Warmists finally acknowledging the influence of the sun

They have always denied any influence from the sun but the temperature stasis of the 21st century is making them desperate. And now that the Chinese aerosol explanation has been sweepingly debunked, the sun is all that they have got left

During the summer months, it's both difficult and remarkably easy to forget how dangerous the sun can be. Sometimes it takes a space weather event to reinforce the point. Last month, the Solar Dynamic Observatory recorded a massive eruption on the sun's surface that produced a mushroom cloud of ionized particles. Had the resulting solar winds struck the Earth's magnetic field directly, the damage to our electrical grids might have proven catastrophic. If you think our politicians have a tough time agreeing on debt ceilings, just imagine how much difficulty they'd have figuring out how to finance trillion-dollar repairs to our country's infrastructure.

As astronomy author Bob Berman's new book reveals, storms like these are actually a common byproduct of the Sun's 11-year cycle of pulsing, dimming and brightening. "The Sun's Heartbeat," which takes its title from this phenomenon, offers a compelling and surprisingly playful history of our solar system's most famous star -- from the alternately brilliant and misguided theories of the ancient Greeks, to the modern-day discoveries that would make Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick blush. Along the way, Berman, a columnist for Astronomy magazine and the science editor of the Old Farmer's Almanac, examines how solar cycles can offset global warming and how mankind has, by its own ambitions and neuroses, devolved into a collection of sun-starved troglodytes.....

There are three major factors that affect the planet's temperature and, by extension, its agricultural development: volcanic activity, the presence or absence of El Niño and, finally, the heartbeat of the sun. If the latter slows down for long periods of time, the Earth gets colder. During the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715, the sun effectively lost its heartbeat entirely. The result was unbearably cold winters and incredible hardship around the world.

Carbon emissions have warmed the planet dramatically, but we happen to be entering a new sunspot [i.e., heartbeat] cycle -- the 24th in our recorded history. Many experts believe that not only will it have weak maximum temperatures, but very deep minimums. If this is true, it's the best thing that can possibly happen. The sun would effectively buy us time to switch over to non-fossil fuels. If we end up having strong or even normal maximums, temperatures in 2015 could be hotter than humans have ever seen before.

More blah blah HERE




Demand for transparency is a "threat" to Warmists

That tells its own story, of course

The recent meme being propagated by global warming alarmists is that they are under siege by skeptics, physically at risk for their selfless service to science, and to the world. So far as I can tell, the very serious claim as advertised either speaks more about those making facially misleading assertions, or otherwise remains not fully baked. That is, the specific bandied about is some Larouchie outburst in Australia about "the British Empire", or something, according to the source... though the recipient gravely intones that, to our surprise, the US is the epicenter of threats to climate scientists. That darn media, covering for climate skeptics!

As with AAAS's panic over our FOIAs [Freedom of Information Act requests] -- who wouldn't see them as akin to death threats? I mean, other than those who don't confuse death-by-transparency of a movement with the real thing -- this is clearly prompted out of desperation over our transparency campaign (see, e.g., the successful effort to compel production of University of Virginia 's "Hockey Stick" and other Michael Mann records here, and seeking the ethics file -- if it exists -- governing James Hansen's lucrative extracurriculars here).

In execution, this is also rather pathetic.

More disturbing is the hypocrisy, including among the warming industry's media cheerleaders. Remember, these people said nothing as the (now-)supposed horrors of FOIA requests, and actual intimidation and assault were visited on those who dared continue plying science -- that is, skeptical, critical analysis -- to anthropogenic global warming theory. I wrote a book about it, it was so pervasive in the global warming industry's modus operandi (a book that also detailed what was affirmed, not 'revealed', in ClimateGate, a year before there was a ClimateGate). Not quite as pervasive as their default plays of no time to discuss! and argumentum ad Hitlerum. But far too common.

For example, consider the following excerpts, aptly titled Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. (citations omitted; if you want 'em, buy the book).

CHAPTER 6. Fear and Loathing: Alarmist Scare Tactics, Demonization, and Threats

At various Kyoto Protocol negotiations that I have attended, Greenpeace posted around the convention hall a "Field Guide to Climate Criminals" with photographs of me and a few others on the enemies list, so that the unwashed children of privilege flocking to these meetings couldn't miss us [NB: I admit to suffering only stalkers, and having Greenpeace steal my trash each Sunday night]...

Take this one from "environmental author" Mark Lynas who describes his blog as "something of a debating hall about climate change."

I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put this in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial-except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don't will one day have to answer for their crimes.

David Roberts, writing for the popular green website Grist went into more detail:

When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards-some sort of climate Nuremberg. ...

Academic and activist Ross Gelbspan (who for a long time portrayed himself as a Pulitzer Prize winner, which he isn't) has attacked scientists (which he also is not) as "criminals against humanity" for questioning his apocalyptic future scenarios. One cowardly green-activist website calls a Harvard astrophysicist an attempted mass murderer for discussing the Sun's role in the earth's historical temperature record, and labels other dissenters "felons." ...

Canada's first PhD in climatology, Dr. Tim Ball, relates that he's received death threats for his apostasy [NB: Ball is also being sued by two alarmists so, using their logic, there's two more death threats]. Yet the threats of an early grave (when not acted upon) have big shoes to fill living up to the rhetoric of the premier darlings of the alarmist industry. Consider the comments from George Monbiot , star columnist for The Guardian, that "every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned," and Gore advisor James Hansen, that "a certain shock treatment is needed, but it would best be delivered with a two-by-four as a solid whack to the head of politicians who remain oblivious to fundamental physical facts." Referring to these gems, climate scientist Roger Pielke Jr. [NB: who also went public with a crystal clear professional threat for his apostasy] opined:

Allusions to murder and beatings kind of puts a chill on discussing options for climate policy, doesn't it? Maybe that is the point. It certainly makes me think.

... It is all too easy for leaders to incite people to actual violence on issues that they are passionate about. Mr. Monbiot and Dr. Hansen (and others, again on all sides) may not have that outcome in mind as they write such statements, but if they don't watch out, that may be what they get.

The Wheels Come Off

Pielke is right. Noted skeptic, physics professor, and former head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo Tom Segalstad related to me an annoying series of pizzas delivered to his home which, although he did not order them, did ensue once he came out in criticism of the environmental alarmists. Oh, those clever greens. Or, maybe not so clever. It seems that, subsequently, the wheels of Segalstad's automobile up and fell off on two separate occasions, including once while his young daughter was in the car. Apparently the lug nuts had been loosened. Of course, his claim is anecdotal [NB: though the incidents later resumed]. Sort of like the global warmists' purported harbingers of catastrophic climate change.

I then detailed the vastly more numerous professional threats, or implicit admissions of having received or known of them (just like all of those global warming alarmists whose funding and advancement has suffered as a result! I kid.). How one terrified citizen beat another to death for supposedly violating a restriction on lawn watering (he was wrong). Of UK schoolchildren widely exhibiting signs of having been terrorized by their educators, and a teenager committed to psychiatric care in Australia, refusing even water, having been convinced he was contributing to an extant environmental catastrophe. All the logical outcome of alarmist rhetoric.

This wretchedness comes with leading, or letting one's self to be led by, a cadre seeking a political agenda and/or to preserve a gravy train, or otherwise their professional futures, all first secured on exaggeration and ideological abuse of a scientific credential, perpetuated by bullying, threats and often dishonesty. Now claiming to be victimized. Please, cut your losses and stop laboring to construct a moral high ground for yourselves.

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Some Common Global Warming Fallacies

by statistician W.M. Briggs

The level of debate on global warming is shriekingly poor. Not that I have any hope of convincing the world to reject bad logic, but here are some of the more common fallacies making the rounds.

* The Consensus Appealing to “the” consensus is a form of the appeal-to-authority fallacy, but it is more so a stacking-the-deck fallacy. It works thusly: the IPCC goes out among the credentialed and asks, “Doest thou agree with me?” If the answer be “Aye”, the person is added to the Nice list; if it be “Nay”, the unfortunate is entered into the Persona Non Grata ledger. The IPCC then reports that there is a consensus among its membership, and that because this consensus is a consensus, its conclusions are beyond question.

But “the” consensus is not a consensus of all climatologists. Your own author, for example, despite offering his services repeatedly—to be remunerated at the same rates as the rest of the Aye-sayers: he has to eat, after all—has never had his offer accepted. “The consensus” is therefore not a consensus in the plain English meaning of the word.

Actually, of course, even some who say Nay make it onto the Nice list, but their views are not accorded equal weight with those of the leadership. See Judith Curry’s interesting post on “the” consensus for more on this (suggested by an anonymous reader).

* You’re no climatologist! The grandfather of all fallacies, the appeal to authority. This one generates more hilarity than any other. This fallacy occurs when a point made by a person outside “the” consensus is said to be invalid because the person making the point is not a “genuine” or “real” climatologist.

First, if this fallacy was not one, then how can we explain that the IPCC could include so many non-genuine, un-real climatologists? A great chunk (even a majority?) of its members are economists, biologists, etc. Should we disbelieve what they say because these people are not genuine climatologists?

An example of hilarity: musing on climate-gate, academic philosopher Gary Gutting writes in the New York Times: "Some non-expert opponents of global warming have made much of a number of e-mails written and circulated among a handful of climate scientists that they see as evidence of bias toward global warming. But unless this group is willing to argue from this small (and questionable) sample to the general unreliability of climate science as a discipline, they have no alternative but to accept the consensus view of climate scientists that these e-mails do not undermine the core result of global warming."

But, Gary, dear boy, just think: if you’re dismissing the claims of critics because they are “non-expert”, how then could you, as non-expert as they come, judge the IPCC’s claims to be valid? How can any non-expert “accept the consensus view”? I am an expert: I do not accept “the” consensus view. My expertise surely trumps yours. Therefore, you must believe what I say. If you retort that more experts take the opposite view than mine, and that therefore you choose to believe that what they say is true, then you have reduced truth to a vote. (Via Bishop Hill, via Randy Brich).

This fallacy is pervasive and almost always used in Gutting’s form by civilians anxious not to learn any physics, but who are keen to shut up the other side.

A person’s lack of credentials can be, and often is, relevant to why that person uttered a falsity, but it is irrelevant to proving the fallacy.

* The asinine comparison Technically known as the non sequitur, this one is most popular with politicians and pundits, and even the occasional academic philosopher. Examples here are legion. This is usually evidenced by calling somebody a “denier,” as pathetic a ploy as exists.

It has also been used, in peer-reviewed publications, to compare disbelief if global warming as comparable for support of slavery. Whenever you hear we must not listen to the nay-sayers because we must “Save the planet,” or its many variants, you are hearing this fallacy.

* The economic fallacy See this post for complete details. The gist: the source of funding to the person who makes a statement is irrelevant to whether that statement is true or false. The source of funding could be, and often is, relevant to understanding why the person uttered a falsity, but it is irrelevant to proving the falsity.

* What you say hasn’t been peer reviewed! Yes, the appeal-to-authority in disguise. A statement is not true because a busy editor and two reviewers (who first look if their own papers are quoted in the paper under review) have said it is. Similarly, a statement is not false because it appears on a web site (and only reviewed in the comments).

Again, a person’s failing to submit a statement to “peer approval” is, and often is, relevant to why that person uttered a falsity, but it is irrelevant to proving the fallacy.

SOURCE




Big Green Pharaohs want copper but obstruct the mining of it

Who is Gordon Moore and what does he have against copper? He's the multibillionaire co-founder of computer chip giant Intel, and he has pledged $2.7 million against a planned mine in the largest known ore body of copper on the planet, Alaska's Pebble Mine -- even though Intel uses tons of copper.

As chairman of his private foundation, Moore gave $1.1 million to the Alaska Conservation Foundation for "Pebble mine campaign coordination;" $1 million to the Renewable Resources Coalition for "Pebble mine education and outreach"; and $624,000 to the Nature Conservancy's Alaska office for "Pebble mine science and risk assessment."

Moore gave the money and marching orders at the same time in 2008. The mine developers, Pebble Limited Partnership, hadn't released their proposal at that time and still haven't released their detailed plan to build and operate the most environmentally sensitive mine in history, careful of the vast salmon runs from Bristol Bay, cognizant of earthquake fault lines, wildlife habitat, native village subsistence hunting, the whole book.

It's not just Moore. The war against Pebble is already one of the largest and most expensive Big Green campaigns ever -- Natural Resources Defense Council ($96.9 million revenue) runs a circuslike Stop the Pebble Mine crusade, replete with jeremiads of salmon doom, aging actor Robert Redford demanding that development partners Anglo American and Rio Tinto withdraw from the project, and gloats that they already chased away Mitsubishi.

Dozens of Big Green groups operate anti-Pebble fights. Environmental Defense Fund ($151 million in assets) runs a petition drive, the National Wildlife Federation ($98.4 million annual revenue) enlists native groups and fishermen, and so on into a coalition of hundreds.

They're even recruiting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to wield an obscure and inappropriate section of the Clean Water Act as brute force to kill the mine project.

It shows, if nothing else, that environmentalism is no longer a movement. Counting its foundation funders, it's an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And it's a strange, alien industry that absolutely opposes any development anywhere.

Hard to believe, but Big Green Inc. is afflicted with a peculiar schizophrenia that shows most clearly in President Obama's clean energy economy campaign. "Clean energy economy" sounds so promising -- wind farms, solar panels, electric cars, biofuels, wonderful products -- all set in a pristine Eden, an untouchable paradise like Bristol Bay.

They want all those wonderful products, but they don't want anybody developing anything to get the stuff necessary to make them. Like mental patients or mystics, from their moral high throne, true believers can't perceive their own contradictions, can't grasp the biblical "more bricks, no straw" analogy.

The Obama administration, with all its agencies, is the definitive true believer, stopping all development everywhere.

The result? Goods production is vanishing in America. There is no recovery from this recession because Washington is killing it. Industry isn't hiring because regulators won't let developers develop. With no development, there's nothing to work on and so no jobs.

I asked Pebble Limited Partnership Chief Executive Officer John Shively what he thought of this outsize opposition. "To try stopping this project before we've even announced what it will be is to deny us the due process people in this country are entitled to."

True, but why is the opposition to the Pebble Mine so ferocious, so hugely funded, so desperate? What's so terrifying about this mine that other mines haven't aroused?

"I can only think of one reason," Shively said. "They don't know what we have in mind, only rumors that we've been constantly working to make it the perfect environmentally sensitive mine. I think they're trying to stop it before it starts because we might actually do it and do it right."

Imagine the consequences.

SOURCE






The nightmare of Greenie rubbish rules in Britain

One of the army of bin policemen employed to make sure households are recycling properly has been sacked after complaints about his over-zealous approach. Lester Murphy was paid £20,000 a year to help homeowners understand the new recycling rules, but his ‘full-on’ approach resulted in chaos.

Mr Murphy, a 50-year-old Army veteran, used a camera to collect ‘evidence’ against householders confused by the new rules. He engaged in doorstep slanging matches about the definitions of recyclable and landfill waste and in one day ordered bin men not to empty 122 bins on an estate because residents had put rubbish in the wrong ones. In many instances, bins stacked with rubbish were left to rot.

Residents of Test Valley in Hampshire complained to the council following disagreements with Mr Murphy, from Froxfield near Marlborough in Wiltshire.

His sacking makes him one of the first casualties of the Town Hall recycling strategy which is costing taxpayers up to £20 million a year in jobs and initiatives that many believe are unnecessary.

Test Valley operates a two-bin system using a black wheelie bin for food waste, glass bottles, plastics and other waste destined for landfill. A brown bin is supplied for recyclable materials such as paper, cans, cardboard and plastic bottles. However, many households assume glass bottles can be recycled and put them in the brown bin, which led to disputes.

Businessman Paul Ashton, 45, from Eastleigh in Hampshire, said his 21-year-old daughter Sam was reduced to tears in October when Mr Murphy said he found a plastic carrier bag containing rotting food in the recyclable brown bin. ‘He was so aggressive it was unreal, and all over a plastic bag,’ said Miss Ashton, a swimming-pool lifeguard. ‘I didn’t even put it there. My dad was furious because this guy was a bit of a jobsworth and really upset me. Enough was enough.’

In July last year, Mr Murphy, who served in the first Gulf War campaign in 1990, also ticked off Malcolm Rolls from nearby Romsey after he found a stale loaf of bread in the recyclable waste bin and ordered bin men not to empty it. Mr Murphy was hauled before a disciplinary hearing at the council’s Andover offices in April, and sacked after 11 months in the job.

In the letter of termination, Test Valley Council said his ‘pattern of behaviour’ had attracted a ‘disproportionate level of complaints’.

Mr Murphy, a married father of two who served as a corporal in the Army’s Royal Logistic Corps for 15 years and prides himself on self- discipline, said: ‘They sacked me because people were complaining about me doing my job.

‘They told me I was taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. But if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. ‘As far as I’m concerned, I was doing my job well and that job was to inform people what waste went in what bin. ‘If they kept getting it wrong, I was empowered to tell them and have their rubbish collection stopped until they sorted it out. ‘I don’t see how I could have done anything different. I only started keeping the photographic evidence to cover my back when the complaints started flooding in.’

Ben Alcock, 29, a lift engineer from the Cricketers Way estate in Andover, where Mr Murphy red-tagged 122 bins in one day for non-collection, said: ‘People do their best with all these new rules but it is confusing and no way should this guy have been going around doing what he was doing. He was a bit full-on.’

Hundreds of jobs similar to Mr Murphy’s have been created up and down the country over the past five years. Nearly all the 410 councils in England and Wales employ at least one full-time official with responsibility for recycling, landing council taxpayers with an estimated bill of £20 million a year.

A spokesman for Test Valley Borough Council said: ‘The circumstances surrounding the departure of anyone leaving council employment are confidential. ‘The council has an excellent employment record and has robust procedures in place to ensure that employment-related matters are dealt with appropriately. ‘We would, however, say that the circumstances in this particular case were not related in any way to recycling.’

It is understood Mr Murphy has been replaced by another inspector.

SOURCE






GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Students 'brainwashed' over climate change in Queensland schools

(The LNP is Queensland's conservative party)

The Liberal National Party president has blasted the Queensland education system for "brainwashing" students about climate change.

Speaking to LNP members at the party's state conference today, Bruce McIver said he was discouraged about how children were being taught about climate change in schools. Mr McIver said he was shaken by the way issues were being taught when he and his wife visited their grandson's school. "We were shocked at the way the climate change debate on one side is being pushed in the classroom," he said. "And not balanced perspectively. Our kids are being brainwashed under this Labor education system."

Mr McIver's comments received loud applause from more than 700 delegates from throughout the state.

"Why aren't they being told that if you go to Quilpie and you drive to Windorah - [Liberal National Party MPs] Vaughan Johnson's country, Howard Hobbs' country - you will see these sand hills that have been blown up years ago," he said. "When the droughts were much bigger than the ones we have just had. "And why aren't we being told that Brisbane has had floods in the 1890s of over eight metres.

"[LNP leader] Campbell [Newman] tells me that back in the 1820s - even before white man even came here - there were floods that could have been over 12 metres at the post office at the bottom of Elizabeth Street. "So, things change. Climate is constantly changing. Is man having an effect? Well I will leave it for you to judge."

Queensland Education Minister Cameron Dick said Mr McIver’s comments were an “outrageous slur” on the professionalism of the state's 38,000 teachers. “The curriculum taught in Queensland state schools is developed and delivered by educational experts, not politicians, nor backroom political party operatives like Mr McIver," he said. "Quite simply, students studying science in Queensland state schools are taught scientific facts.

"We all know that Mr McIver and the LNP are climate-change deniers, and his comments are not only wrong and insulting, but an attempt to push the party’s ‘head-in-the-sand’ beliefs on Queenslanders."

Mr McIver described Labor's carbon tax as a "socialist" policy would have a devastating effect on Queensland business and on Queensland jobs. "It is a direct threat to our economy. I believe it is a redistribution of wealth," he said to cheers of "hear, hear" among delegates. "It is a direct threat to Queensland jobs."

Mr McIver also challenged Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to install more Queenslanders onto his shadow front bench. The LNP won 21 of Queensland's 30 Federal seats at the August 2010 election.

Mr McIver said the LNP had added an extra 4000 members since it formed in July 2008.

SOURCE

Conservative leader opens fire on huge Greenie bureaucracy in Qld.

CAMPBELL Newman has launched a personal attack on Premier Anna Bligh's husband as he threatens to shake up a ballooning green bureaucracy captive to "environmental ideology".

Mr Newman was yesterday given a thunderous welcome to the LNP's annual conference in Brisbane, where he outlined a vigorous plan of attack to take power from Queensland's "tired 20-year-old Labor Government".

Despite fighting a cold that made his voice hoarse, Mr Newman delivered a lengthy barrage at Labor. He saved his sharpest barbs for the Department of Environment and Resource Management, recently revealed to employ the equivalent of a medium-sized township.

Mr Newman said DERM would come under a powerful spotlight and be swiftly re-engineered if he won government. "It's a department without true leadership, a department that is more about ideology than science," he said. "It's more about politics than outcomes."

He also singled out Ms Bligh's husband, Greg Withers, assistant director-general in the Office of Climate Change in DERM, for special mention. "Let's face it, when you have a climate change policy in Queensland decided by the Premier's husband, not science, then you know there's a problem," Mr Newman said.

Environment Minister Vicky Darling hit back immediately, saying Mr Newman was showing his true colours. "Campbell Newman's promise to wreck one of the state's most important regulators should send shivers down the spine of any Queenslander who values the protection of our precious environment and natural resources," she said.

With more than 5600 public servants, DERM is now one of Australia's largest bureaucracies, dwarfing even the number of federal public servants assigned to green schemes (2254).

DERM was designed to protect waterways and wildlife and ensure prime agricultural land was not developed, Mr Newman said. "(But) under Labor, Queenslanders have lost confidence in DERM."

Mr Newman also attacked the Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation. "Many people from business, the community and even government simply do not understand how this department works or which of its six ministers is in charge," he said.

Mr Newman said Labor was too focused on Green preferences.

Ms Darling said the Bligh Government had a strong, nation-leading record on protecting precious environment and natural assets. "The LNP has never cared about protecting the environment, and this is a clear indication that Campbell Newman is a very real risk," Ms Darling said.

SOURCE

Carbon tax to hit schools

STRUGGLING schools will be hit by an annual $200 million rise in power bills - costing about $57 per student - under the carbon tax. Parents will have to foot the bill by paying more in voluntary contributions or less money will go into vital teaching resources.

Federal opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said the carbon tax would add 10 per cent to electricity bills and 9 per cent to gas bills.

With schools already struggling with rising power costs due to the digital education revolution, which has meant classrooms become increasingly reliant on computers and digital technology, the NSW Department of Education has told them they will not automatically be given supplementary funding once they exceed their budget for utility bills.

Mr Pyne said yesterday: "There are only two places schools can get the money: they can either increase their fees, or in the case of government schools, it can come out of the state government coffers."We all know the state governments aren't flush with funds so that is going to be difficult for them to find those funds."

School Education Minister Peter Garrett responded by calling the claim a Coalition scare campaign. "The fact is that the government's contribution to school funding is indexed," he said. "So as costs rise, funding to schools is increased."

However, a memo late last week from the NSW Education Department called on public school principals to "identify and develop strategies" to help reduce the money spent on casual teachers and utilities. "In 2008, schools sought supplementation for $13 million to cover the costs of short-term casual relief and utilities," the memo said.

"Last year that number doubled to $26 million. This is a 100 per cent increase for roughly the same numbers of students, teaching staff and teaching spaces. It means that we have less money to spend on other teaching and learning programs."

President of the Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations of NSW Helen Walton said parents were continually being called upon to support basic programs because schools' money was going on bills. "The computers and whiteboards that come with the digital education revolution are great teaching resources but they come at great expense," Ms Walton said. She said many P&Cs paid for air- conditioning and heating units but their use was adding to schools' bills.

Premier Barry O'Farrell said the power bill rises would cost parents. "The impact of Labor's carbon tax reaches into every corner of life and schools will be adversely affected," he said. "It will push up costs for schools and for parents. The NSW Government is seeking talks with the Prime Minister to discuss the impact of her carbon tax, and schools will be included in that. "We are deeply concerned (about) the impact it will have on schools."

Mr Pyne has also written to Mr Garrett to ask if there would be compensation and what other costs of schooling would rise under the carbon tax. "There are many costs related to a school's operations that could potentially increase as a result of the tax, including increases in electricity and gas," he wrote.

SOURCE

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