The Minister proves he has become a politician… and a good one. ‘Never put off until tomorrow what can be left till the day after’ is a good lesson for a politician, and one that Environment Minister Peter Garrett seems to have learned well. This Minister, with perhaps the most difficult job in government, is handling the issue of the northern Tasmanian pulp mill with consummate skill. Putting off a decision was the best way of reconciling the irreconcilable pressures to be both green and pro-development. With any luck, Minister Garrett will not have to deliver a final verdict until after the next election and he might even avoid the need to do so altogether. The financial pundits seem to think there is every chance that Gunns Limited will not be able to arrange finance for the project. Certainly it would be a brave financier who committed the necessary multi-millions while uncertainty remains about the impact of emissions from a mill in to Bass Strait.

An award winning example . Any doubters who wondered whether The Australian really deserved to beat the London Daily Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal for the Real Climate title of “the most consistently wrong media outlet” should have a quick read of this morning’s op ed piece “The warmaholics’ fantasy“.

Another hot one. The annual temperature figures for Australia show we had another hot year in 2008. Data collected by the Bureau of Meteorology indicate that, overall, Australia’s annual mean temperature for 2008 was 0.41°C above the standard 1961-90 average, making it the nation’s 14th warmest year since comparable records began in 1910.

Readers of The Australian, or course, will be able to ignore all that having been told an adjunct professor of virology that all the historical figures are nonsense. But back to the Bureau: Most regions recorded a warm year overall, apart from Queensland, northeast New South Wales and the Kimberley. Particularly high temperatures were recorded across inland Western Australia and the Northern Territory in January, as well as western Victoria and southern South Australia in March, with a record-breaking heatwave during the first half of the month. Conversely, cool temperatures were recorded in southeast Australia during February and again in April, across most of the country in August, and across the southwest during November.

When it came to rain the overall Australian mean rainfall total for 2008 was 466 mm, close to the long-term average of 472 mm.

Banging the deficit drum. Peter Costello, I notice, is banging on the evil deficits drum as if this Labor Government is going to undo all his good work by acting to try and stop the country going down a depressionary gurgler. The former Treasurer took a moment while speaking at the annual KPMG Couta Boat classic yacht race in Sorrento to say the Rudd Government was set for a “challenging year”. “I think the Government will find it’s much harder to build financial strength than it is to spend it,” he told the assembled corporate yachties.

Meanwhile in the United States, the recent recipient of the Nobel prize for economics was publishing something of a nightmare scenario in the New York Times where it takes Congress months to pass a stimulus plan, and the legislation that actually emerges is too cautious. “As a result,” wrote Krugman, “the economy plunges for most of 2009, and when the plan finally starts to kick in, it’s only enough to slow the descent, not stop it. Meanwhile, deflation is setting in, while businesses and consumers start to base their spending plans on the expectation of a permanently depressed economy — well, you can see where this is going. So this is our moment of truth. Will we in fact do what’s necessary to prevent Great Depression II?”

If politicians listen to the likes of Peter Costello and Malcolm Turnbull, with their continued desire to portray deficits as inherently evil things, then I guess the horror scenario might actually come to pass.

Check the microphone is off. New Year’s Eve took on a special flavour for watchers of CNN when comedian Kathy Griffin kept talking while the network went to an ad break.

You can catch it on YouTube here.