God said While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease Genesis 8:22.
‘Among the supposed horrors of climate change you can list, well, everything from giant jellyfish to itchier poison ivy to soggy pork chops, bad chocolate and the disappearance of beaches on which to savour a Foster’s. But don’t forget bad computer models, including the one that said beaches were going fast and would go faster; it turns out they were based on bad assumptions and used to justify worse policy. It really is getting silly.
According to The Times, the European Commission study predicting the end of sand as we know it was badly flawed and caused, of all things, “unnecessary alarm”. And in such a basic way that it almost looks deliberate although as we have repeatedly stressed, one should never ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity. What new research has discovered about beaches is, in plain language, that they are sandy strips at the edge of the sea and so if the sea rises, the beach that is washed away at the low edge will be replaced by new beach at the high edge.
It cannot have been easy to miss this point. But the EC study apparently managed it through a combination of elaborate techniques, beginning with assuming rising seas washed sediment away rather than depositing it. (Were this true, we must observe, the steady sea rise since the end of the last glaciation would have finished off the beaches long before Henry Ford got to work on them; once again the inability to think through basic historical points is among the most glaring weaknesses of climate alarmists.)
The earlier study then seems to have assumed that people would do the dumbest stuff possible in response to eroding beaches, like walling them in so they had nowhere to grow. (Among other things it said Australia was the worst-affected country because it has over 7,000 miles of beaches. But of course most of them are not in built-up areas so those beaches have endless outback into which to retreat.) And then it suggested some even dumber stuff like trying to pump sand back out of the water as if Mr. Ocean weren’t big enough to wash it all away again with a sneer.
Now of course it is true that in Britain, for instance, if the beaches keep retreating they will eventually meet at the top of the last sandy hill and vanish like a sand castle before an incoming tide. But if all of Britain goes under because of rising seas, from man-made causes, natural ones or both, the big problem won’t be not being able to relax on the beach as it happens. If on the other hand the world continues to see the same slow rise in sea levels that it appears to have seen for many centuries, long before man-made GHGs were a thing, then the new study reveals that the old study repeats another familiar and unhelpful alarmist habit: Having misidentified the problem, it then recommends actions that would make the situation worse. As the new study says, “As sea level rises, shoreline retreat must, and will, happen. Beaches, however, will survive. The biggest threat to the continued existence of beaches is coastal defence structures that limit their ability to migrate.”
So as always, let’s combine a sober assessment of the problem with a sensible solution. Among the major drawbacks of climate alarmism is that, in part by relying on computer models that simply assume what they set out to prove, it diverts far too much time, energy and money to “stopping climate change” which is neither possible nor desirable, and away from mitigating any really undesirable impacts of it at acceptable cost while also giving sustained attention to other environmental problems from smog to plastic in the oceans that are both real and manageable.’https://climatediscussionnexus.com/2020/11/25/on-the-beach/
‘Wind developers face liability in the millions for the nuisance caused by unrelenting, turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound.
Litigation is where the rubber hits the road: myths get replaced with facts; evidence overtakes spin and propaganda. Court rooms (and where they determine the facts, juries) strike fear into the (ordinarily icy) hearts of those that stand behind or run with wind power outfits.
Wherever in the world civil actions have been pursued in nuisance and negligence, wind power outfits have bent over backwards to settle out of court.
Sure, wind power operators have deep pockets (obscenely stuffed with the massive subsidies drawn from their victims, among others). But they have never won a common-law case demonstrating that wind farms do not cause noise nuisance.
Back in February this year, three siblings managed to secure €225,000 from the wind power outfit responsible for the turbine noise that for some to leave their family home in Cork. Again, the matter was settled without a trial – due to the dread that the wind industry holds of a binding judicial precedent, which would cost them hundreds of $millions around the globe, as a result of the thousands of claims that would naturally follow.
The team from JoNova pick up on the result of the case from Cork, but take a different tack, by begging the question: if a thumping, grinding cacophony of low-frequency wind turbine noise can drive human beings insane, what on earth is doing to Ireland’s native fauna, such as Red Deer, Squirrels, or Pine Martens?
€225,000 reasons mammals need a 1km exclusion zone from wind towers Jo Nova Blog Jo Nova 7 October 2020
Laura David and Jack Kelleher had to leave their family farm at Gowlane North, Donoughmore, Cork, four years ago after a shuddering, flickery 10-turbine wind farm began operating a bit more than 700 metres from their home.
They suffered from “nosebleeds, ear aches, skin rashes, swollen and painful hands, loss of power in their limbs, sleep disturbance, and headaches.” Naturally, they moved into a hotel, and then found a new home eight miles away, and took it to the High Court.
Family in Cork win a €225k payout:
by Ann O’Loughlin, IrishTimes
Two brothers and a sister from the same family who claimed they suffered illness as a result of noise, vibrations and shadow flicker from a Cork windfarm have settled their High Court actions for a total of €225,000.
The settlements which were without an admission of liability were approved by Ms Justice Leonie Reynolds and occurred after mediation.
The defendants had denied all the claims they had been allegedly negligent resulting in the siblings becoming ill. They also denied that noise, shadow flicker and vibration from the windfarm had intruded onto the family’s farm.
The rest of the family have other claims still outstanding.
If industrial infrasound has this effect on people what does it do to the endangered Red Deer, Squirrels, or Pine Martens of Ireland? We’re waiting for the Green screams of protest outside wind farm developments in 3…2…1… or does no Greenie care because it’s not about homeless furry critters, and never has been — it’s just about impressing their friends at dinner parties? And right now, apparently nothing impresses friends at dinner more than acting as a blind marketing agent for multinational renewable corporations.
If wind turbine operators must pay out people within a 1km radius (or more), and if turbines aren’t too good for the cows, sheep, deer, whales, or bats either, then these charges are just another hidden cost of wind power. Wind power consumes more land, and more legal funds.
A member of the Conservative Party ‘Rishi Sunak is considering plans to charge motorists for every mile they drive on Britain’s roads to fill a £40billion tax hole left by a push to electric cars, according to reports.
The Chancellor is reportedly ‘very interested’ in the idea of a national road pricing scheme – which would steer motorists into a new ‘pay-as-you-drive’ type system.
Road pricing in England is limited to schemes such as the M6 Toll in the Midlands, the Dartford crossing on the M25, London’s Congestion Zone and a handful of small tunnels and bridges.
But a national scheme is now being considered amid fears a switch to electric vehicles will leave a massive tax shortfall from the loss of key revenue raisers such as Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty, according to the Times. […]
‘The real climate refugees are those forced to abandoned their homes thanks to a grinding, pulsing cacophony of wind turbine generated low-frequency noise and infra-sound.
The climate catastrophists wail about millions being displaced by rising tides and chaotic weather. But it’s their obsession with chaotically intermittent wind power, that’s causing a real rural exodus.
The bucolic Dutch landscape – which thrives, notwithstanding that a third of it is below sea level – has been carpeted with these things over the last generation; homes have been encircled; entire villages surrounded. The families that occupy these, once peaceful abodes, are driven mad by wind turbine noise and, in far too many cases, they’re simply driven out of their homes, forever.
It’s a story which is as sad as it is familiar to rural communities, across the globe.
Victims are told by the ruthless and cynical that profit from the greatest scam on earth, that they’re just ‘collateral damage’ and treated by those paid and empowered to protect them, as wind industry roadkill.
For a taste of what your wind powered future looks like, let’s head to the Netherlands.
First Dutch climate refugees fleeing wind turbines: “The noise is unbearable” Global Warming Policy Forum translated from De Telegraaf Edwin Timmer 2 November 2020
AMSTERDAM – The first Dutch climate refugees are a fact. Not because of wet feet, but because citizens cannot cope with the noise of wind farms.
Residents close to biomass power stations also complain bitterly. Are health and the environment in the Netherlands subordinate to our climate goals? “I do see a similarity with the Groningen gas and the Limburg mines: energy interests outweigh other interests.”
Every time he sent his Connexxion public transport bus across the Haringvliet Bridge, Claus aan de Wiel looked to the northwest with concern. Towards five windturbines two hundred meters high, ten kilometers away, near Piershil. “How’s the wind? Isn’t it too windy? What will it be like when I get home? ” Will it be another evening where the turbine noise rumbles like a rolling, roaring surf above the TV? “I never slept a wink. Sometimes I got back on the bus after only three and a half hours of sleep. ”
Windfear Windfear. The bus driver and his partner Ine van den Dool suffered from it after the Spui wind farm was set up five hundred meters from their house. The initiator still boasted about the Rolls-Royce among the windturbines – so quiet. “But we were shocked. The noise was unbearable. The house was built by my parents, I grew up there and thought I would only leave between six planks, but we could not stand it ”, says Aan de Wiel. Sound waves banged on the facades from three sides. Even the moles disappeared from their garden.
Van den Dool loved the greenery and space in the Hoeksche Waard. “It was a heavenly, healing place. Where we sat in the garden with friends until late. The wind farm has distroyed that. It was as if a jet plane kept circling overhead. I developed severe asthma and could not stop coughing at night. As if my body was screaming: this is not safe, you have to get out of here. ” And so the pair left. As a climate refugee in their own country.
Turbine noise It is the compression of air when a wick sweeps past the mast that makes the typical turbine noise. “Our noise standards for wind turbines are much more flexible than in neighboring countries,” says Fred Jansen from Schagen. Ten years ago, as chairman of the National Critical Platform for Wind Energy, he already opposed the cabinet’s new noise standards. According to Jansen, they only work in favor of wind farm builders. “Local residents are the victims.”
The World Health Organization recommends that the wind turbine noise for local residents be kept below an average of 45 decibels per day (45 L-den). Louder noise “is associated with adverse health effects,” according to the 2018 report “Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region”. However, Dutch law allows an average of 47 decibels during the day, and peaks well above 50 decibels. Since every three decibels means a doubling, that saves a sip on a drink, Janssen believes.
Sound expert Marcel Blankvoort confirms the Dutch exceptional position. Our country works with averages, where other Western European countries, apart from Norway, allow a maximum peak load on the facade. “And we don’t include background noise. Elsewhere, a turbine in an industrial estate is allowed to make more noise than in the countryside, because there is more noise there anyway. Here, the same standard applies everywhere. That is why wind turbines in a previously quiet polder are more likely to be perceived as a deterioration in the living environment. ” In the ‘Nijpelsian landscape’ (named after the architect of the Dutch climate agreement), full of wind farms, those sound waves hit more and more citizens.
It is not only wind energy that the government is helping, on paper, to halve CO2 emissions by 2030. Subsidizing the burning of woody biomass also helps the accountants in The Hague to comply with the Paris Agreement. Billions of euros in subsidies have already been promised for hundreds of biomass plants. But the nuisance for local residents has caused a fierce social debate about wood burning.
“Recently our bedroom was full of smoke again,” says Rini Ruitenschild from Ede. He lives with his family at a distance of one hundred and eighty meters from one of the local biomass plants, which does not burn gas but wood for district heating. “It is not the first time. My wife has a lung problem. If your whole house is full of dirty air again, then you will become unruly. ” Officially, the heat company adheres to the rules.
That also applies in Zaandam. But residents of the senior apartment De IJdoorn are done with it. From the eleventh floor, Co and Jeanne Meester regularly see smoke drifting from the much lower chimney of the biomass power plant about two hundred meters away. “The stench is unbearable. How do you get it into your head to place such a thing in the middle of a residential area, right next to a school and close to a hospital? ”Says Meester. “We are concerned about the effect on our health and that of my flatmates.”
Health issues The disadvantages of wood burning for energy have been known for years, says Fenna Swart of the Clean Air Committee. “It’s expensive, it destroys ecosystems and it’s bad for biodiversity. In addition, the emission of wood combustion causes air pollution. We don’t even have standards for ultrafine particles entering our lungs. And then there are other substances of very high concern that no filter will help against. It is not without reason that people who cook on wood in developing countries develop health problems. And we are now returning to that on a large scale, in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. ”
The Dutch Lung Foundation is also concerned about health effects and regularly receives complaints about biomass burners. In the summer, the Foundation responded with satisfaction to the “phasing out of the use of woody biomass”, as the Social Economic Council, an important advisory board tot the Dutch government, wishes. “But we don’t see anything of that phase-out yet,” Swart criticizes. “Because Minister Eric Wiebes fails to make it concrete with an end date and buy-out schemes. The House of Representatives stands by. Industry and politics are holding on to each other and our health is in check.”
“Wind turbine syndrome” In Piershil, Ine van den Dool searched for an explanation for her physical complaints since the wind turbines were running. She came across the “wind turbine syndrome”, a term coined by the American doctor Nina Pierpont. Scientifically, there is still much discussion, but Pierpont registered a list of identical complaints for several people who live near wind turbines: sleep disturbance, headache, tinnitus, dizziness, nausea, irritation and cardiac arrhythmias. “Very recognizable. Falling asleep and staying asleep was no longer possible. I fled the house as often as I could. ”
Dutch doctors are also stirring gradually. Some GPs, such as Sylvia van Manen in the magazine Medisch Contact, already warn against the effects of low-frequency noise, shadow cast and flashing red lights at night. The Leiden University Medical Center recently recognized a worsening of heart disease due to low-frequency sound. “If there are so many indications that it is wrong, then we should investigate further, right?”, says Fred Jansen of the Critical Platform Wind Energy. “Or at least follow the WHO advice. But yes, that would mean that fewer windmills would fit in the Netherlands. ”
Energy interests At the Cauberg Huygen engineering firm, Marcel Blankvoort works as a knowledge leader for wind farm developers as well as for interest groups who oppose it. “It is always a trade-off between several interests, including those of residents and energy generation. It is clear, however, that our government has made its choices about noise standards in such a way that sustainability through the energy transition is possible. I do see a similarity with Groningen gas and the Limburg mines: energy interests again outweigh others. ”
The climate refugees from Piershil have moved to a quieter place on Goeree-Overflakkee since the summer. They are the sixth family within two years to move from Oudendijk. Aan de Wiel now says he feels a lot calmer on the bus. “I now understand the gigantic stress situation we were living in. It was as if I was there waiting for my death; once at home I didn’t feel like doing anything anymore. But if they tear down those turbines tomorrow, I’d love to return. I miss the place I used to be. ”
“We are no longer ‘bunker citizens’, agrees his partner. “We couldn’t sleep there with the window open, nor sit in the garden. Here we live outside again. And we sleep like marmots, as if we need to sleep in for a century. ” Within two weeks after the move, Van den Dool was off the drug Ventolin, because her asthma complaints disappeared like snow in the sun. ‘Is that a coincidence? No, it proves to me what an abnormal life we had to live under the violence of those rotten turbines.”’https://stopthesethings.com/2020/11/17/climate-refugees-dutch-families-abandon-homes-to-escape-excruciating-wind-turbine-noise/
‘In 1979 the Communist Party of China introduced a ‘One-Child Policy’ in aa attempt to control China’s population growth – a policy that subsequently ended in 2015.To enforce this policy, the communists used propaganda and harsh punishments – requiring the use of contraception, abortion, and sterilization to ensure compliance, and imposed enormous fines for violations. Large propaganda billboards were installed throughout the nation to reinforce the message. However in 2020, Climate Alarmists are now copying the Chinese Communists, and have started installing large billboards promoting the same ‘one-child’ message. While it may be argued that Chinese Communist’s Policy was adopted to halt population growth, there is no such argument in western countries today, as most countries have such a low fertility rate which will result in their populations decreasing to such an extent that mass migration from developing nations is required just to maintain stable population. Climate Alarmists peddling a ‘’one-child Policy’’ in Western Nations are merely promoting the suicide of our societies. And they are doing so with lies and misinformation. We need to wake-up quickly to realise how mad and dangerous these Climate Alarmists truely are.’https://www.facebook.com/CraigKellyMP
These Left walking talking politicians are a disgrace to their countries. Among the top ten of these is Macron who ‘…on Thursday expressed his excitement over Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s promise to re-enter the U.S. into the Paris climate accord, describing the prospect as an opportunity to “make our planet great again.”
Reuters reported that Macron specifically hailed Biden’s vow to re-enter the Paris climate accord, noting that the Democrat “has pledged to rejoin the pact and to invest $2 trillion to wean the country off planet-warming fossil fuels.”
Man cannot change the climate as many politicians in the West say! These politicians are either stupid, ignorant or liars! Whatever they are this climate change scam is going to change your and my lifestyle. This climate change scam is going to cost lots of money which will go into the bank accounts of the elite such as Hunter Biden! You’ve heard his name recently, haven’t you? Perhaps not if you only get your news from CNN and those like it. Well, Hunter’s daddy sleepy ‘Joe Biden is heading to the White House with a promise to overturn four years of US retreat on climate action.
The election was called for Biden on Saturday, as his lead in the swing state of Pennsylvania – where he was born – with 98% of the vote counted put the result beyond dispute. Biden was also pulling ahead in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, putting him on track to win 306 electoral college votes, comfortably above the 270 needed to secure the US presidency.
“[Voters] have given us a mandate for action on Covid and the economy and climate change and systemic racism,” Biden tweeted in anticipation of victory.
It marks the end of a four-year assault on environmental protections from the White House under Donald Trump.
Elected on the most ambitious climate platform ever presented by a presidential candidate, Biden promised a $2 trillion clean energy revolution.
Can mankind change the climate? If you believe this I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.
‘Thanks to US president-elect Joe Biden’s declaration that his administration will set a target of net-zero emissions for the US by 2050, meaningless statements about emission targets are now the political vogue.
President-elect Biden had barely made this declaration before independent Federal MP Zali Steggall brought forward her previously announced plans to launch a private member’s bill containing the same target for Australia. Britain and France have already made such declarations, as has China.
The private bill is extremely unlikely to reach the governor-general’s desk for royal assent but means just as much as all the other pious declarations made by the other countries, as it does not spell out how Australia is going to reach such a target.
Instead the bill sets out various processes which may help in achieving the target, such as forming a Climate Change Commission (as opposed to the late and unlamented Climate Commission) to advise on the matter, as well as mandating a national climate risk and national adaptation programs in addition to adopting the government’s existing technology road map.
All the extra public servants that have to be hired for those initiatives will then work out the irksome details on just how to eliminate or offset the emissions from Australia’s aluminium smelters and steel-making operations, not to mention changing all of the power industry over to renewables and the cars to electric.
Just how any of those targets will be achieved in thirty years is anyone’s guess but the major advantage for Steggall and the other proponents of this bill is that they can pose as green saviours knowing that the bill will never become law. If the bill, or some variation on it, does eventually get through parliament they will never be held accountable for any failure to meet a target so far into the future — at least five parliamentary cycles. In the meantime, taxpayers will be left to pay the bill for an expanded green bureaucracy plus consultancies.
Much the same calculation may underpin the decision by organisations such as Oxfam, the Business Council of Australia, the ACTU and the Australian Medical Association to publicly support the bill. They get green street cred knowing that the bill is unlikely to see the light of day.
President-elect Biden is in a different position as he will be expected to do something about the target, but at 77 he is highly unlikely to be held accountable for a target 30 years from now and he has a host of ready made excuses. For Biden only has the power to set targets, not to enforce them.
In the disparate US system, individual states have more freedom to mess things up than in Australia, assuming they have any interest in climate targets in the first place. It is difficult to imagine hard- core Republican states such as Texas, for example, being impressed by Biden’s climate aspirations and the Republican senate is unlikely to pass legislation that would force them to do so.
Then there is the reality of decarbonisation. Even Democrat California, which has its own climate targets, will struggle to meet the President-elect’s intermediate goal of decarbonising the power industry by 2035. As has previously been noted, California’s emphasis on renewable energy and failure to invest in reliable power plants resulted in rolling blackouts during a Northern summer heatwave (‘Battery Battles’, The Spectator Australia, 29 August, 2020). Activists living in the state have excused this failure on the grounds that the blackouts did not last for long, while Democrat state governor Gavin Newsom has blamed neighbouring states (which faced similar high demand) for refusing to sell power to California.
The checks and balances of the American system will also make it difficult for President-elect Biden to take the US back into the Paris treaty framework for reducing emissions, as he has declared he will do. America was only ever able to sign it in the first place in 2015 as a presidential agreement rather than a treaty. The wording of Paris was even altered so that it could be considered an agreement rather than a treaty as far as the Americans were concerned. Treaties have to be ratified by the US Senate which would never have happened at the time and still won’t happen.
However, Biden can still sign the Paris deal as a presidential agreement, binding him to do what he can to meet climate targets, knowing that green activists will insist on calling it a treaty, without any of the legal obligations of a treaty.
He can also still waste a lot of taxpayers’ dollars once he reaches the White House in pursuit of his declared goal and already the sum of $US2 trillion to be spent on clean energy over four years has been mentioned. That is a lot of money to spend on batteries and wind farms.
Particularly hard to take for anyone with knowledge of the climate scene is activists hailing, as a breakthrough, the declaration by Chinese President Xi Jinping that his country will aim for net-zero emissions by 2060 to a virtual audience of world leaders at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly last month.
Chinese mines dig up half the world’s coal (both power and smelting) and the country still has to import billions of dollars worth from Australia to feed its industry. Earlier this year US climate organisation CarbonBrief estimated that in 2019 the Chinese built coal plants capable of generating 37 gigawatts, net of closures, or about the same as the existing total coal-fired capacity of the Australian system.
Although coal’s share of the power generating market is declining despite that growth, thanks to increases in hydro power and nuclear, it is still very difficult to reconcile that building program with China’s net-zero emissions declaration.
This week Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that Australia should meet the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 ‘as quickly as possible, as quickly as it’s able’, but he declined to mandate a target until it was clear how it would be achieved and what the cost would be.
The elite (whoever they are) hate the common person and the freedoms which we in the West have enjoyed for centuries. Now, our freedoms are being taken by this push on saving the planet through the climate scam scare. Are people so gullible? Yes, I am afraid they are. Here in Australia both the states and Federal governments are spending billions in subsidizing renewables and then have the audacity to lie by saying electricity prices will go down. What a farce! Also here in Australia ‘Mark Butler has declared Joe Biden’s victory shows an ambitious climate policy can help Labor win elections rather than cost the party power, provided colleagues and activists mount the case for action rather than warring among themselves.
With Labor roiling since the 2019 election defeat about whether to wind back the level of ambition on climate action, the opposition’s climate change spokesman told Guardian Australia the US presidential election result demonstrated why it was important for Labor to stay the course and prosecute the policy arguments with “unity and consistency”.
Two of Australia’s worse and very Leftist leaning Prime Ministers got together on the Leftist/Marxist government sponsored One billion dollars per year ABC’s Leftist China loving Insiders program to condemn Rupert Murdoch and clamor on about make believe catastrophic climate change.
These two climate scammers never liked President Trump and now with him perhaps out of the way they are hoping sleepy Joe will come to their aid in the push for more climate change rules and regulations for the poor saps here in Australia. I didn’t watch the spectacle but according to the Leftist Marxist Guardian’s New Daily ‘Towards the end of Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd’s joint interview on the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, host David Speers gave voice to the thought that was on the lips of every viewer watching from home.
“Years ago, I would have doubted there would be so much agreement between the two of you,” the veteran broadcaster said with a smile, the smiling visages of the former prime ministers towering over him from two giant televisions.
“So would we,” Mr Rudd replied.
It capped an extraordinary interview and the latest chapter in an unlikely budding bromance from the two former rivals, who have teamed up in their post-politics careers to take on the white whales they couldn’t vanquish even from the highest office in the land.
Namely, climate change and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull: an unlikely pairing. Photo: AAP
“We had agreed on an emissions trading scheme once upon a time,” Mr Turnbull reminded the Insiders host at the end of their wide-ranging chat.
It’s not difficult to see the most recent ex-PM still carries grudges over his unceremonious booting from The Lodge in August 2018, replaced by Scott Morrison after a toxic partyroom brawl over energy policy.
Mr Rudd also lost his prime ministership in 2010, in no small part due to his controversial dumping of a carbon reduction scheme and the ensuing popularity hit.
Both have blamed the “Murdoch media” for waging campaigns against their leaderships, and in the years since they left Parliament, both have fired shots back and kept spruiking their thoughts on strong climate action.
The pair are not exactly good friends – indeed, Mr Rudd was famously enraged when then-PM Turnbull blocked his bid to run for United Nations secretary-general in 2016 – but have backed common purposes in recent times.
Good to have you on board, @TurnbullMalcolm. Supporting media diversity isn’t about left or right, Labor or Liberal, but preserving the lifeblood of our democracy.
So it was perhaps a programming coup to get Australia’s angry grandpas on TV together on Sunday in the wake of the US election being handed to Joe Biden just hours earlier, to have them continue their unlikely alliance in front of a national audience.
On the agenda? Climate, News Corp and, of course, Donald Trump.
Rupert Murdoch was mentioned no fewer than a dozen times in the Insiders interview.
“Trump has lost. Murdoch’s man in the White House has been defeated,” Mr Turnbull said.
Mr Rudd called out “Murdoch bullies” for haranguing Mr Turnbull, calling the media proprietor “a cancer on our democracy”.
“Malcolm and I disagree on a multitude of things, but Murdoch’s treatment of Malcolm Turnbull in 2018, directly interfering into the internal politics of the Liberal Party, to do what he could through his editors to bring about a leadership change to Morrison or Dutton at the time, is a disgrace,” Mr Rudd said.
“Murdoch has engendered a culture of fear in Australia about this discussion because he goes after people individually who raise this question. Including myself, including Malcolm and others,” he complained.
On the hot-button topic of climate, the pair said they hoped Mr Biden would usher in a new era of global environmental action and co-operation.
Mr Turnbull couldn’t resist taking a stab at Mr Morrison’s plans for a ‘gas-led recovery’ – a plan he called “BS” and “piffle” – and loudly calling for stronger commitments.
“This is the time to pivot, otherwise [Morrison] is going to look out on the extreme with Saudi Arabia, as some kind of a carbon economy,” Mr Turnbull quipped.
“Really, we can do so much better than that, and now is the time for Scott to move.”
Mr Rudd claimed the government’s policies amounted to a plan to “hide in the shadows”, and called on Mr Morrison to “swallow your political pride and get real” on a net-zero target.
But stinging words were also reserved for the vanquished Mr Trump.
Mr Rudd said the President should “put on his big boy pants” and “act like a grown-up” after his loss.
Mr Turnbull, famously the target of Mr Trump’s ire in a 2016 phone call over refugee policy, said the change was “a good thing for everybody”.
“It’s a relief to have a return to normal transmission, to have an administration that is going to be consistent, that isn’t going to be making decisions by wild tweets in the early hours of the morning,” he said.
“That isn’t going to be walking out of global treaties and alliances, discombobulating friends and foes alike.”
whatyareckon 