Here in Australia we’re copying techniques from tin-pot tyrannies. When the government wants a “consensus” that they know they have no way of achieving, they fake it. People in suits declare (with no hint of irony) that Business Needs Certainty (which means: certain-taxes, guaranteed imposts, global handicaps, Mmmm. Yes. Please).
The Ultimate State of Business Certainty will be found when the idea of costing carbon is dumped for good, laughed into history, and is mocked on whatever version of Saturday Night Live is running at the time.
Frankly the case cooked up as “Business Needs Certainty (so tax us)” is an inanity-cake with cherries on top. Can we bake it in public, chop and serve it with a smile, and all enjoy the joke together?
Is anyone kidding that there is any better kind of “business certainty” than when companies know for sure they won’t be hit with unnecessary taxes based on corrupt science? How about a future where a Government guarantees to get out of the way and stay out?
Gilllard has painted herself into a corner where the only escape hatch is “a consensus” (well not just any old consensus, but a fully predetermined one — hers).
Rule number one of the Strategic Bluster is to win the argument by simply declaring you’ve won. But Advanced Bluster 101 is better: Don’t even acknowledge there was a competition in the first place — simply proceed as if Conclusion A is so obvious that there was never even a need to discuss it. Move along people. In the run-up to the election Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard tried on the idea that 150 citizens might be force-fed propaganda until they conceded or succumbed and thus produced a token community “consensus”. But the dumb punters were unimpressed. Instead Gillard has set up a quasi “authoritative” organ called the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee (which the main opposition party refused to join, making it the not-so-multi-party committee). Gillard declared that only faithful acolytes and certified witchdoctors could join the committee. No one who asks hard questions is allowed. The not-so-secret password is “A-Carbon-Price-Please!”
The Committee is starting from the position that a carbon price is a necessary economic reform required to reduce carbon pollution, to encourage investment in low emissions technologies and complement other measures including renewable energy and energy efficiency. It is also providing advice on and assisting in building community consensus for action on climate change.
In the run of the mill world of business, homes, schools and bedrooms, a “consensus” is reached — not “built” — and there’s a gulf in the difference. “Building a consensus” is a Orwellian speak for forcing people to agree with your view. They’re not building any old consensus, after all.
In the end, the main job of the MCCC is Public Relations
The government has decided already on it’s favorite atmospheric theory, it’s concluded the “best way” to deal with it, and the MCCC’s job is to be yet another tool to repeat the messages, issue press releases, and hammer the permitted theme home. It’s just another form of government advertising that the ruling class don’t have to declare, and handily, it pours money and or status to their patrons as well.
Bob Carter has replied to the latest issuance of the MCCC on Quadrant. He calls it a “pantomime performance”.
… from the UK has just come the news that, with a December temperature average of -1 deg. C, England has already had its second coldest winter since records begin in 1659 – and, if January and February continue to be cold, England may yet achieve its coldest winter in the last 1,000 years. The effective response from the British Meteorological Office (BMO) was for Director Julia Sligo to demand more funding to purchase bigger computers, saying:
It’s quite clear that if we could run our models at a higher resolution we could do a much better job — tomorrow — in terms of our seasonal and decadal predictions. It’s so frustrating. We keep saying we need four times the computing power. We’re talking just 10 or 20 million a year — dollars or pounds — which is tiny compared to the damage done by disasters.
The delusion that pouring more funds into ever more powerful computers will “solve” the climate prediction problem is chimerical….
The MCCC have dutifully met and produced 11 principles — Bob busts them all on on Quadrant but I couldn’t resist doing my small version here too:
1. Environmental effectiveness: The mechanism should be capable of delivering reductions in carbon pollution…
Pollution? There are literally hundreds of papers showing how plant life on Earth loves CO2 (Earths Biosphere is Booming), grows faster and greener, yields more food and feeds more people. So can anyone name that paper that shows that CO2 probably causes more than 1.2 degrees of warming?
2. Economic efficiency: A mechanism to price carbon should harness the most cost-effective pollution reduction options…
How many $trillion does each 0.1 degree of global cooling cost, and can we afford to run that planetary air-conditioning system?
3. Budget neutrality…
The deceptive thing about a “price” on carbon is that it sucks money from the public via corporations instead of their tax installments. It’s budget neutral for the government but budget negative for the humans.
4. Competitiveness of Australian industries: blah blah blah…
The worlds largest economies are not having a bar of this self-imposed handicap. Not China, not the US, not Japan. The price of carbon dioxide in these countries is $0. (Handily, that is the only number that is equal in all currencies. Zero US Dollars = Zero Yen, Zero Yuan, Zero Pounds Sterling, and Zero ounces of gold.)
5. Energy security: Introduction of the carbon price should be accompanied by measures that are necessary for maintaining energy security.
Destroying industry in Australia is a good way to promote energy security. We won’t be buying energy from the House of Saud if China does it for us.
6. Investment certainty: A mechanism to price carbon should provide businesses with the confidence needed to undertake long-term investments …
Here’s a radical idea: the ultimate “investment certainty” would come with a policy of a ten year guarantee of No Carbon Tax, and No Carbon Price. Cost of implementation: $0. (That number again, this is too easy).
7. Fairness: The introduction of a carbon price will affect Australian households and communities. Assistance should be provided to those households and communities most needing help to adjust to a carbon price, while striving to maintain incentives to change behavior and reduce pollution.
“Fairness” is where the government doesn’t take our money to pay for services we don’t need.
8. Flexibility: Internationally, climate change policy is continuing to evolve. A mechanism to price carbon should be sufficiently flexible …
Exactly — that’s why the last thing we need is an inflexible trading scheme. Once it’s in, it creates a vast array of vested interests and property rights. It’s damn near impossible to remove, and if the rest of the world isn’t suicidally stupid in adopting it after we do we’ll be stuck with this handicap ad infinitum.
9. Administrative simplicity: A mechanism to price carbon should be designed with a view to minimising both compliance costs and implementation risks.
To minimize the cost and risks, abolish the MCCC, abandon the carbon price, close down the Dept of Climate Change. The committee can’t possibly beat that.
10. Clear accountabilities: A mechanism with transparent scheme rules and clear accountabilities will help promote business and community confidence in carbon pricing.
Transparent and accountable? Answer one question: Where is the peer reviewed empirical evidence that net climate feedbacks are positive at current temperatures and levels of CO2?
11. Supports Australia’s international objectives and obligations: An effective global solution requires action from all major emitters… and [to] be consistent with Australia’s foreign policy and trade objectives.
Is this the coded part of the MCCC that effectively nullifies the rest? The get-out-of-jail clause “we would have done it, but the rest of the world… tut tut tut… chose not too”?
Or is this the part where they think they might actually encourage the rest of the world if we publicly castrate Australia’s economy in the name of carbon, and hope everyone else “comes to their senses”, sees how rewarding it is, and joins in the masochistic economic party?
Thus of the Eleven Principles, at least seven are met best if the Government doesn’t bring in a carbon price. (Not that that makes any difference in and of itself, since it not about principles anyway, just about the PR.)
But if our foreign policy objective is to help Chinese manufacturers, then we can’t do better than bringing in a carbon price.
Read Bob Carters reply “Combet’s Hot Air Tax”
Image Credit: Pressure cooker from tinned cast iron, made by Georg Gutbrod in Stuttgart, Germany. This picture was scanned from an article in ”Svenska Familj-Journalen”, a Swedish monthly magazine from 1864.
Back at the turn of the century the Sherman Act and a bit later the Clayton Act were passed (USA) to stop monopolies and collusion between businesses.
Today we need similar laws passed to prevent the same thing between and within governments.
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I get your sentiment Mark. I just think more laws is not the answer. We need to enforce the laws we already have.
We need to teach people the history of tyrannies.
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From a business perspective (and just about any other perspective you care to name) nobody but nobody cares a whit about Australia’s standard of living except you Australians. China, India, Japan etc. will buy all your natural resources at the cheapest price possible and sell you back their products at the most expensive price possible. That’s the name of the game. For the life of me I can’t understand why your Federal government is giving away the Auatralian means to prosperity for a next to nothing and to add an extra burden, taxing what little you have left to give to tin pot dictators. What do they think funds your standard of living….love and good will?
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To Mark D 1:
Of course, all modern states have legislative that formally protects competitive environment, thus free market, and prohibits cartelization and corruptive leagues of privileged hayabusha type cartel groups with bureaucrats that means forming corporativistic system. (The two types of corporativism that are known best are fascism and BAASism.) But the very corporativistic system is formed at noteworthy rate now for the noble reasons, of course: Save the planet, save the environment.
Actually we should save the planet from the free market and the competition-free environment for cartel of green corporations and their political patrons from their honest competitors. The reason is so noble that it is over the law.
Corporativism lost its war – the WWII. Nevertheless, they lost only the first battle they are winning the second ring of the fight. They are not Brown any more they are Green instead of the swastika they have a hockey-stick. They have got IPCC, Obama Hussein and all the leaders of the democracies being in conversion to BAASistic republic like the Saddam Hussein one.
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To Frank Brown 3:
Growing is connected with competition and erosion of monopolistic privileges. To keep power and privileges of oligarchy secure you must go on like the mandarins in ancient China or the shoguns in Japan when they ordered all ocean ships to be burnt not to destabilize the society with overgrow.
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Yes Adolf, I agree and it might have worked if China and Japan had been real world powers instead of powers in their own imagination.
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It seems that all western democratic republics are heading towards catastrophic failure. The reason seems to be watching too much Star Trek. The socialist progressives have adopted the Star Trek idealized word of big government, aided by technology, providing every need of every citizen where nobody actually works for a living. Unfortunately, they conveniently neglect the enabler of this ideology. which is free, inexhaustible energy. Instead, this same progressive logic wants to make energy as expensive as possible owing to unwarranted carbon guilt, undermining the very idealized existence they seek. The result is promises that can never be kept, government expanding beyond all reasonable bounds and an insane morass of government policies propping up the dream at the expense of the future, all of which will drive once prosperous nations into third world irrelevancy. Once the people finally realize these promises are vacuous, unsustainable and self destructive, revolution will arise. In the US, the Tea Party is an embryonic form of this revolution, albeit constrained within the bounds of nominal politics. It remains to be seen if a soft revolution can succeed in redirecting government away from it’s self destructive tendencies. Hopefully, it will, otherwise, we’re in a heap of trouble going forward.
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I agree Frank. I have read a figure of >20% for coal & >10% for oil & gas. When you throw in other minerals, wheat, wool & other rural commodities it is easy arrive at the conclusion that very few of those involved in commercial activity are producing the bulk of Australia’s foreign earnings.
While our standard of living is ever increasingly dependent on the goods & chattels we import because we hardly manufacture anything competitively here. Our enthusiastic pursuit of a “Level Playing Field” low tariff trading regime (remember the Button Plan) is a parallel of the “argument” to go to a low carbon economy: because all those World Leading countries & the UN say we must!
Whenever I see the Maiden Aunt on the chube talking (slowly) & chopping her hands about, I am reminded about the old joke about the Irish mother in a missive to her son.:-
“writing very slowly because she knew he was such a slow reader” & that “she would have put 5 quid in with the letter but she had already sealed it”.
Like any addict this nation is hooked on a lifestyle & living standard we can barely afford. The pushers are out in plain view – “Bliss is at the end of a consumption rainbow, you only have to watch it on you flat screen TV”. Unfortunately a Carbon Tax will make the screen smaller, the frig smaller & the engine capacity of our cars smaller all while those few still earning foreign income will be b*%gered over a barb wire fence.
Happy Days!
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Jo @ 2
I am not a fan of more laws but instead better laws that uphold rights and freedoms. Better yet, laws that eliminate bad laws. I believe more of the right kind of laws should mean less overall laws.
The problem is that teaching the history, while valuable, is too slow. The general population has been asleep and our governments are almost out of control. Creative application of laws and courts may just be our only hope of pulling us back from the brink.
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I see the problem of the modern west a little simply.
The population is delegating free and autonmous thought to someone else.
When this happens, everything is someone elses problem, but more importantly, someone elses fault.
Gone is resonsability for own circumstances.
The homognisation of thought coming from the MSM is staggering during this age of information diversity and awareness as well
I feel the west is headed for a fall it didn’t see coming. When it gets here, there’ll be an enormous amount of bleating about who’s to blame and who’s fault it is. “Oh it can’t be my fault, I gave up my ability of analysis and co-herant thought years ago”. “Conveniently, I can’t remember who to though”. “I rmemebr voting a few times”. “Maybe that was it”?
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Jo,
In the not too distant future ONLY the rich will be able to afford food. Husband and wife need to work now and even that is stretching incomes to wages very tight.
So, this means our “free market system” does not work and will generate two societies.
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If you want to see how the Australian government works I recommend going to the CASA website and looking up Civil Aviation Safety Regulation 45. I did this the other day. This deals with requirements to paint identification (registration) markings on aircraft e.g. VH-ABC. Take a look at the number of pages and try to figure out what to do on your aircraft.
It gets better: there’s a proposal to change the rules complete with call for public comment, an industry consultative committee etc.
This for something as simple as painting VH-ABC on your aircraft which really helps to identify it when it is parked on the ramp.
When our Canberra bureaucrats can make something so simple, so complicated, what do you think they’ll be able to do with a price on carbon?
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The westen world has been moving closer to the ‘corporate state’ wince the end of WW2. In Australia, most international trade is controlled by a very few individuals, and as this is the basis of our perceived prosperity, they really ‘run the country’.
Gillard has painted herself into a corner, and is naturally afraid to budge. I am afraid there will be some of the madness they have now in New Zealand around ‘carbon taxes’ and all that nonsense.
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The problem with Australia is that when the ALP get into power they then impose their socialist system via legislation by small increments. The conservatives then have a problem since it’s pointless repealing those laws as these would be re-introduced when the ALP is next in power. Hence mitigating those laws seems to be the conservative policy and why, overall, there seems to be little to choose between the Coalition and the ALP politically.
Now the driving ideology behind the ALP and its world-wide progressive soul mates is that we westerners are living an unsustianable lifestyle, and that our civilisation is headed for a catastrophe.
The problem is that our understanding of history is itself flawed, and it is becoming apparent that the cause of the LIA was not some minoir wobble of the earth’s rotational state but a catastrophic event that affected the Pacific Ocean hemisphere, rather than Europe, thou Europe was peripherally affected climatically.
The fact that progressives have no problem rewriting history, as detailed by Keith Windschuttle in his Fabrication of Aboriginal History series, suggests that this mindset has also rewritten other histories to fit in with existing perceptions; the curse of Post Modernism in other words.
The problem is that the progressives believe it to be true, their fabricated narrative, that is, and this attitude is the force we are facing.
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So that makes Gillard yet another contender in that race of power hungry egos who all, one day, want to be be able to declare:” l’etat mondial, c’est moi”… Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? And each and every of those individuals wants to try to achieve that by whatever means possible. And currently they use utter arrogance, confusion, junk science and scare mongering (as in this global warming / climate change etc) to be able to bombard the world population with ever increasing intrusive laws, rules and regulations that cut deep into peoples individual freedom. They use whatever tax dollar they can get their fingers on and will keep the pressure on until we have all succumbed and surrendered the last bit of personal autonomy. Then, when we are all meek and willing serves, will they fight among themselves (with the world population as armies) for that one and only spot they all so desperately desire, the position of World Emperor…
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Jo at @2: We need to teach people the history of tyrannies.
A good start is the viewing of The Soviet Story at: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/12/27/the-soviet-story/
“An unprecedented film, The Soviet Story, has documented how the difference between Hitler’s Nazis and Lenin’s Bolsheviks was ever so slight.”
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NASA Peer-Reviewed Study Finds Low Sensitivity To CO2 Doubling: The UN’s IPCC Global Warming Science Is Imploding……….
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/12/nasa-peer-reviewed-study-finds-low-sensitivity-to-co2-doubling-the-uns-ipcc-global-warming-science-i.html
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I see the yearly dose of BS from BoM is being propagated by our ABC.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/05/3106683.htm?section=justin
I just can’t believe that they get away with such false statements…colander science!
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Lionel #16
Very apt. I have always wondered at the mendacity of the Left when they describe Hitler’s regime as “far right”. The Nazi party’s name translated as National Socialist German Worker’s Party. It was socialist to the core. The only reason Hitler persecuted communists was that he was a megalomaniac.
Pretty sure his “kindy” report card said something like “does not play well with others”.
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Joe Lalonde @ 11 You say “So, this means our “free market system” does not work and will generate two societies.” We do not currently have a free market system. The main control on the market is the price of money. This is endlessly manipulated by the Government and it’s minions at the Reserve Bank. The main reason that Husband and Wife have to work to afford a modern lifestyle is because of the increased % of income needed to finance a morgage. Contrary to widely held opinions about consumerism, Australian families now spend a lesser % of their income on things such as big screen TV’s clothes and cars ect than they did in the 70’s. The increase in the cost of housing has largly been driven by the artifical setting of interest rates at a low level to increase credit availability, in an effort to avoid recessions, and government handouts and subsidies to specific industries. The resulting credit bubbles are what drives inappropriate investments and the resulting misallocation of capital that drives up particular asset prices. Think back to Tech Bubble and now the housing bubble. These bubbles always burst and cause economic disruption. With the housing bubble burst in most of the world, and now beginning here in Australia, the next cab of the rank was supposed to be the Carbon Bubble but the ruling classes are have trouble getting this off the ground and now trying to combine it with renewable energy. This is already starting to fail, eg the wind back of feed in tariffs is destroying companies and asset prices in Europe and now beginning in NSW. The only way we can have a truely free market system is for the Government to disband the reserve bank and to stop disrupting the market with cheap credit and special subsidies and conditions for selected industries.
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It is truly ironic to hear that any member of a carbon based life form would want to pass a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. By their very existence they are a pollutant and with every breath they exhale they pollute with carbon dioxide. Every living thing they can see in their world is carbon based (not sure about fungi and stuff). They appear to be sentient beings, but near a quarter of a century ago maybe Eric Idle got it right.
In the Galaxy Song from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life the last two lines are –
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth.
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I am a tad confused by some of the comments here… “giving away Australia’s riches”? Sorry but that is just rubbish and completely ignores basic economics.
But I am quite willing to have a debate on the matter. Fair warning… I work in the field and studied Mineral Economics. In a nutshell we (particularly in Western Australia) have a competitive advantage in producing mineral resources, but we do not have the same access to cheap labour. Therefore we export the resources and buy in manufactured goods.
It really is that simple chaps. Wishing it to be otherwise does not make it economically viable. If Australia was the cheapest place in the world to produce iron and steel… guess what? We would be doing more of it. Likewise to producing higher end manufactured goods.
As to the original article… totally agree Jo. I am glad I am not alone in calling bullshit (as is my perogative) on the argument that a carbon price gives investment certainty. A garuantee of no carbon price is the biggest certainty business can have. I can only imagine that the likes of BHP sees the political benefit of agreeing in principal in order to secure a seat at the bargaining table. Logically, economically, etc BHP’s call for a price on carbon makes no sense whatsoever.
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Thanks for the heads up on the BoM annual report Scraper.. I just found it here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20110105.shtml
I love the way temperature got pushed to the bottom of the report because it happened to be a cooler year LOL. Despite the cooler year they are quick to point out that:
Lest we forget the CAGW mantra… thankfully relegated to the bottom of the report for a year. So if the yearly data looks unconvincing, choose a different base (decade) to comfort the faithful.
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but but – the ice is melting!!
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Janama …. clearly it is rotten ice. Rotten for trapping those poor men in their ships.
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yesterday i lined up on a long queue at the post office to pay another exorbitant water bill, due to qld govt’s waste of taxpayer money on an unnecessary desal plant which is to be mothballed. got to talking with young and old on the queue cos it turned out we were all holding our water bills in our hands.
need i say everyone, young and old, stated they knew the whole carbon tax and mann-made global warming fantasy was a scam. they knew gillard promised no carbon tax and they are asking how can we hold her accountable for her about-face. all agreed the media was complicit in pushing the CAGW scam.
those i spoke with all agreed, however, that the Coalition was not standing up and exposing the scam, and this made them even angrier.
what to do?
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Ahoy Bulldust,
How economically competitive will Australia be when the MRRT kicks in, especially if there is the compounded handbrake/fuel leak of a Carbon Tax?
Where will our exchange rate be heading then? What interest rates will rule to keep the money coming into the country?
What will be the amortisation of the Maiden Aunt’s quoted $100M per day cost the future generation?
Marius Kloppers might be a global player but I am a dumb jaffa & I still like it here ( even if we can’t beat the Poms at cricket or the Kiwis at rugby).
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I am dead against both taxes Pattoh, and have said so many a time. An MRRT would be fine in the absence of state royaties, but that is simply a hypothetical statement. Unless the Fed is about to take all the states on in another round of tax centralisation I can’t see state royalties disappearing any time soon. Hence there is no place for an MRRT. As for the CPRS (or whatever air-chopping Joooolya wants to call it now) I condemn it as much as anyone here.
Besides the Feds already steal much of the resource states’ royalties through the Commonwealth Grants Scheme… this is why WA only sees about two thirds of the GST returned from the Feds, for example.
My personal opinion is that when the taxi drivers start to tell you to invest in something it is already too late. Likewise when Swannie starts talking about “mining boom mark II” you know it is about to end. My personal gut feel is that the US is having a dead cat bounce right now and the economy is about to hit the skids again. The only question is whether more Eurozone economies fail first or not. Japan is in deep doodoo as well… it is all unravelling but it needs a trigger.
I therefore await Assange’s bank revelations anxiously, because that might just be the trigger the next crash is looking for. Judging by the market tremors at the end of last year, he has got some dirt on Bank of America (alternatively it could be the other biggie, Goldman Sachs).
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Bulldust, perhaps I should have qualifies my natural resources comment…I was thinking more of your low cost coal and high quality Uranium. This boils down to low cost energy and I think that is a high value resource along with a well educated public. I’m a free trader by nature although the more value added processing the greater the profit.
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I never touched the questions 🙂
Aussie dollar – I am not sure what to think anymore. I always had a gut feel that US70-80c was a fair range in the old days. With the US printing money like there is no tommorow (oh, sorry, it is “quantitative easing” these days) I am not sure what to think. Maybe parity is fair /shrug. When the wheels fall off the world economy again I would not be surprised to see some slippage again, but who knows. If I did know I wouldn’t be in a government job 🙂
As for the MRRT and the CPRS (or alternate), I just can’t see both taxes being levied by the Feds at the ame time … I am still struggling to see a lot of difference between them to be honest. Both the MRRT and the CPRS hit all the fossil fuel industries, with the only exception being that off-shore oil (under Fed control) was already paying the PRRT, which is equivalent to the MRRT for petroleum purposes and the MRRT hitting iron ore as well.
At the end of the day the Fed Labor Government is simply looking for a big pot of money to spend… CPRS, MRRT … they don’t care really, as long as it impacts as few voters as possible. Politically it looks like the CPRS/carbon price is on the back burner for now while Swannie talks up the mining boom part II (gag) in preparation of levying the MRRT. They are simply pigs hunting for a trough…
The long-term effect of either is that it sends future investment offshore to lighter taxing regimes – e.g. British Columbia (Canada) for mining, or anywhere without carbon prices for fossil fuels etc…
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This is a video well worth watching regarding rthe US financial system.
Re-wiring the financial system
Catherine Austin Fitts
exposes the “tapeworm economy”
http://www.realecontv.com/videos/post-collapse/re-wiring-the-financial-system.html
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Frank Brown:
I am all for value-adding… don’t get me wrong, but the governments (at various levels) have tried to back winners in the past and are justifiably gun shy these days.
In WA, for example, most State Agreements contain clauses encouraging companies that mine our resources to look at downstream processing. These are not generally vigorously pursued because there have been dramatic failures in the past (think the Boodarie HBI plant for example).
The alumina state agreements are a success story by comparison, with both Worsley and Alcoa being required to process the bauxite ore they mine in WA into alumina. Alcoa takes it a step further to aluminium in Victoria utilising some of the alumina produced in WA. The agreements also have clauses encouraging the companies to look at smelters, if economic, but the main hurdle there would be electricity costs. Al smelters live or die based upon electricity contracts.
So yes, value-adding is great, if it’s a win-win scenario (for State and company). Government can best assist by facilitating projects and funding some infrastructure.
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hasn’t Alcoa built it’s own power station at Anglesea.
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Bulldust @ #28
Better had a read of Dryblower in yesterdays Mining News (www.miningnews.net) – the old curmudeon reckons the US is on a rise from manufacturing starting to gear up again. He reckons we are in for the mother of all booms. I hope so.
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Aluminium is congealed electricity – Al. smelters need a whopper of a powerstation to be economic – and the power operators like the smelters as it’s their baseload, making it easier to cope with the consumer fluctuation.
Consider using windpower to run an Al smelter – or solar panels !!!!!!!! You would be barking mad.
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its ILLEGAL to grow your own……..
http://deborahadams.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/its-illegal-to-grow-your-own/
THIS IS ALL PART OF AGENDA 21 –
Governments next step in Australia, after ordering you to install rain tanks
Will CHARGE YOU FOR STORING THE WATER……………….
Afterall Australian farmers are already charged for storing water – YES THATS CORRECT.
http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/la21_198.html
Already as part of Sustainability (part of the UN Agenda 21 signed up by the Australian Labor Government
UNLESS A LIBERAL GOVERNMENT IS INSTALLED AND THAT LIBERAL GOVERNMENT RESIGNS
FROM UNITED NATIONS TREATYS WHICH WERE SIGNED BY A LABOR GOVERNMENT WITH
NO CONSULTATION WITH THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE
there is a bleak future ahead of you and your Grandchildren. The aim is to flood the cities with the people
and close down rural areas to humans. Already this Agenda has been implemented in Queensland
under Wild Rivers, Australian Aboriginals are not permitted to use the rivers on their own land
be afraid
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I don’t quite understand why people like Clive Palmer and Andrew Forrest don’t
speak up about a carbon tax I am sure if they said it was C#$P it would make the government think.
Interesting on the ABC news this morning an economist was saying that the flooding in the Queensland coal mines could lead to two quarters of negative growth e.g a technical recession.Is this Gaia giving the Queensland government a little look at what their economy might look like without coal.
In fact what Australia’s economy might look like without coal.
She’s a funny old bird Gaia she just keeps taking the pi$$ out of the warmists but they think she loves them.
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Shock. Shivering Britain realises wind power needs wind to work……
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/shock_shivering_britain_realises_wind_power_needs_wind_to_work/
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Janama @31
Thanks for the video link. Very interesting.
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wendy – I think you should check that grow your own story a bit more deeply.
No one is stopping anyone from growing your own just stopping you from growing your own to sell in an area that is not zoned for commercial agriculture.
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/24979774/detail.html
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The U.S. Quantitative Easing II (QE II) is not the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2, but may well be the Titanic.
What this agenda outlines (government diktat + corporate buyin) has the main thrust of the Corporate State. It has been tried before. In Italy c.a 1930s.
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Hey Wendy as you probably gathered from the Thompson’s dilemma any slope can be arguably be classed as a stream. By interrupting the run off from our roofing we are denying the downstream “riparian” water users ( storm water harvesting local governments) from an economic asset (water rates). Every body who has a rainwater tank in the MDB is making the whole of AUS pay more tax
Now the gubmen are going to a lot of effort to save us from global warming. How do you think they appreciate those pesky PV panels sucking all that energy out of incoming solar radiation?
Crikey, they will probably want to tax us more for not only poaching their turf but by exclusion making the poor power consumers pay more for their infrastructure.
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Janama:
Sounds about right – I know they have a power station that feeds the smelter near Geelong. Yep right you are:
http://www.alcoa.com/australia/en/alcoa_australia/location_overview/anglesea.asp
If you look way back in Hansard in 1961 when the WA pollies were discussing the Alcoa State Agreement (Alumina Refinery Agreement Act 1961) you will see some discussion about why the smelter was located in Victoria and not WA at the time.
If memory doesn’t fail… it might have had something to do with securing a fuel supply – I can’t remember off the top of my head why Collie coal wasn’t considered. I think there was a concern that there wasn’t enough Collie coal for Alcoa and other WA needs as well… something along those lines. Remember this was before the NWS was discovered, so everything was running on coal or oil.
Louis: Yeah I read Dryblower yesterday.. him and the Slugcatcher are two of my favourite pundits. Usually Dryblower is on the conservative side when people start talking of booms, but I am not sure why he is so gung ho on the US economy ATM. Maybe because he likes taking a contrary position to the mood of the day (best way to get read, after all). Don’t get me wrong… I hope I am wrong and we don’t get the second crash, but I can’t see how we aren’t… or at least a prolonged US economic malaise, like the Japanese one of the last 15 years. The economies just have to adjust… they can’t keep on going on the way they have in the last couple of decades.
BTW I love referring to aluminium as congealed energy… I wonder where I picked that terminology up.
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Scraper/Bulldust/John Brookes
Just had a quick squint at the aforementioned BoM report.
Can any of the serious players explain why they are quoting record SSTs?
As a yob on the hill, it confuses me that the ARGO data was reporting lowering of temp down the column & we have passed the end of a solar cycle. The heat shouldn’t be coming from above or below???
Perhaps Mr Brookes will be able to enlighten a slow learner like me.
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You’ll want one of the other blokes… I am more of an economist and lapsed bucket chemmist (mineral processor).
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What price carbon?
Our Australian government has not heard that the Chicago Carbon Exchange closed down when the price of carbon dropped to zero.
International Obligations?
Means slavishly obeying the dictates of a bunch of UN officials!
This has happened already with native vegetation and Murray-Darling water proposals.
The British Meteorological Office want a bigger computer?
We know that Piers Corbyn is doing much better with a PC and keen brain!
Do we really live in a free society?
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Louis,
Solar is ideal for Al smelting and in fact, all electrolytic manufacturing processes. Solar produces the exact form of low voltage, high current power needed, saving all the transformer and transmission losses when solar is co-located with the smelter. Seems to me that AU has all sorts of bauxite and desert sunshine near the deposits. A sane politician would promote this unique combination of resources as a competitive advantage. Don’t worry about the massive amounts of CO2 produced by the smelting process. As we all know, CO2 is benign to the planet and beneficial to biomass. See the kinds of things you miss out on when you’re government is consumed with carbon guilt?
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Re: scaper…: (18)
I notice that the ABC article “2010 among Australia’s wettest on record” is headed ‘Climate Change’, which of course it is, but not in the sense that they mean.
Another example of language used to corrupt thought, in the body of the article the author uses hot (hotter hottest) as the antonym of cool (cooler coolest).
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CO2isnotevil @ #47
Smelters need to run 24 hours per day to be economic. Solar might have a problem ???
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Louis,
The economics changes if the incremental cost of electricity is zero during the day, but higher at night. What you do is run the smelters with just enough input power during the night so that they can start up quickly in the morning. You could apply the same techniques to growing silicon, which is another energy intensive, low voltage, high current process. Seems to me that the ideal solar power plant would produce solar cells and aluminum, rather than export electricity directly. I kind of like the idea of a robotic plant self manufacturing and assembling itself.
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…except the small issue of the cost of solar power… good luck trying to smelt aluminium using solar and selling it at world market prices. Things that are technically possible are not necessarily economically viable.
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pattoh@44; SST have been increasing since 1976 when there was a PDO phase shift into a +ve El Nino dominated climate; this is clear from BoM data:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=sst&area=aus&season=0112&ave_yr=T
Since about 2002, when the PDO phase shifted from +ve to -ve, SST has dropped:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/AMSR-E_SST_thru_Nov_09.jpg
This is also clear from the BoM data. While SST has, like temperature generally, increased since about 1850, the end of the LIA, those SST movements correlate clearly with PDO phase shifts:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1850/to:2010/normalise/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1850/to:1880/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1880/to:1910/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1910/to:1940/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1940/to:1976/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1976/to:1998/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1998/to:2010/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1850/to:2010/trend
The point about this is that oceanic temperature variations have determined the general climate conditions for the last 160 years. This is consistent with the findings of Compo et al, White and Cayon and a host of other papers have found:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2007a.pdf
http://tenaya.ucsd.edu/~cayan/Pubs/60_White_JGeoPhyRes_2001.pdf
And since the ocean is the proxy for solar warming the temperature variation since 1850 has been due to TSI variation.
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The idea put about by enthusiasts (who are doubtless ‘interested parties’) that an ETS would be a ‘market’ scheme is surreptitious deceit.
Such a scheme would be no more ‘free enterprise’ than the Roman Senate auctioning tax collection to the highest bidders (the ‘Publicani’).
It’s one of those paradoxes which abound in AGW ‘mitigation’ rage, like Australian electricity consumers paying more than Taiwanese or Korean consumers using the same raw material (Australian coal) or the Australian government seriously considering taxing the most important export (the list goes on), that Greg Combet represents the voters of Charlton (NSW), an electorate where the district’s wealth is created by coal mining, electricity generation and heavy industry.
Beam me up, Scotty.
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Combet, RED gillard, wong, rudd, pitman, gore, flannery etc etc need to be introduced to Madam Guillotine ASAP!!!
http://www.napoleonguide.com/guillotine.htm
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Don’t blame Gillard; she’s getting her orders from the top. Trade sanctions probably the stick. And there would also be the carrot somewhere.
It takes fortitude she doesn’t possess, to stand up for our nation against the globalist agenda.
Where’s Bob Menzies when you need him?
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The ‘Scientific Consensus’ About Global Warming Turns Out to Be About Manipulating the Numbers…..
97% cooked statistics!!!
THE BOTTOM LINE
……..75 out of 77 (75/77 = 97%) of scientists of unknown qualifications were left endorsing the global warming orthodoxy. The two researchers, the master’s student and her prof, were then satisfied with the findings of her master’s thesis
(http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/012009_Doran_final1.pdf)
Are you?
READ MORE:-
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/220947-The-Scientific-Consensus-About-Global-Warming-Turns-Out-to-Be-About-Manipulating-the-Numbers
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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Robert James. Robert James said: Eleven Principles to advance us to a Third World Nation « JoNova http://goo.gl/S5WEJ […]
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It’s all about finding revenue to feed an insatiable appetite of a sector that wants to whine for its supper rather than sing for it. I’ll believe they’re all fair dinkum about AGW the moment Gillard proudly announces- ‘Henceforth, no publicly funded official will remain air-conditioned on my watch’- to the thunderous applause of those impacted. That’ll be the day we won’t have to worry anymore about global warming because that’ll be the day Hell freezes over.
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If Ms Gillard wants to set a price for carbon, ask her to use the CCX
Chicago Carbon or Climate Exchange, not that it exists anymore,but I believe the closing bell wrung in at 0.05/ton USD, she can also trim her
bloated government by 50%, deport the ecotards of Canberra,sell off the
green police cars of Queensland or was it NSW and finally put a moratorium on immigration for the next 10 years, including boat people…
Sorry,got carried away…Apparently the governments of Canada, U.K., U.S.
and Australia get together far too often to discuss new ways to tax the citizenery, whilst proclaiming it’s for the good of the environment
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I haven’t been able to find anything on the cap and trade that was postponed to be implemented in 2011 – how is this being done?
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Myrrh, Cap and trade in the USA has not passed the Senate. There is nothing to be “implemented” yet. Pay close attention to the news looking forward and DO call your congressman/woman to express your thoughts and opinions.
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Thank you. Though USA not my country, wish you well in stopping it. I was wondering how these were being put into place because I had read in 2009/2010 when there was a lot of fuss about it, that these were going to be delayed until 2011 – and now I can’t find anything about this, as if all reporting has been stopped or maybe I’m not asking google the right questions.
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