Insignificant and semi-literate attention-seeker jumps on the Warmist bandwagon

She is allegedly an academic but is a poor one.  She says, for instance:  

"From the moment I decided to carry my girls I have mitigated against every threat to their future."

She doubles confusion with that language.  It is common to misquote "militate against" as "mitigate against", which no-one who knows any Latin would do, but she actually uses even the mistaken usage in a mistaken way.  "Tried to mitigate" was what she probably meant. [Clue:  "Mitis" is Latin for "mild"]. One really does expect better from an academic historian.

But that is only one indication of her low intellectual level.  Her major failing is that she is completely unscholarly.  Instead of examining the evidence for or against anthropogenic global warming theory, she just accepts partisan judgments of it as true:  No evidence of critical thinking at all.  She would seem to be motivated by a need to pump up her own importance rather than by any concern for the facts

I reproduce a fair bit of her little emission below so readers can judge for themselves.  Note both the title she puts on her article and her acknowledged attention-seeking behaviour towards the end of the article

We are guardians of the future

By Liz Conor, a history (herstory?) academic at the National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University.



It is our duty to protect the rights of the next generation. Climate change is a threat and we must take action - we must hold governments to account, writes Liz Conor.

Whenever my 14-year-old asks me if she can get a 'stretch' earring, a piercing or a tattoo I tell her I am the guardian of her 40-year-old self who might not like living in the future with the permanent choices her 14-year-old self made.

From the moment I decided to carry my girls I have mitigated against every threat to their future. I steered clear of alcohol during the pregnancies, and drugs during their births. I slathered them in sun block and plonked hats on their curly-haired heads. I buckled their squirming bodies into every seat they were transported in, took their little hands across every street, rinsed the pesticides off their fruit, rubbed salt off their chips, and more recently chased off a risk-taking boyfriend and blockaded their screen time.

When the latest findings of climate scientists came out last fortnight, just as Doha was coming to its negligent close, I knew then sorry doesn't quite cut it. A report released by the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists, announced that the planet was on-track for the worst-case-scenario projections of the IPCC, of a rise in temperature of between 4 and 6 degrees by the end of the century. They found emissions have increased 54 per cent since 1990. A World Bank-commissioned study also warned that a four-degree leap was possible this century - even if current pledges to cut emissions are met. Meanwhile at the latest UN conference on climate change government heads finished a marathon meeting in Doha, Qatar, where they extended the Kyoto Protocol which proposes a set of measures many climate scientists have argued will be ineffective in halting rising greenhouse gas emissions.

For me the failure last fortnight to grasp the latest findings of peer-reviewed climate scientists, and act decisively to stop burning fossil fuels was my moral 'tipping point'. These reports are beyond alarming and frankly terrifying. They condemn our children and grandchildren to eke out a miserable existence, buffeted by violent weather, on a planet blighted by drought, fire, flood and no longer able to supply their basic needs. Already we see this nightmare of food shortages playing out in Africa as crops fail due to drought.

By any standard it is wrong, unconscionable, unfair and negligent to continue to go about my life in the business-as-usual bubble that we seem to have taken refuge in. On Monday last I took a bike lock to Parliament House and bolted myself to the members' gate. The police came and after cordial exchange called for Search and Rescue who would not wait for a key to materialise and angle grinded the lock. I was banned from the Parliament House precinct for a week and from the CBD for 72 hours. On the way home I picked up a new lock.

We are not in safe hands. For our children's and their children's sake the time has come to hold governments to account. When the full impact of climate change is massing on the horizon I hope to be able to look my girls and their children in the eye and tell them I did everything I could.

SOURCE






German Scientists Shoot Down Recent Claims Of “Rapid Warming” In Antarctica – Overall Continent Is Cooling!

The Bromwich data actually show NO WARMING since 1980.  All the warming they show is before that.  See the red line in Figure 2 below. Just the usual Warmist cherrypicking at work.  I immediately labelled the Bromwich claims as hokum two days ago  -- JR

Western Antarctica warms more quickly than thought – however, hardly at all in the last 25 years

By Dr Sebastian Lüning and Prof Fritz Vahrenholt
(Translated/edited by P Gosselin)

We recently got some hot news from Antarctica. According to a study by a team led by David Bromwich of Ohio State University in Columbus, which appeared just before Christmas 2012 in Nature Geoscience, Western Antarctica warmed up more quickly than first thought. This of course pleased alarmist newspapers like the online Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), who without hesitation wrote:

"With a temperature increase of 2.4°C since 1958, the central region of Western Antarctica is among the regions that are warming up the fastest on the planet. [...] There the temperature is rising three times faster than the global average.”

Now that really stirs up fear. Global warming is apparently advancing rapidly in Western Antarctica and temperatures are climbing and climbing. This is taking place year after year, and so it is only a matter of time before the catastrophe strikes.

To underpin this claim, the Süddeutsche Zeitung presents a temperature curve of Western Antarctica going back 55 years (Figure 1…in the SZ article it is necessary to click on the figure to see the curve). An enormous temperature jump is obvious beginning in the year 2000, as the temperature skyrockted. With another jump like that, the ice in Western Antarctica would never survive, one might think.


Figure 1: January temperatures of Western Antarctica. Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 23 Dec 2012.

But wait. When it comes to the the Süddeutsche Zeitung one has to be a little careful. It has long been known that the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) is cozily cuddled together with climate alarmism (e.g. see our blog article “Schlimmer als befürchtet: Die Süddeutsche Zeitung verliert den klimawissenschaftlichen Boden unter den Füßen“ (Worse than we feared: The Süddeutsche Zeitung loses its scientific bearings). So let’s take a closer look.

Unfortunately we quickly discover mischief. The temperature curve for January readings used in the SZ does not even get mentioned or appear in the quoted paper. The warming value named by David Bromwich and colleagues has much more to do with the annual average temperature of the Western Antarctica, and whose curve is of course depicted in the paper (red curve in Figure 2). This curve, however, shows a completely different course than the one used by the SZ. Do you see it?


Figure 2: Temperature development at Byrd-Station in Western Antarctica. Source: Realclimate

Heavens! In the last 25 years the West Antarctic has not gotten warmer! If anything, the temperature has remained flat. It is indeed quite a stretch to claim that Western Antarctica is among the most rapidly warming areas on the planet.  Over the last two decades temperatures in the region have gone nowhere.

And now if you look a little closer, you see that the warming is mainly concentrated in the period of approx. 1962-1980. Did mankind produce an extraordinary amount of CO2 during that particular period? No. The Co2 emissions were nothing different from what we had at other times.

What is remarkable, however, is that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) during this time went from a negative cool phase to a positive warm phase (Figure 3). It cannot be ruled out that this nearby climatic oceanic phenomenon may have had something significant to do with the Western Antarctic 2.4°C warming until 1980 mentioned in the paper.


Figure 3: Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) over the last 110 years

Unfortunately the SZ reader is left alone with only the context of the article. According to new ICEsat satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet as a whole has increased in mass over the last years (see our blog article on this). The much larger Eastern Antarctica dominates, and that area has gotten colder over the last years. Also Antarctic sea ice reached a record high extent just a few months ago for the 30-year satellite era. Not a peep about both of these stories from the Munich-based SZ.

It also would have been nice if the SZ had provided its readers with another important piece of background information: Unexpected but true: the post Ice Age temperatures at the Antarctic Penninsula were at today’s levels for 7000 years (also see our blog article on this here). With this background, the temperature development of the last 55 years discussed by the SZ loses considerable relevance. And it was also a pity for the SZ that David Bromwich and his team dumped cold water on their results for sea level rise. With a gnashing of teeth, the SZ had no alternative but to report:

    "Because at the high elevation Byrd-Region mean temperatures of -10°C prevail in the summertime, the warming does not lead directly to large-scale melting, say the scientists.”

It is quite amazing that the SZ creates almost only dramatic climate stories. Sober, non-alartmist reports just don’t seem to be of any interest for SZ editors. There’s plenty of non-alarmist material out there. At our blog we present new scientific results almost daily. We welcome editors at SZ to help themselves to it..

SOURCE  (See the original for links)

Central West Antarctica among the most rapidly warming regions on Earth

By David H. Bromwich et al.

Abstract

There is clear evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is contributing to sea-level rise. In contrast, West Antarctic temperature changes in recent decades remain uncertain. West Antarctica has probably warmed since the 1950s, but there is disagreement regarding the magnitude, seasonality and spatial extent of this warming. This is primarily because long-term near-surface temperature observations are restricted to Byrd Station in central West Antarctica, a data set with substantial gaps. Here, we present a complete temperature record for Byrd Station, in which observations have been corrected, and gaps have been filled using global reanalysis data and spatial interpolation. The record reveals a linear increase in annual temperature between 1958 and 2010 by 2.4±1.2 °C, establishing central West Antarctica as one of the fastest-warming regions globally. We confirm previous reports of West Antarctic warming, in annual average and in austral spring and winter, but find substantially larger temperature increases. In contrast to previous studies, we report statistically significant warming during austral summer, particularly in December–January, the peak of the melting season. A continued rise in summer temperatures could lead to more frequent and extensive episodes of surface melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. These results argue for a robust long-term meteorological observation network in the region.

SOURCE

1947 Shock News : “Enormous” “Alarming” “Serious” “Catastrophic” Polar Melt To Drown The Planet. International Agency Needed To Study The Problem

Saturday 31 May 1947

Dr. Ahlmann added that temperatures in the Arctic have increased by 10 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. An ‘enormous’ rise from the scientific standpoint. Waters in the Spitsbergen area, in the same period, have risen from three to five degrees in temperature, and one to one and a half millimetres yearly in level. ‘The Arctic change is so serious that I hope an international agency can speedily be formed to study conditions on a global basis.’ said Dr. Ahlmann. He pointed out that in 1910 the navigable season along the western Spitsbergen lasted three months. Now it lasts eight months.



Forty years later scientists told us that we were all going to freeze to death, and that we needed a commission to study it.



SOURCE  (See the original for links)





Climate Consensus: Do Little for Now

The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that continued emission of greenhouse gasses (GHG) will raise the Earth’s temperature by 1.8°C (3.2°F) and sea level by one foot by 2100. Projected climate changes, if they come to pass, will have a number of effects on society, though not all of those effects will be negative.

Although debate over the IPCC’s projections continues, less attention has been focused on the ultimately more important result: cost-benefit analysis implies we should do very little to prevent climate change. Instead, we should create wealth. Expanding the productive capacity of the economy will compensate future generations better than reductions in GHG will. A richer world in 2100, after all, will be able to afford to do things like relocating people affected by rising sea levels and constructing new port facilities and seawalls.

A report by the liberal Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University observes, “Economists frequently . . . calculate the optimal policy response [to climate change]. This calculation often leads to the conclusion that relatively little should be done for now.”

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Businesses operate under the discipline of profit and loss based on market prices. Profit signals that an action generates benefits for the economy. Government does not face the discipline of profit and loss, but cost-benefit analysis, performed honestly, offers guidance about whether government actions benefit society.

Measures to reduce GHG emissions today typically fail a cost-benefit test due to the discounting of benefits. Discounting refers to applying a real interest rate to future values. Two arguments support discounting in CBA. The first is impatience, or what economists call time preference: $100 is worth more today than it is one year from now, even without inflation. The second is the return on savings and investment, or the opportunity cost of capital. Money spent now to reduce GHG could be saved and invested instead. The interest rate equates impatience and the return on investment on the margin, as investors must be compensated for delaying consumption.

Discounting

The mathematics of discounting makes values more than about 50 years in the future worth little today. The Federal government makes cost-benefit calculations using 3 percent and 7 percent annual real (or adjusted for inflation) interest rates, approximating the historical risk-free interest rate and the annual real return on stocks. The present value of $1 million 100 years from now is $52,000 at a 3 percent discount rate, and $1,150 at a 7 percent discount rate. To see how this affects climate change economics, suppose that spending $100 billion annually—starting right now—we could prevent $1 trillion in annual damage, beginning in 100 years. The ratio of $10 in benefits to every $1 cost appears favorable, but this fails a benefit-cost test at either a 7 percent or 3 percent real discount rate.

Some observers respond to this math by arguing against discounting in climate change economics. Time preference is a questionable argument in intergenerational settings because future beneficiaries will not have to wait 100 years to realize climate benefits. But the opportunity cost argument remains. The Stern Commission in the U.K. applied an implausibly low discount rate to its calculations. Others imagine current benefits from GHG reductions rendering discounting irrelevant. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) included private benefits in a CBA of higher fuel economy standards to reduce GHG emissions, arguing that making people purchase higher-mileage cars than they prefer makes car buyers better off. Creating benefits today effectively makes reducing GHG a free lunch.

Wealthier is Healthier

Resources put into reducing GHG can’t be invested elsewhere, so the opportunity cost of GHG reduction amounts to the returns that could have been expected, based on historical rates. Maintaining opportunities to invest and create wealth for future generations requires the institutions of a market economy, or a high level of economic freedom, as the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World: 2012 Annual Report demonstrates. Bequeathing a higher standard of living to future generations also requires preserving economic freedom. Discounting mathematics ultimately tells us that economic freedom addresses climate change more effectively than energy central planning through carbon taxes or cap-and-trade.

Compensating the “victims” of climate change with extra wealth does have a potential limit. Extra resources provide inadequate compensation if climate change dramatically alters the world. Money will not typically fully compensate for a catastrophic injury; a quadriplegic is unlikely to enjoy the same level of utility or satisfaction after their injury, even if his medical bills and care needs are paid. Wealth accumulation will not adequately compensate future generations if climate change produced a world like those depicted in Waterworld and The Day After Tomorrow. Future generations would not be adequately compensated if climate change destroyed the economy’s ability to produce goods and services. Fortunately Waterworld is the stuff of Hollywood fiction; the largest of the upper range of sea level rise in any 2007 IPCC climate scenario is about 2 feet. That will have serious consequences, but it will hardly flood the entire world. It can be offset by wealth accumulation.

A Hundred-Year Plan?

Property rights and prices lead basically self-interested people to worry about the future. For example, property rights and markets for existing homes provide owners with incentives to keep their houses livable long after they plan to own them. And yet the mathematics of discounting implies that events too far in the future should not affect decisions much today. Growth, progress, and creative destruction limit the horizon for detailed planning in a market economy. Imagine a business in 1900 trying to plan its operations in 2000. The plan could not have included automobiles, planes, television and radio, satellites, computers, and many other conveniences of modern life.

Now let’s project ahead and consider planning for climate change. A number of fundamental innovations could substantially reduce if not eliminate the threat from climate change, such as effective, low-cost carbon sequestration or effective weather modification to smooth out precipitation patterns. And the development of a radical new clean energy source like nuclear fusion could render remaining stocks of fossil fuels uneconomic at any price.

Conclusion

A dynamic market economy will feature too much creative destruction to allow detailed planning for the distant future. Nothing is sure in a market economy ten years from now, much less 100 years, and discounting in cost-benefit analysis simply reflects this reality. The economic future becomes more predictable when government controls economic activity, but then stagnation results. Discounting in climate change economics tells us to create wealth to protect future generations. Economic freedom and the institutions of the market economy, not central planning of energy use, is the prudent policy approach to a changing climate.

SOURCE



About time Canadian skeptics put their money where their mouth is

American President Barack Obama has indicated that “stopping climate change” will be an important focus of his second term. Because our climate policies are closely tied to those of the U.S., it is therefore crucial that the Canadian government finally gets its act together on the issue. If it doesn’t, we will be swept up in increasingly expensive programs that many in the Conservative party, Prime Minister Stephen Harper included, must know are utterly futile.

Before first forming the government in 2006, Harper, a longtime climate realist, promised that the Conservatives would re-examine the file and handle it more sensibly. But they haven’t. Here are some of the ways the government is letting Canadians down on climate change, and what they must do differently in 2013.

 *  Despite strongly opposing the Paul Martin government’s decision to add carbon dioxide (CO2) to the list of toxic substances in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), the Conservatives have left the benign gas on the list. This provides the legal foundation for costly and useless CO2 emission regulations now being imposed sector by sector across Canada. CO2 is in no way toxic and so should be immediately removed from a list that includes mercury, lead, arsenic, sulphuric acid and PCBs.

Billions of dollars are being wasted trying to reduce CO2 in other ways as well, all based on the improbable assumption that emissions contribute to climate problems. Most egregious are pointless and potentially dangerous projects to stuff CO2 underground. Such speculative programs must be cancelled and the money transferred to worthwhile environmental initiatives such as cleaning up toxic waste dumps and reducing air pollution where it is a problem.

 *  Vast sums of money are also dedicated to wind and solar power, energy sources that have little chance of becoming economical in the foreseeable future. This raises electricity prices and drains funds away from upgrading conventional power systems we need to survive. Wind and solar power have had decades to mature. If they are not yet ready for head-to-head competition with conventional power systems, the government needs to stop throwing good money after bad.

 *  All government climate programs focus on possible warming impacts. The far more damaging effects of cooling are ignored. A drop of 2 C, for example, will result in the loss of virtually all of our wheat harvest, while, if it warms, we simply adopt farming practices used to the south of us. We must concentrate on preparing for dangerous possible climate change, and that is unquestionably not warming.

 *  Environment Minister Peter Kent promotes a worldwide climate treaty based on the United Nations Cancún Agreements. He does not seem to know that Cancún has an out-clause for developing countries that is not available to those in the developed world. In the unlikely event that the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change were true, a treaty that lets China and India off the hook will accomplish very little climatically, and simply transfers wealth and jobs from developed to developing countries. Kent must stop promoting what is, in effect, another Kyoto Protocol.

 *  To substantiate its climate plans, the Harper government continues to use the rhetoric employed by previous Liberal governments. Kent is clearly being misled by activist scientists within Environment Canada who assert that there is no credible evidence to support the climate skeptics’ perspectives.

 *  But the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) demonstrates that the alarmists are mistaken. Citing hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers, NIPCC shows how the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has ignored or misinterpreted much of the research that challenges the need for CO2 controls. In other words, the science being relied upon by the Canadian government to create multibillion-dollar climate and energy policies is almost certainly wrong.

 *  Harper must order ministers to stop using the damaging and erroneous language of climate alarmism. Taking their talking points from David Suzuki while completely ignoring reports such as those from NIPCC is feeding the fire that threatens to burn down Canada’s economy.

 *  Aside from the Dec. 15, 2011 testimony of four climate experts before the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, the Conservatives have not permitted well-qualified scientists who disagree with climate catastrophism to testify in government hearings. Instead they invite members of non-governmental organizations with no training in science to testify in support of the scare. This must stop.

During the height of the oilsands pipeline controversy, the prime minister asserted “the only way that government can handle controversial projects of this manner is to ensure that things are evaluated on an independent basis, scientifically, and not simply on political criteria.”

2013 is the year they must at last do this on climate change.

SOURCE



GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three current articles below

Greens seek millionaire tax to revive parent payments

Bandt was a Trotskyite but there were no votes in that so he  turned Green.  Sounds like his thinking hasn't changed

A "millionaires tax" increase of 5¢ in the dollar would raise enough money to restore payments to single parents cut in this year's budget.

The Greens' policy, costed by federal Treasury, would generate at least $790 million over the next three years by lifting the top tax rate on income above $1 million from 45 per cent to 50 per cent.

The revenue boost could even be much higher, closer to $500 million a year, but Treasury has assumed some people on high incomes will not earn as much if their top tax rate is lifted.

The acting leader of the Greens, Adam Bandt, compared the money raised by the tax increase to a similar amount saved by the government when it cut payments to some single parents, which take effect from the start of next year.

"I think this is a reasonable step that should get the support of the government," Mr Bandt said.

"What possible justification could Labor have for hurting single parents and yet not touching millionaires? The Treasurer said he's been listening to Bruce Springsteen but he must've been listening to the records backwards," the Greens MP said of Wayne Swan's vaunted affection for the US rocker.

It was the second Greens policy to be costed by Treasury's Parliamentary Budget Office, established by the Gillard government as a price of securing the Greens' support in Parliament, and the party plans to release at least two dozen more by the time of the next election.

The tax increase would bring the top marginal tax rate to a level it last sat at in 1987, but would affect only about 8000 people listed by the Australian Taxation Office as recording annual incomes above $1 million.

The expected revenue would double from about $800 million to $1.6 billion in the next four years if Treasury dropped its assumption of "tax income elasticity", which says that growth in tax revenue will fall if tax rates are lifted.

The Greens are framing the policy in the context of cuts that kick in next week for single parents. From January 1, single parents on the parenting payment with a youngest child over the age of eight will be moved onto the lower newstart allowance, costing them about $60 a week.

The measure will save the government about $700 million in the next four years, but it has been criticised by the welfare sector and by some backbench Labor MPs.

The Gillard government argues the benefit of the measure is in encouraging parents back into the workforce.

Mr Bandt said: "If the government is wanting to improve the budget position by somewhere around $300 million a year it has a choice. It could either increase taxes on the wealthiest Australians or it could hurt single parents."

In the 1950s, Australia's top marginal tax rate sat at 75 per cent. It was above 65 per cent for most of the 1960s, and was above 60 per cent for most of the 1970s and 1980s. It now sits at 45 per cent, for any money earned about $180,000 a year.

The first Greens policy costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office was a revised mining tax that showed the government could raise an extra $26 billion in the next four year if it reversed concessions to the mining industry.

SOURCE

Fall in demand dents shift to low emissions

THE shelving of EnergyAustralia's gas-fired power plant in Victoria raises fresh doubts about the incentives for power companies to move from high-polluting coal to lower-emitting technology, with one expert saying more projects could be cancelled.

The proposed plant, on the Yallourn power station site, was one of several gas-fired projects put on the drawing board several years ago by power companies to reduce emissions, and therefore costs, under the carbon price.

But the downturn in electricity demand due to retail price rises and the strong dollar has put pressure on generators to abandon new projects.

Bruce Mountain, the director of Carbon Market Economics, said more energy companies would be forced to consider moving away from low-emissions investments because of these changes.
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"Many market pundits had three years ago indicated there would be more rapid transfer to low-emission technologies like gas-fired power generation," he said. "But with lower demand and higher gas prices, that shift is being pushed back in time."

He said power companies were more likely to close parts of their coal capacity to save money.

"Existing generators are having to fight very hard to compete in the market," he said. "The partial closures of brown coal plants makes more sense, because although they lose contribution to their profits, they are able to drive prices higher."

SOURCE

Greens platform 'will fail'

ANY attempt by the Australian Greens to make policies more palatable for mainstream voters is deceptive and doomed to fail, says Senate opposition leader Eric Abetz.

On Thursday The Age reported that the Greens had redefined the party platform to portray many core beliefs as "aims and principles" rather than explicit policies, to present a smaller target to critics in a federal election year.

Acting leader Adam Bandt said on Thursday the revised policy platform would give voters more information on what the party stood for and how its ideas would be funded.

Mr Bandt said the minor party wanted to go to the next election able to tell voters it had a fully costed set of policies. "Treasury wouldn't cost them for us and there wasn't an independent body that would do it," he said.

"So what we now have is a very strong policy platform that has been voted on and determined by our members by consensus."

Mr Bandt said the Greens would go to the next election on the same footing as the two major parties. "So our updated policy platform, together with the new parliamentary budget office, will allow the Greens to go to the next election as the most economically responsible party out of all the parties contesting the election."

But Senator Abetz said the Greens were trying to hide "extreme impulses" and this would fail. "The Greens will always be 'watermelons' - Green on the outside and red inside - no matter how they cloak their policies," he said. "The Greens need to actually repudiate their extremist policies before people will believe they've changed. Deciding simply not to talk about them simply will not wash."

Senator Abetz said the public viewed the party not as "benign environmentalists", but a hard-left movement bent on "Marxist social engineering".

The Greens were simply trying to change tack after setbacks in several recent state elections, he added. In the ACT election in October, the party's Legislative Assembly seats were cut from four to one.

The Greens will reportedly soften their stance on cutting federal government funding for private schools, and stop calling for the abolition of the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate.

Senator Abetz said the party had a history of supporting controversial ideas.

SOURCE

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