Denier weirdness - Anthony Watts favours taxation to reduce carbon emissions - is he a closet socialist?

This post is short.  It's to show how inconsistent deniers can be.

Anthony Watts, who rejects global warming because he doesn't like paying tax, has a new post up (archived here).  He is praising the incoming Australian government for shifting to a taxpayer-based carbon reduction program.  Anthony Watts is a closet socialist.

Australia adopted a market-based scheme where the polluter pays and it doesn't cost most taxpayers a penny.  They get any costs passed on to them as a result of the scheme, reimbursed through a tax cut and for those who don't earn enough to pay tax, through an increase in social security.  (People on high incomes do pay more but the majority of people don't.)

This new government has pledged to get rid of that market-based program and replace it with one paid for directly by taxpayers.  That means that either the tax cuts will have to go and our tax will go up, or services will have to be cut which is effectively the same thing.  We'll have to buy services elsewhere or do without - both of which will come at a huge cost.

The government is also going to recruit a green army to go and plant trees on land, presumably purloined from farmers, for the purpose.  That won't work too well as studies have shown, which will mean taxpayers will have an even bigger burden down the track.

The main ones to benefit as far as I can tell will be the polluters, who will be able to claim money from the government if they reduce emissions while they go to the bank laughing.  In other words, it's we taxpayers who will be paying the polluters that reduce emissions.  (This is the opposite from the current scheme whereby polluters pay for polluting.)  The ordinary person will be out of pocket where they weren't before.

Should we complain as long as the carbon emissions get cut?  Yes, I think we should.  The direct action plan will cost more and there is no guarantee of results.  It's a very risky path and the risk burden falls squarely on the shoulders of the taxpayer.

Deniers are really and truly weird.

Australia - a hot detrending topic at WUWT

Anthony Watts posted an article by someone callled Bill Johnston, headed up "Australia's Average Temperature".

Bill explains how he went to some lengths to collect and play with numbers from the Bureau of Meteorology.  He really went to a lot of trouble, though not as much as the Bureau does.  I don't see anywhere that he looked at area weighted analysis for example, which would be helpful.  Nor regional analysis (Australia is a big country).

From what I can follow, he first removed as many fluctuations as he could from the data to allow for seasonal fluctuations and maybe other stuff and then ended up with this:

He decided to remove what he called the "shifts" as well.  That allowed him to conclude:

Bill's Clever Solution and Conclusions - Remove the Trend and the Trend Disappears!

1. Australia’s averaged temperature data were impacted on by climate shifts in the 1950’s, 1970’s 2002 and 2010. After deducting the impact of those natural events, no residual warming trend was evident that could be related to atmospheric CO2 levels. Well, duh! What did you expect, Bill?
2. Australia’s, ‘hot decade’ (2000-2010) was used to relentlessly market global warming by Australia’s Climate Commission; the Bureau of Meteorology; green groups and politicians in order to stir a sense of catastrophe and climate-fear. However, the fear was unfounded; the drought and associated high temperatures were a temporary aberration caused by El Niño cycles, not global warming. Huh! You mean ENSO events just keep getting bigger and bigger? Is that the same "logic" that Bob Tisdale uses with his magical leaping ENSO's?
3. The 2010 down-step exposed much of that decade’s climate-grooming as false and deceptive. Deceit continues under the guise of “climate change”. There is no evidence at this time that climate change and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere are related. Huh! The lowest low around 2010 in Bill's data is still way higher than the lows of the 20th century.  And what about the Angry Summer - see Lewis and Karoly.
4. The outcome of Australia’s looming election will make no difference to the climate, or to the likelihood or impact of future climate changes. Ditching the carbon tax together with ‘direct action’ would save the Nation’s taxpayers many billions of AUD$ which would be better spent on Nation-building and improving access to services. 

If you detrend the data you remove the trend - we know that, Bill!

Looks as if he caught the trick from John McLean and Bob Carter.  Detect the trends and give them a name like IPO, PDO or DPO or Tisdale's Leaping ENSO's.  Remove the trend (detrend the data) and then claim there aren't any trends!

Here is the longer term record of Australia's temperature from a more accurate and complete approach by the Bureau of Meteorology:

Data Source: Bureau of Meteorology, Australia

Direct Action - A Socialist Approach

Bill says "Ditching the carbon tax together with ‘direct action’ would save the Nation’s taxpayers many billions of AUD$ which would be better spent on Nation-building and improving access to services."

For people who aren't aware, the system in place at the moment is a revenue-neutral price on carbon, with all but the wealthier taxpayers reimbursed by direct payment and/or tax deduction.  The proposed Emissions Trading Scheme is a market-based approach and also revenue neutral.

Direct Action on the other hand is the socialist solution (ironically from the conservative party).  It would be fully funded by taxpayers, with no compensation.  It would be funded by general revenue.  So it would be paid for either by cutting services elsewhere or by increasing taxes or more likely both.

Bill wants none of the above. (At first I thought he favoured Direct Action, but on reflection I see he doesn't want any of the above.)

From the comments

They are not a very sceptical lot at WUWT.  Here are some of the comments:

Phineas Fahrquar says:

July 21, 2013 at 3:33 pm  Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
The upshot is that, after accounting for natural events, there is no discernible trend toward warming, let alone one that could be attributed to human-generated CO2. In other words, it’s all scare-mongering on the part of the Eco-Left and Green Statists, and the fools think they’re right.

Stuart Elliot says:

July 21, 2013 at 3:43 pm  I wish facts were enough. I believe that a collective sense of outrage and betrayal will be required to shatter the grasping smugness of the alarmist / politician complex. But at least facts give the world a place to start the journey back to sanity.

Chad Wozniak is still deluded and says:

July 21, 2013 at 3:46 pm  No surprises here – the warm anomaly in Australia could be compared to the warn autumn of 2011 in the northeastern US and eastern Canada while the rest of the world was entering into one of the coldest winters since 1850. Meaningless in any case for the world as a whole.

Anenome Ofglobalgov is a conspiracy theorist extraordinaire and says:

July 21, 2013 at 3:47 pm  We, the People, have been deceived. In the Larry Abraham book ‘The Greening’, 1993, he gives evidence that the world’s ‘Elite’ have always believed that war is necessary to keep the masses under control, that they were seeking an alternative control mechanism for the same purpose, and that the Environment was chosen as the tool. And look how they have succeeded. That is why they are using the global warming fraud, and also UN Agenda 21 to regulate, restrict and control us step by evil step until we are cleared off the land into self-contained highrise ‘transit centres’ with public transport and no cars allowed.. To create dependency of We, the People, on our (controlled) ‘governments’, the derivatives markets were created to create debt overload of the banks (by removing the Glass-Steagalls Act that separated commercial banks from casino investment banks like Goldman Sacs), which will collapse in the near future, and ‘bail-ins’, the theft of depositors money, will take place – all planned decade ahead. Australia and New Zealand in april began working on legislation to legalise the theft of our deposits by the banks that are too big to fail, so-called. There is a push around the world to prevent this catastrophe by brining Glass-Steagallsinto legislation, see Citizens Electoral Council. of Australia, LaRouchePac too.

Finally one lone voice emerges. thingdonta says:

July 21, 2013 at 7:16 pm  “Regardless of their origin, events that impact on data are not trends.”
You don’t know whether the events are part of the overall trend or not, so this statement is statistically invalid. You cant filter out step changes when it is convenient. There is no way of knowing whether the step changes are part of the overall trend or not. They may or may not be. But to filter them out routinely, you have caught the academic disease of ignoring aspects or parts of the data that don’t suit you. This filtering of step changes as you have done is an old trick, and it is invalid. Step changes can be caused by an overall trend.

But is quickly put in his place by geran, who has other ideas!:

July 21, 2013 at 7:53 pm  thing, you must have missed the next sentence:
“The popular choice of 1950 as a climate change “starting point” is not a valid one because the data from 1950 to 1957 are from a pool of lower than average values that exert leverage on the trend-line. As indicated earlier, data prior to 1957 were non-trending.”
(I know you don’t want your comment to be “statistically invalid”. Glad to help.)

Update: I see Nick Stokes has now joined the party and has gone into more detail of how Bill's analysis is cock-eyed.  More than it deserves IMO :D