The clear and present problem facing us at this moment, is the introduction of the Air tax. Once it is in, it is a small step to an ETS, and as New Zealand is learning, almost impossible to unwind.
What can we do, in the next week, and during the time it takes for the legislation to get through Parliament? How are we going to capitalise on the convoy? How are we going to give one or more of the “Independents” cold feet? Who is the wettest of the Labour caucus, what are their vulnerabilities? Who is the best attack dog in the media to unleash on this, and what ammunition would they need?
Short notice, I know, and we should have been thinking about this months ago, but we weren’t, so we just have to be creative now.
If you click on the ‘Tenders’ you will see that last week they have issued $2.950B of bonds and notes. You can break these tenders into two parts. Firstly, the short term issues to cover the government’s cash flow deficiency (repaid by PAYG and GST through BAS) issued on the eighth and secondly, the longer term issues that mature from four to twenty years which will be Labor’s legacy to future governments.
I have been watching the tender issues since the debt was only $90B. The government has been spending wildly for no foreseeable benefit.
Now I see that the government is raiding more, yes, more money from the Future Fund, in an attempt to balance the budget.
“Last night, Mr Costello, who was appointed to the Future Fund board in December by the Rudd government, said Labor’s approach was deeply flawed.
“The HEEF was set up to be a fund in perpetuity to develop world-class Australian universities and the Labor Party has now raided the capital in a short-sighted attempt to spend money today at the expense of tomorrow,” he told The Australian.”
I believe, when this disgusting government is thrown out it will take at least eighteen years to clean up the economic mess that they have created for no net gain in GDP.
Just heard on the morning news that the Australian Federal Police are worried about “home grown terror” & broad scale civil unrest.
You have to wonder whether they reckon the economic hardship of unemployment ( Woolongong, Mt Isa etc….) & the future of the mortgages attached to our “Home & Away”real estate market features in their calculations. The Australian Dream is going Green (around the gills). Woo Hoo!
The street riots in London & the unrest in Western Sydney a while back should give them a clue.
This fantastic clean,green,low carbon future will come at a price.
A BRITISH geologist has volunteered to spend 48 hours in an airtight chamber relying on the oxygen produced by plants to survive.
It echoes an experiment first tried by scientist Joseph Priestly in the 1770s, when he showed how a mouse could survive in an airtight chamber full of plants, but not in a box without them.
Imagine: A scientist who wants to test his idea to “figure out if it was a good idea or a bad idea.” No wonder he’s ignored by the Church of Climatology…
Scientists have been speculating on the relationship among cosmic rays, solar activity and clouds since at least the 1970s. But the notion didn’t get a workout until 1995, when Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark came across a 1991 paper by Eigil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen, who had charted a close relationship between solar variations and changes in the earth’s surface temperature since 1860.
“I had this idea that the real link could be between cloud cover and cosmic rays, and I wanted to try to figure out if it was a good idea or a bad idea,” Mr. Svensmark told me from Copenhagen, where he leads sun-climate research at the Danish National Space Institute.
He wasn’t the first scientist to have the idea, but he was the first to try to demonstrate it. He got in touch with Mr. Friis-Christensen, and they used satellite data to show a close correlation among solar activity, cloud cover and cosmic-ray levels since 1979.
They announced their findings, and the possible climatic implications, at a 1996 space conference in Birmingham, England. Then, as Mr. Svensmark recalls, “everything went completely crazy. . . . It turned out it was very, very sensitive to say these things already at that time.” He returned to Copenhagen to find his local daily leading with a quote from the then-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): “I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naïve and irresponsible.”
Mr. Svensmark had been, at the very least, politically naïve. “Before 1995 I was doing things related to quantum fluctuations. Nobody was interested, it was just me sitting in my office. It was really an eye-opener, that baptism into climate science.” He says his work was “very much ignored” by the climate-science establishment—but not by CERN physicist Jasper Kirkby, who is leading today’s ongoing cloud-chamber experiment.
Somehow, we need to get the following messages out there because these messages have been lost in the noise:
1. The so called carbon tax is a precurser for a goldman sacs style ets in 2015.
2. Every ets implemntation around the world to date has been a rich sorce of rort and fraud
3. The ETS is a precursor to a global emissions trading scheme. Think Enron
4. These taxes will do nothing to prevent water pollution or anh of the real polluters
5. These taxes have been subsidised to the hilt as a short term measure. Oncethe subsidies are removed -which is the plan- that is when everyone finds out how much this is really going to cost them.
6. Craig Thomson thinks this tax is a greatidea. This should be a warning bell, surely.
President Obama reportedly read these words publicly on this 10th anniversary of the frightful events of 11 Sep 2001:
“Be still and know that I am God!
I will be exalted among nations.
I will be exalted on Earth.” – Psalm 46.10
Almost 40 years earlier in Oct 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis [1] convinced less wise leaders in 1971 [2] to save the world from the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation by uniting nations to work together to stop global climate change.
This unscientific charade continued by hiding, avoiding or misrepresenting experimental evidence [3] for decades that
1. Earth’s climate has changed and is changing.
2. The Sun has evolved and is evolving.
3. Life has evolved and is evolving.
4. The Sun is violently unstable.
Every politician who votes for these pieces of legislation should have their name and electoral office contact details published clearly for the people to let them know their thoughts.
Whenever their name is mentioned in the media, someone should just drop a line to remind people that they voted these heinous pieces of legislation.
This should continue until the legislation is repealed. And probably afterwards as well.
Likewise every politician who votes against this heinous lot of legislation should be praised at every opportunity when their name is mentioned.
I haven’t read anything in NZ about this big splash by Gore on Sept 14. Has it been in the news in Australia? I hope not and its turns out to be another poor prediction by Gore.
More Lies from Big Chocolate… We all know Climate Change caused the global food shortage!
“Politicians,” Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe says, “do not understand that between the food market and the energy market, there is a close link.” That link is the calorie.
The energy stored in a bushel of corn can fuel a car or feed a person. And increasingly, thanks to ethanol mandates and subsidies in the U.S. and biofuel incentives in Europe, crops formerly grown for food or livestock feed are being grown for fuel. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent estimate predicts that this year, for the first time, American farmers will harvest more corn for ethanol than for feed. In Europe some 50% of the rapeseed crop is going into biofuel production, according to Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe, while “world-wide about 18% of sugar is being used for biofuel today.”
In one sense, this is a remarkable achievement—five decades ago, when the global population was half what it is today, catastrophists like Paul Ehrlich were warning that the world faced mass starvation on a biblical scale. Today, with nearly seven billion mouths to feed, we produce so much food that we think nothing of burning tons of it for fuel.
Or at least we think nothing of it in the West. If the price of our breakfast cereal goes up because we’re diverting agricultural production to ethanol or biodiesel, it’s an annoyance. But if the price of corn or flour doubles or triples in the Third World, where according to Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe people “are spending 80% of [their] disposable income on food,” hundreds of millions of people go hungry. Sometimes, as in the Middle East earlier this year, they revolt.
“What we call today the Arab Spring,” Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe says over lunch at Nestle’s world headquarters, “really started as a protest against ever-increasing food prices.”
“There is a huge difference,” he says, “between how we live this crisis and what the reality of today is for hundreds of millions of people, who we have been pushing back into extreme poverty with wrong policy making.” First there’s the biofuels craze, driven by concerns over energy independence, oil supplies, global warming and, ironically, Mideast political stability.
Add to that, especially in Europe, a paralyzing fear of genetically modified crops, or GMOs. This refusal to use “available technology” in agriculture, Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe contends, has halted the multi-decade rise in agricultural productivity that has allowed us, so far, to feed more mouths than many people believed was possible.
Then there is demographics. Recent decades have seen “the creation of more than a billion new consumers in the world who have had the opportunity to move from extreme poverty into what we would call today a moderate middle class,” thanks to economic growth in places like China and India. This means a billion people who have “access to meat” for the first time, Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe says.
“And the demand for meat,” he says, “has a multiplier effect of 10. You need 10 times as much land, 10 times as much [feed], 10 times as much water to produce one calorie of meat as you do to have one calorie of vegetables or grain.” Even so, we are capable of satisfying this increased demand—if we choose to. “If politicians of this world really want to tackle food security,” Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe says, “there’s only one decision they have to make: No food for fuel. . . . They just have to say ‘No food for fuel,’ and supply and demand would balance again.”
If we don’t do that, we can never hope to square the drive for biofuels with the world’s food needs. The calories don’t add up. “The energy market,” Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe argues, “is 20 times as big, in calories, as the food market.” So “when politicians say, ‘We want to replace 20% of the energy market through the food market,'” this means “we would have to triple food production” to meet that goal—and that’s before we eat the first kernel of what we’ve grown.
Well I guess this Government is about to find out how much patience the Australian public has. I wonder how many protests they will ignore this week.
I also note that articles are popping up that Labor could win an election under Rudd. I wonder… there must be Labor strategists saying: “What if we dump this toxic Rainbow Coalition, dump the taxes, and go it with Rudd?” They might even have a fighting chance againt Abbott under those circumstances. It will be a bit tricky to find a platform of policies they stand for, but seeing as no one believes a word they say that is a moot point.
“…Not only that, in a complete refutation of the continuing lies of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who constantly states that the deliberately misleadingly named carbon tax will be applied to CO2 emitters, Garnaut literally admitted that the alleged CO2 emitters would not pay a single cent of this tax. He stated the following:
“Australian households will ultimately bear the full cost of the carbon price.”
Ross Garnaut, Labor Government Appointee and Author of the Climate Change Review
So here is the architect of this whole debacle, not even a climate scientist but an economist, admitting that those CO2 emitters listed by the Labor government will not pay the tax, but Australian households will pay it. And who better to know this, than the man who literally is the reason that this idiotic and unjustifiable tax exists.
However, the problem for the Australian public is that the Labor government will continue to push its carbon tax agenda by continuing to trot out these erroneous reports by Garnaut, remembering that at best, they are nothing more than predictions and guesses, fooling some sectors of the voting community into falling for this gigantic carbon tax scam. Many ignorant people in the community will continue to believe that Ross Garnaut is some sort of scientist, not just a bean counter co-opted by the Labor government to drum up their case for this insane cash grab.”
GILLARD ADMITS THAT THE FULL COST OF THE CO2 TAX WILL BE PAID BY END-USERS
Let’s say I’m burning tyres or chemicals here on my property, or running agricultural chemical waste into Euroka Creek, which flows into the Macleay River…should I be able to buy permits from people who aren’t polluting so I can go on polluting?
If an institution, government or financial body, which accepted that my actions were polluting, offered to be an initiator or intermediary in the sale of those permits which enable me to pollute…are they innocent of polluting?
Have there ever been any other pollutants – any kind, anywhere – treated in this fashion?
By distorting the meanings of words such as “market”, “pollution” and “certainty”, are we asking to be remembered as the Spin Generation?
Did you know Ross Garnaut spent a lot of taxpayers money producing a completely worthless report on the wool industry in 1993? God only knows how much taxpayers money he has wasted since.
[snip]
meanwhile GE is set to get plenty from our Govt’s billions for pretending to do something about something:
10 Sept: Forbes: William Pentland: GE Guts Offshore Wind-Power Plans
General Electric, the U.S.-based industrial giant and leading manufacturer of wind-power turbines, is scaling back efforts to expand its presence in the offshore wind power market.
The rationale: there is no meaningful offshore wind market to speak of – at least not yet…
GE is considering laying off about 40 employees in Norway as it scales-back its offshore operations there, according to reports in Recharge. The company has also suspended plans to construct a manufacturing facility in the United Kingdom indefinitely… http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/09/10/ge-guts-offshore-wind-power-plans/
hopefully some in canberra will start picketing parliament this week with placards simply saying:
It takes a Mad Neocon Canadian give an honest-to-God assessment of what’s become of America in the decade since 911…
…A couple of days after 9/11, the celebrated German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen told a radio interviewer that the destruction of the World Trade Center was “the greatest work of art ever”. I’m reminded of the late Sir Thomas Beecham’s remark when asked if he’d ever conducted any Stockhausen: “No,” he replied. “But I once stepped in some.” Stockhausen stepped in his own that week: In those first days after the assault, even the anti-American left felt obliged to be somewhat circumspect. But at a certain level the composer understood what Osama was getting at.
Nevertheless, Stockhausen was wrong. The “greatest work of art” is not the morning of 9/11, with the planes slicing through the building, and the smoke and the screaming and the jumping, and the swift, eerily smooth collapse of the towers. No, the most eloquent statement about America in the early 21st century is Ground Zero in the years after. 9/11 was something America’s enemies did to us. The hole in the ground a decade later is something we did to ourselves. By 2010, Michael Bloomberg, the take-charge get-it-done make-it-happen mayor of New York was reduced to promising that that big hole in Lower Manhattan isn’t going to be there for another decade, no, sir. “I’m not going to leave this world with that hole in the ground ten years from now,” he declared defiantly. In the 21st century, that’s what passes for action, for get-tough leadership, for riding herd. When the going gets tough, the tough boot the can another decade down the road. Sure, those jihad boys got lucky and took out a couple skyscrapers, but the old can’t-do spirit kicked in and a mere ten years later we had a seven-storey hole on which seven billion dollars had been lavished. But, if we can’t put up a replacement building within a decade, we can definitely do it within two. Probably. As a lonely steel skeleton began lethargically to rise from the 16-acre site, the unofficial estimated date of completion for the brand new “1 World Trade Center” was said to be 2018. That date should shame every American.
What happened? Everyone knows the “amber waves of grain” and “purple mountain majesties” in “America The Beautiful”, but Katharine Lee Bates’ words are also a hymn to modernity:
Oh beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears…
“America The Beautiful” is not a nostalgic evocation of a pastoral landscape but a paean to its potential, including the gleaming metropolis. Miss Bates visited the Columbian Exposition in Chicago just before July 4th 1893, and she meant the word “alabaster” very literally: The centerpiece of the fair was the “White City” of the future, fourteen blocks of architectural marvels with marble facades painted white, and shining even whiter in the nightly glow of thousands of electric light bulbs, like a primitive prototype of Al Gore’s carbon-offset palace in Tennessee. They were good times, but even in bad the United States could still build marvels. Much of the New York skyline dates from the worst of times. As Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sang in the Thirties:
They all laughed at Rockefeller Center
Now they’re fighting to get in…
The Empire State Building, then the tallest in the world, was put up in 18 months during a depression – because the head of General Motors wanted to show the head of Chrysler that he could build something that went higher than the Chrysler Building. Three-quarters of a century later, the biggest thing either man’s successor had created was a mountain of unsustainable losses – and both GM and Chrysler were now owned and controlled by government and unions.
In the months after 9/11, I used to get the same joke emailed to me every few days: The proposed design for the replacement World Trade Center. A new skyscraper towering over the city, with the top looking like a stylized hand – three towers cut off at the joint, and the “middle finger” rising above them, flipping the bird not only to Osama bin Laden but also to Karl-Heinz Stockhausen and the sneering Euro-lefties and all the rest who rejoiced that day at America getting it, pow, right in the kisser: They all laughed at the Twin Towers takedown. Soon they’ll be fighting to get in to whatever reach-for-the-skies only-in-America edifice replaces it. The very word “skyscraper” is quintessentially American: It doesn’t literally scrape the sky, but hell, as soon as we figure out how to build an even more express elevator, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t.
But the years go by, and they stopped emailing that joke, because it’s not quite so funny after two, three, five, nine years of walking past Windows On The Hole every morning. It doesn’t matter what the eventual replacement building is at Ground Zero. The ten-year hole is the memorial: a gaping, multi-storey, multi-billion-dollar pit, profound and eloquent in its nullity.
As for the gleam of a brand new “White City”, well, in the interests of saving the planet, Congress went and outlawed Edison’s light bulb. And on the grounds of the White City hymned by Katherine Lee Bates stands Hyde Park, home to community organizer Barack Obama, terrorist educator William Ayers and Nation of Islam numerologist and Jeremiah Wright Award winner Louis Farrakhan. That’s one fruited plain all of its own.
In the decade after 9/11, China (which America still thinks of as a cheap assembly plant for your local KrappiMart) built the Three Gorges Dam, the largest electricity-generating plant in the world. Dubai, a mere sub-jurisdiction of the United Arab Emirates, put up the world’s tallest building and built a Busby Berkeley geometric kaleidoscope of offshore artificial islands. Brazil, an emerging economic power, began diverting the Sao Francisco river to create some 400 miles of canals to irrigate its parched north-east. But the hyperpower can’t put up a building…
Julia Gillard who admitted helping rip off the AWU of over $1million stands by and supports Craig Thomson who is accused of ripping off the Health Services Union. The Australian Labor Party, beautiful one day, perfect the next.
MELBOURNE, Sept 12 AAP – The Climate Institute has given Australia’s 225 federal MPs a mailed reminder that Australia is a big polluter on the eve of the parliamentary debate about the carbon tax.
The think tank has mailed a top five list of climate change “myth busters” to all federal MPs, in what it says is a bid to set the record straight about carbon pricing and limiting pollution.
Institute CEO John Connor says many Australians and probably a few politicians have been left confused by “the mother of all scare campaigns” over the carbon pricing legislation.
Releasing the institute’s myth busters on Monday, Mr Connor said Australia is a big polluter and can achieve significant pollution reduction while growing jobs.
“Australia is at no risk of leading the world in taking action,” Mr Connor said in a statement.
“Instead, taking decisive action now will open up new clean energy opportunities, creating up to 34,000 new jobs in the electricity sector alone by 2030, and ensure our industries remain globally competitive as the world switches to cleaner energy and cleaner economies.
“It’s time for our politicians to stop the squabbling and remove the sensationalism that has dominated this issue and get on with a mature debate on the challenges and opportunities of taking action.”
The Gillard government will introduce its 13 carbon price bills into parliament on Tuesday.
Under the Clean Energy Future plan, a fixed carbon price will start from July 1 next year followed by an emissions trading scheme in 2015.
Labor will need the support of the Greens and independents to get the bills through the Senate and House of Representatives.
The Climate Institute has focused on five “myths”:
* That Australia is not a significant polluter and there is no need for us to act;
* That a price on pollution will not do anything to help the environment;
* That a pollution price will see the demise of mining and other sectors, and there will be massive job losses;
* That other countries aren’t acting so why should Australia move ahead of the rest of the world; and
* That if you have a pollution price then you don’t need other clean energy measures.
Cut and paste, taken out of context to suit my argument………..
A couple of days after 9/11, the celebrated German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen told a radio interviewer that the destruction of the World Trade Center was “the greatest work of art ever”.
Nevertheless, Stockhausen was wrong. The “greatest work of art” is not the morning of 9/11, with the planes slicing through the building, and the smoke and the screaming and the jumping, and the swift, eerily smooth collapse of the towers.
So if two planes “slicing” through buildings like coke cans making them collapse at free fall speed is not art then the synchronous as yet unexplained collapse at free fall speed by WT7 must be…..yes?
The rest of the post is very apt and the lack of vision shown can be demonstrated here in Oz as well (lets build a whte elephant) but not a dam no, no, no, no, no, no, not a dam.
Comments like 34 are helpful how? I assume you do not wish to bring down the calibre of this site. That Garnaut is a bought-and-paid-for shill of Government is quite obvious, but calling for his head is hardly helping the case is it?
In another disturbing twist, it seems Labor is now willing to bust open the Future Fund which was to remain untouched until 2020 as long as it was below target levels (which it is) just to help them make the aspirational Budget surplus:
I can understand your frustrations but one must be careful of what one writes as legal repercussions can result in the possibility of the owner of this site facing such.
Can a moderator have a look at the post, especially the statement concerning ‘criminal history’? Might be a layman but it does not sit comfortably with my legal understanding.
How easily it happens.
How little some people understand.
This exemplifies the ‘Cascade Failure’ potential of electrical power, and it has lessons for us here in Australia as well.
A small (and in the main, unreported here) glitch caused a blackout in Southern California that affected more than 5 million power consumers, losing their power, and in most cases for up to and more than 2 days.
While working on an electrical circuit, a small area was isolated. As ‘electricity’ (electrical current) travels at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) the current immediately finds an alternate route of least resistance. This overloaded other sections of the grid, and because of this overload, those circuits automatically ‘shut down’ one after the other.
This cascading failure then caused the San Onofre Nuclear power plant (2350MW Nameplate Capacity with 2 reactor/turbine/generators) to shut down.
How?
Part of the triple (and more in some cases) redundancy is that auxilliary power backup systems are in place in case its own power, and power from other areas goes down. The safety systems cause the reactors to be scrammed, (rods being driven back into the pile) something that happens in 0.7 seconds. Once the reactor is shut down, all other safety mechanisms fall into place to provide core pool cooling etc.
However, because the reactors are now shut down, there is no power, hence all that power is taken from the grid, shutting down everything even further in a cascading effect, first one, then the next etc. All of this happens in around one to five seconds ….. all gone.
The remaining power plants cannot handle the overload, and they also then are brought off line.
Now, some areas were back up and running, after a considerable amount of work, in five to 15 hours, but quite a major number of places were without power for that 2 days and even now, some are not up and running, almost 3 days later.
The major problem in all this is that Nuke. While it goes offline, (safely, no problems there) it takes a day and a half to get back up and running delivering power to the grids. Nothing untoward about that, as it’s the same for all large scale plants of this nature.
However, what to look at here is where this actually occurred, California, ‘Green Central’.
That State has assiduously avoided construction of large scale power plants, in the main new coal fired plants, for decades now, and older ones, considering the average age is approaching 50 years, have reached their life expectancy and are closing, with nothing to replace them.
Wind and Solar, especially in ‘Green Central’, are flavour of the month, and have been constructed in that State at a greater rate than for other States.
Because of this, California, with its huge and ever increasing population does not have enough power (read base load here) to cover all its own contingencies, hence power has to be sourced from other surrounding States. Even Hoover Dam Hydro in Nevada sends 60% of its power straight to California.
In doing this, California pays a premium for its electricity, because those other States sell to the highest bidder, and as we all know California has wads of money????? (The State is effectively broke) Californians pay near the highest amount per unit of electricity than all but a few States, and that amount is almost 2.5 cents per KWH higher than the US Average, mainly because of all that renewable power within the State driving up the cost, and also having to purchase power externally.
So California pays almost 14 cents per KWH for its power, and, er, take out your most recent bill here in Oz, where electricity sells retail for around 20 cents per KWH.
Power is so cheap in the US because they have access to huge amounts of power from the Nuclear process, (22% of every watt being consumed) which sells its power to grids at around half that of the next cheapest, coal fired power.
So with this power outage in California, what lessons are there here in Oz that we can learn.
Look no further than Hazelwood.
Shut that down, and take 25% of all Victoria’s power away. Take that power out of the Victorian grid, and there is no power in Victoria.
Not just 25%, all of it, because the other plants just cannot cope with that increased load being placed on it, and power just cannot be imported from other States, because they also have barely enough to go around.
So, two things here.
This is why Hazelwood will not be closed down in the (long) foreseeable future, because that power is critical to actually keeping Victoria ‘running’.
The second is that Hazelwood cannot be closed until there is equivalent power to what it provides already in place and delivering, and tell me, have you heard plans for major scale power replacement in Victoria, and a plant of this nature is almost a decade from thought bubble to power delivery.
So, it’s a wonderful thing (careful Tony, sarc off) to have wind and solar plants mooted to take the place of all this power, but the minute the wind stops blowing and the Sun stops shining, power goes down, and that ‘Cascade effect’ falls into play, and Victoria just, er, shuts down.
This CO2 Tax, and the even more insidious ETS, has as its intent the closing of coal fired power plants, providers of huge amounts of electricity.
As detailed above, those plants will not be shutting down. They will not be cutting back on the amount of power they will be producing. They will not be burning less coal. They will not be emitting less CO2.
All that will be happening is that the Government will be making huge amounts of money from it to bolster their bottom line, or perhaps even to give that money away, so other Countries can, er, lower their emissions.
They will tell you that they are giving some of it back to the people, but when we are taling Billions, what’s a Billion here and there, eh!
Before all you ‘pro Nukes’ rush to reply, saying I’ve made the case for Nuclear power, I’m as big a fan as you are, and, knowing at least something about it, I know that nuclear power in Australia is decades away, and in the interim, Billions of dollars will flow into Government coffers from a ‘captive’ target that can do nothing other than what it already does.
Provide a staple of life that none of us can do without.
This week, Labor politicians are shoring up as a ‘bunch’ to ensure they have the numbers to ram this through.
For one reason only.
Ker ching.
Huge Post here I know, but see how something so tiny can cause so many ever expanding ripples, on every aspect.
Wes @ 29
It’s clear from your post to see that, however unpalatable it may be, Osama and his zealots have “won” the battle they set out to win, bringing down the economic Goliath of the world with a couple of well placed “stones”. Even he could not have guessed that the wildcard in his gambit would have been the economic white anters at Goldman Sachs et al, ironically the very targets of the attack on the twin towers that symbolised the Rockefellers in particular, and the Wall St money men in general. Without their help in eroding their own country’s economic foundation, the hole deck of cards would still be standing and the “American Dream” would march on, not stumbling forth to the precipice over which it is about to fall, if indeed it hasn’t already fallen.
Good post which explains how power systems work well done, on a happier note ze Germans wanted to shut down their aging Nukes and decided to pillage the green fund to build new Coal power plants (there was much gnarling and gnashing of green teeth) however……….ze Gremans did the math and figured out it would cost them 400 billion odd Euro’s just to pay for the derdy polushon permits before they turned a sod of dirt.
Their only option was to stick a few bandaides on their nuke plants, i have recently invested heavily in the European tar and feather manufacturing sector as a retirement fund.
So you agree with the “Spend money on your credit you cant afford or the terurist will have won” mantra?
Dont be silly, the US drove themselves into the problems they have now, the only thing the US manufactures now are shiny new bombs and the only ones they export are the ones they give Israel for free. The re-enactment of the holy crusades coupled with fiscal mismanagement (fraudulent mortgage bundles and government bank bailouts) are the cuase of their problems.
And if you honestly beleive 19 Saudi’s with box cutters brought all this about then you need to do a bit of reading.
Did you know Ross Garnaut spent a lot of taxpayers money producing a completely worthless report on the wool industry in 1993? God only knows how much taxpayers money he has wasted since.
This was a couple of years after the collapse of the highly dodgy floor price for wool, wasn’t it? The wool industry was in dire straits.
It is all very well to say “worthless report”, but you back this up with zero facts, making it a useless statement. Enlighten us a bit, what recommendations did Ross Make, and were they acted on? If so, is there any evidence that they worked or didn’t work?
Only a non skeptic would believe that kerosene [jet fuel] melted the towers steel framework all the way down to the basement while people were standing in the gaping hole left by the plane [see ABC documentary “The Falling Man”.
How come the towers turned to dust?
Has anyone seen a kerosine heater melt?
And then a diesel and paper fire caused WTC7 to collapse just like a planned demolition using explosives. At least that is what it looked like to me.
But the men inside the Pentagon also need to know that the bankers want them to lose WWW III. Tell them that the passage of NAFTA in 1994 resulted in sending 50,000 American factories overseas. In 2011 America’s supply lines extend all the way back to China and even then only on credit. It is by design that America must lose a protracted conflict fought without China’s permission.
The bankers want America to lose World War III so the soon to be impoverished citizens cannot demand both the arrest of the bankers and the return of the tens of trillions they stole. They also want to fold a weakened America as a destroyed state into the New World Order with all power securely in the hands of multi-billionaires.
Kevin,
6 or so months after the WTC towers went down, I watched a doco hidden away on SBS. It was done from an engineering standpoint, and explained what happened quite effectively.
Where the planes crashed caused an intense fire. In fact the burning fuel found its way down, via gravity, and blew out every window on the ground floor.
At the impact site, it caused an intense fire that melted the surrounding structural steel beams for a number of floors, creating a virtual gap where there was almost nothing.
Above that now hole, was a large number of floors, an absolutely immense weight.
That huge weight then collapsed exactly downwards because now there was nothing to support it.
As that weight moved vertically downwards, it gained momentum, and that, coupled with the immense weight caused the whole structure to collapse as that weight collapsed supporting structural beams that could no longer support the immense weight now collapsing on top of it.
Anything even approaching conspiracy theories that the structure was ‘somehow’ blown in a controlled demolition is not only ridiculous, it is patently laughable in the extreme.
If I read you right, Australians will be paying much more money for the same or less power. On the other hand, we will continue to burn brown coal in facilities which just get older and crappier.
Meanwhile, 75% of our coal will continue to go offshore to be combusted, and some of that power will be used to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels to be sent back here in order to litter our countryside and NOT replace anything.
I can see where a Ross Garnaut or a Robert Oakeshott might think it’s a good deal. (I can defintely see how a Tony Windsor could turn any land or coal deal into a good deal.) But I’d like to think my species descended from trees and graduated from caves to reason and function a bit better than that.
I was surprised that there was barely any mention of the 10th anniversary of September Eleven by the MSN over the weekend and this morning and last week and last weekend and today. 😉
Over at deltoid in featured ‘steaming toad’ segement, apparently it is my reptilian brain that is rendering me into a life of ‘denial’.
Another book of eco-trash being peddled I’m afraid.
Is there no end to this flanneryish gaia type gibberish ?
Crakar @45
No, I just think that sometimes a straw can break a camel’s back. No doubt the seeds of self-destruction were sowed well before this, but Osama saw a fragility and he exploited it, knowing that the follow on ramifications economically would far exceed the damage done by the act itself. I believe I made it plain later in the comment that living on credit and the false perception of wealth “creation” was exactly what white anted the economy, egged on by Wall St pimps at every turn. I don’t quite see why you think I believed that the US should have spent its way out of trouble by what I said, if anything I suggested the exact opposite.
mosomoso,
all of this can be sheeted home directly to complacency.
You would think that with an expanding population, electrical power would need to be expanded in much the same manner.
That program ‘effectively’ stopped in the late 70’s when State Governments, and in nearly every State, stopped the construction of new power plants.
The thinking was that with all those new 70’s plants operating, that would cover things for a while, which in fact was the case at the time.
Population increase is not just an increase to personal electrical power consumption, eg in the residential sector, but across every sector, hence as population increases and moves into ever expanding new suburbs there is a need for power for Commerce, (malls, hospitals, Coles, Woolies etc) Industry for where those people work, electric rail infrastructure, and hundreds of other areas.
So gradually, all that 70’s extra power moves closer toward maximum consumption. Because power is ‘always there’ in our Western World situation, then the thinking is that it always ‘will be there’.
We reach a stage now where all that 70’s extra has been eaten up.
Governments have not bothered to construct new power plants, because after all, all that infrastructure was once in State owned hands.
Then, the big ‘sell off’ started, and here I might suggest it was because those Governments had that ‘tap on the shoulder’ telling them that they were running short, so they needed to construct more of them.
Now, the expense factor came into play.
“Jeez but, that thing is so damned expensive. We need that money for important things mate, not just power, and gee, we’re right now.”
Then, further talking heads in a different faction of the Party in Government mentioned that the whole thing could in fact be used to their advantage. They could sell off the plants, making a shirtload of money (well, not really, as seen in NSW) and then any need for more power could be sheeted home to those derdy polluders, er, moneygrubbing capitalist bathplugs, er, private operators.
Now, when those private operators want to actually do what the Government should have done, construct new large scale plants, eg Mount Piper, and Bayswater, Governments step in and veto it.
Now it’s got to the point where it’s actually too damned late to construct anything to fill the void.
Instead, they seek to pass a Tax to lower emissions, thinking this will solve the problem.
If it wasn’t so serious, you’d have to laugh at these morons people who represent our interests.
When the rolling brownouts and blackouts start, those politicians will be lounging around in retirement on the public purse, still thinking they did something worthwhile.
I watched a doco once on SBS as well, not the same one you saw though, this one talked about the fire fighter that made it to the 75th floor and said there is plenty of people trapped (alive but trapped) no raging inferno just a few spot fires 2 hoses would be enough!!!!!
Unfortunately many other fire fighters at the time were running for their lives out of the building because of all the explosions and this lone fire fighter died in the collapse.
The doco i saw even had interviews with firefighters that witnessed the squibs exploding as one put it “pop, pop, pop and then the building came down”. Also in this doco was a transript from a guy who was on the same floor as the one the coke can jet hit, he said he has a wing in his office but no inferno just a wing where all the fuel once was but no inferno.
They also interviewed a guy sitting in the 3rd level basement who got blown off his chair because of an explosion, when he walked out of his office he noted a 50 ton press had been destroyed and moved 40 feet of its foundations, by the time he scrambled the 3 floors of rumble and up to the lobby he could beleive his eyes. The whole lobby was destroyed, not of fire by the inferno but destroyed.
They also talked about the “5 dancing Israelis”, you know the ones that were arrested by the NYC police for dancing and high fiving each other as the towers came down whilst they filmed it all happen. The NYC police found over 10 grand in cash, multiple false passports and they also detected the presence of high explosives in their van. Unfortunately no further evidence could be garnished from them due to the US government stepping in and sending them back to Israel!
Oh almost forgot, Kevin in 47 touched on WTC7. I would like to expand on it a little, the first much anticipated NIST report failed to mention WTC7 and its subsequent collapse which in itself is rather enlightening however due to public pressure NIST had a look at it and after years of waiting came back with the astounding comclusion that they do not know why WTC7 collapsed.
Now to understand why WTC7 is the key to understanding this whole issue you need to see the video of it collapsing unlike WTC1 &2 WTC7 is not shrouded in pulverised concrete due to explosions prior to its collapse and what you see is the roof line kink in at the middle and then the whole roof of the building collapses as one which of course can only mean one thing. All 47 major structural beams failed at the exact same time, how is this possible? What could possibly cause every structural beam in that building to fail at exactly the same moment?
It is easy to see why NIST could not find a cause……………
The point i was making is that whoever was the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks did not force the banks to sell dodgy mortgages as triple AAA rating investments which they on sold to every investor on the planet, the perpetrator of 9/11 did not force the US government to bail out the banks to pay back the money to the investors they ripped off.
The perpetrators of 9/11 are not forcing the US government to assist the banks in foreclosing on homes that have not missed a payment so the banks can get liquidity back onto the spread sheets etc, etc, etc.
Wilkie might pull the plug on the government before the tax comes into effect in 2012 if he doesn’t get his Pokie and Gambling reforms…. Gillard is caught between a rock and a hard place on this issue as the club industry are campaigning hard and will cause massive damage to Labor’s heartland and voters.
If Gillard had any brains, she would abandon this Carbon dioxide tax. It’s going to be a Labor hiding to nothing. The Greens won’t and can’t do anything except hyperventilate if it’s axed…. the Greens wouldn’t want to go to an election because they are going to lose big time….. But of course Gillard won’t use common sense and she’ll attempt to crash through with her CO2 tax. That’s the expression Gillard is using “Crash through”….. and she’ll crash and burn as far as the electorate is concerned. She’ll be thrice fried by her Pokie playing Labor voters and their high electricity bills and lost jobs.
Now whether there is an early election because Wilkie pulls the pin or a normal election two years hence. Tony Abbott and the Coalition will win with an overwhelming majority, The polls show extreme dissatisfaction with Labor that won’t change, he is liable to quickly force the issue by immediately scrapping the now ex Gillard Government’s “Carbon Tax”, which the Green senators will block in the upper house…. they’ll block it twice in the Senate…. That will cause a Double dissolution trigger.
Abbott will dissolve Parliament and go back to the polls. Abbott and the Coalition will win with pretty much an unchanged majority. The political landscape will be in turmoil with Union scandals high on the agenda, international financial problems and rising Domestic and employment promlems…..
Thus, the Green Senate majority will also be wiped from the face of Australian politics, paving the way for wall to wall Coalition State Governments and a Coalition Federal Government that controls both houses. The Labor Opposition will languish as a credible political entity and the Greens will go back to their usual minor party activist weirdo status again…….Very interesting times ahead.
…. and even if the Greens roll over and let Abbott throw out the CO2 Tax…. He will start defunding the Greens and causing them all sorts of grief rolling back ecofascist legislation…. Eventually they will have to reject something onerous to them and trigger a double dissolution…. Or Abbott will strip every cent from the eco funding streams and put it in Abbott’s “Green Army” and roll back any eco regulation that industry needs to rid itself of in order to employ people and get the economy moving again. The Greens will become powerless hysterics on the fringes of politics.
It’ll all be okay, Tony. I recently filled out this census thingy, and the government has been made aware that the population is now greater than in 1972. (Mind you, it does sometimes feel that Whitlam is still in power.)
Tony… indeed the WTC had some unique structural design associated with it being constructed with a tube framework; it made it extremely light (hence the design of its dampening system had to cope with greater potential for sway) but also more fire susceptible (the framework and the central core design contribute). Consequently it had more than the usual amount of fire retardant – asbestos. A building engineer I heard interviewed stated that such buildings are designed with a 2 hours to escape before collapse (presumably after a severe event), as this allows most people to escape.
Kevin, do you actually understand the properties of fire?
A building engineer I heard interviewed stated that such buildings are designed with a 2 hours to escape before collapse (presumably after a severe event), as this allows most people to escape.
Interesting concept………….however the designer of the WTC designed it to withstand the impact of a 707 and yet the buildings fell at free fall speed in less than one hour!
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth put out a brilliant 15-minute video for the 10th anniversary. btw their numbers grow all the time. the collapse of WTC7 is still a mystery and has never been satisfactorily explained. tens of millions of americans doubt the official version of 9/11, including many New Yorkers and families of victims, and all they ask for is a credible,independent investigation.
Bloody models indeed, what i like most about this line of defence (it was the Kerosene that did it meme) is that if you watch the impact of both planes you see a vast majority of the jet fuel explode out side the building. So the question of how did a 50 ton press in the 3rd level basement get blown clear off its foundations….i know the jet fuel ran down the elevator shafts and exploded, the same jet fuel that caused an inferno 80 floors up that weakened the structural beams that *science* tells us is impossible.
And no, paper and bits of furniture cannot produce heat high enough nor long enough to produce such a temperature on the very same floor that people were standing in, where was the inferno? Answer there was none so if no inferno then what could possibly cause a sudden explosion at the point of impact moments before the building began to collapse at free fall speed or 9.8 meters per second? How could jet fuel take out the entire 80 odd floors below the impact to allow the building to fall the way it did?
Yes and the planes themselves weren’t real they were photoshopped…
By the same “lab” as did the lunar landings.
FOR REAL
I mean it
PS. For home work, take a nail (steel) and heat it on the gas range till it is approximately 1/2 of it’s melting (welding) temperature. Then quickly try to nail a piece of oak (or whatever hard wood you Aussies have) and tell me what happens…..
PPS I don’t believe you know anything about cutting steel with flame.
looks like the govt is going to ram it thru…and i don’t share mirabella’s optimism:
12 Sept: Border Mail: Aisha Dow: Carbon tax pitch ‘failing’
THE government is failing to sell its carbon tax to North East voters, Member for Indi Sophie Mirabella says.
In the past month the Liberal MP has collected almost 900 signatures for her anti-tax petition from residents in Wodonga, Wangaratta and Bright…
“People don’t understand why we would be introducing a carbon tax that will make it expensive for people to make things in Australia.
“There are also concerns about the rising costs of living and they don’t believe the compensation is going to be enough.”
Mrs Mirabella said the government was attempting to “ram” the tax through Parliament without rigorous debate, because they knew their policy was unpopular.
She said it was not customary for a bill to be debated on the same day it was introduced to Parliament — but this is exactly what the government hoped to do tomorrow.
She was optimistic a Labor MP would break ranks and cross the floor to vote against the controversial legislation… http://www.bordermail.com.au/news/local/news/general/carbon-tax-pitch-failing/2288135.aspx
I would prefer to take a bit of the steel used in the WTC heat it up and nail it into a red gum (really hard wood), which reminds me why would the US government ship off all the evidence from the crime of the century to China before they conducted any testing what so ever?
Mark D… we are as one for once. Conspiracy theories have a life of there own and life that life for so long they forget where they came from. They also thrive in complex events and in chaos.
Anyway, here is some sanity on the “never fully explained” (conspiracy theories know that nothing is fully explained so this fact proves nothing.
I was a bit flippant in my previous comment so I should explain that I probably don’t see the media as the innocent reporters of events like most people, I see the media as manipulators of peoples thoughts and opinions through endless propaganda spewed 24/7. For them to jump on the 911 band wagon so hard now after a decade, to turn what should have been a dignified remembrance into an avalanche of programmed propaganda sets of all my BS alarms. Are we going to go after the evil Syranians now?
PS For those who don’t know NIST, it is hard to find a better respected organisation in the world that deals with scientific measurement and standards. NIST standards are pretty much Australian standards for many things – I’m sure some of the geologists and engineers reading would agree.
I guess they are in the pay of the mysterious and dark forces who really pull the strings and photoshop exploding planes.
12 Sept: Sky News: Carbon tax to fire up parliament
Leader of the lower house Anthony Albanese last week announced parliament would start early on Tuesday to allow the introduction of the lengthy bills package, ahead of debate on the bills on Wednesday.
The opposition has already made it clear it wants discussion on the draft laws delayed until the bills package has been referred to a committee for proper parliamentary scrutiny.
Mr Albanese said there would be no voting on the legislation until the October sitting of parliament but it was clear there was a majority in the lower house and the Senate to pass the legislation.
The government was not overriding the fact there was a need for proper scrutiny of the legislation, he said…
Treasurer Wayne Swan was spruiking the importance of the introduction of the carbon tax package ahead of the parliamentary week.
‘It’s going to be a big week with the introduction of the Clean Energy Future package into the parliament,’ Mr Swan wrote in his economic note on Sunday.
‘I’m looking forward to the debate and also getting on with introducing this critical economic and environmental reform.
‘The legislative package will give businesses and investors certainty about the carbon price, allowing them to plan new investments, including in the renewable and clean-energy technologies of the future.’…
Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said the opposition would say the carbon tax needed to be ‘debated to death’.
‘It won’t be,’ Senator Brown told reporters in Hobart.
‘There will be a parliamentary committee, it can either be Senate or house or joint house to allow the usual input.
‘As far as the Greens are concerned, we want to see the legislation thoroughly debated, a final opportunity for people looking at that legislation to give input to the parliament … and the legislation then passed into law before parliament ends at the end of November.’ http://www.skynews.com.au/businessnews/article.aspx?id=660483&vId=
this is what worries me:
8 Sept: Herald Sun: Super funds slash greenhouse risks to reduce carbon tax impact
SUPERANNUATION funds are offloading shares in companies that have high greenhouse gas outputs to help reduce the impact of the carbon tax on investment returns.
During the past three years, 14 of Australia’s largest super funds have slashed their carbon exposure by 25 per cent, with more cuts expected as they clean up their investment portfolios…
“Company profits can be dented by the carbon tax,” Trucost chief executive Richard Mattison said.
“Profitability will be adversely affected by the impact of a carbon tax for a select number of companies and having knowledge of that will enable super funds to better manage their portfolios and returns.”…
The survey found the total carbon footprint of the 14 funds surveyed in March 2011 had fallen 25 per cent since the first survey, in 2008.
Minister for Climate Change Greg Combet said at a superannuation conference yesterday that there were parallels between the introduction of a carbon tax and compulsory superannuation 20 years ago.
“I am confident that just as compulsory super has proved to be a vital, positive long-term economic reform, so will our plans to place a price on carbon,” he said. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/super-funds-slash-greenhouse-risks-to-reduce-carbon-tax-impact/story-fn7j19iv-1226131691431
here is a gross simplification of ignition of fires. A single match could burn down a forest and substantial infrastructure, buckle metal etc. The match burns dry grass, burning grass ignites further fuel – some with low ignition but high burning temps etc etc etc until a rampant fire ensues. Strong winds (I wonder what affect wind had on the WTC fires?) raise the temperature and spread the fire and more things burn etc etc.
If I tried to start a bushfire by using the match to set a house or powerpole or even a bunch of green leaves on fire, the only at risk of burning would be my fingers.
Crakar @59
I couldn’t agree more. If you make yourself vulnerable through stupidity and avarice, don’t be surprised when someone makes you pay for it. As far as conspiracy theory goes… people in the lobby within minutes of impact were on fire as was demonstrated by the real time doco footage on Ch9 last pm by the French guy doing a documentary on NY fire dept, presumably by flaming fuel siphoning down the lift shafts. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Al Quaeda didn’t have others on the ground to weaken the foundations of each structure, as well as to kill those escaping from the initial impact, just like Madrid and the London bombings- it’s their stock in trade to have you running in panic from one disaster into the path of another bomb. No doubt these alleged “co-consirators” were vapourised when the towers came down so no wonder no one could find any evidence of these likely secondary operatives, if indeed they did exist- we will never know I’m sure, but then really how could we?
the only comment below this disputes Partridge’s figure:
11 Sept: Fairfield Advance: Lisa Herbertson: Another brick in the wall for carbon tax
Austral Bricks managing director Lindsay Partridge said the Brickworks had reduced carbon emissions by 40 per cent in the past decade, but the introduction of the carbon tax would cost his company $12.8 million a year.
“People can’t afford housing now, this is just going to increase the cost of housing further,” Mr Partridge said… http://fairfield-advance.whereilive.com.au/news/story/another-brick-in-the-wall-for-carbon-tax/
their! Sorry. Some pretty crap parsing for grammar too. To think I used to do some paid editing. I always blame computers and never myself for such failing.
Ah yes the conspiracy theorist accusation rears its ugly head the much maligned half brother of the denialist, well its funny you know because i base my decisions about AGw on science and you call me a denier. When i do the same thing about 9/11 i become a conspiracy theorist.
Just another appeal to authority for some i suppose.
77, i know it was for Kevin but WTF are you talking about?
Winston in 79,
You remind me of a poem
They seek him
They seek him there
They seek Al Qaeda everywhere
Hes got em F*&%ed but they dont knowist
They will never catch the shit house terrorist
Note: The arabic translation of AlQeada is “The Toilet”
The Twin Towers, you say, were constructed using a steel tube framework hence it was extremely light.
The exact opposite of your statement is true.
The Core Structures
The Structural System of the Twin Towers
Each tower was supported by a structural core extending from its bedrock foundation to its roof. The cores were rectangular pillars with numerous large columns and girders, measuring 87 feet by 133 feet. The core structures housed the elevators, stairs, and other services. The cores had their own flooring systems, which were structurally independent of the floor diaphragms that spanned the space between the cores and the perimeter walls. The core structures, like the perimeter wall structures, were 100 percent steel-framed.
The exact dimensions, arrangement, and number of the core columns remained somewhat mysterious until the publication of a leaked collection of detailed architectural drawings of the North Tower in 2007. Although the drawings show the dimensions and arrangement of core columns, they do not show other engineering details such as the core floor framing. It is clear from photographs, such as the one on the right, that the core columns were abundantly cross-braced.
LINK
Core Denial
Establishing the true nature of the core structures is of great importance given that the most widely read document on the World Trade Center attack — the 9/11 Commission Report — denies their very existence, claiming the towers’ cores were “hollow steel shaft[s]:”
For the dimensions, see FEMA report, “World Trade Center Building Performance Study,” undated. In addition, the outside of each tower was covered by a frame of 14-inch-wide steel columns; the centers of the steel columns were 40 inches apart. These exterior walls bore most of the weight of the building. The interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped. Ibid. For stairwells and elevators, see Port Authority response to Commission interrogatory, May 2004. 1
The top illustration indicates what may have been typical dimensions and thickness of the smaller core columns, about half-way up the tower. The outermost rows of core columns were apparently considerably larger, measuring 54 inches wide.
LINK
Columns…….
There’s nothing I can say that will stop people considering conspiracy theories, other than having seen a rational explanation, there is no way I can believe those ‘theories’
While the ‘burn’ point in open air of AVTUR (Jet A and Jet 1A) is only around 300C, that started fires that burned at 1000C+, still below the melting point of structural steel, so where I said ‘melted’, that could have been worded a little more clearly.
However, the structure above and the structure below the impact site were left intact, while at and around the many floors of the impact site, that 850KPH impact had destroyed a lot of the main structural formation of the building itself.
The resultant ‘hot fire’ while not melting the remaining structural steel did cause it to become a little more ‘plastic’ than full integrity, so those core columns in that area were slowly being crushed, because of the immense weight above the impact site, a fact alluded to when calls from choppers just prior to the first Tower collapse said that the top of the building seemed to be leaning somewhat, something that they, as pilots couldn’t quite understand.
With the integrity of that impact area now significantly weakened, the enormous weight above the impact point gradually, almost immeasurably, began to drop. The structure that was in existence prior to impact was designed to support static load, but had no resistance to a moving load, the weight of the structure above the impact point. It only had to ‘let go’ in one small area and the whole lot then collapses under the weight, and once started, it is then impossible to stop. In fact that weight only needed to move through 18 inches to release sufficient energy to begin the catastrophic collapse.
So now, as that enormous weight is falling, vertically under its huge weight, the pressure wave under it was forcing everything in that space to be forced out, through the point of least resistance, hence all the windows ‘blew’ out, around three floors below the now collapsing structure, one floor at a time. In amongst the rumble of the now collapsing structure, each floor blowing out prior to the arrival of the huge weight from above would have given the impression of a pop pop pop sound as it descended.
See now how sometimes a rational explanation can used to explain something. Even so, people will still believe whatever they want to, and that’s okay with me. It’s just that I’m not a believer. I prefer to go with that rational explanation, sorry.
Craker24 – I was pointing out to Kevin that a fire is not limited by the initial temperature. A small cool fire can lead to a big hot one.
I never called you a denier of AGW or anything else. Do you think there was a conspiracy to cover up the truth of the WTC collapse?
Kevin, if you think that the NIST report is wrong, say where and how. If you think that your link is the proof of this, say how. To justify your viewpoint you must have also constructed an explanation for why an organisation like NIST has mislead us. Is this true?
Kevin in 85… stop asking us the questions. Go and read the reports that explain it. If you think those reports are flawed let us all know and we’ll give an opinion. Do you really think that anyone here wants this sort of nonsense arguement?
A plane with no more structrual strength than a coke can (minus the engines) ploughed into a building, most of the jet fuel burned outside of the building but the little bit that did not did many things, firstly:
It burned to 300C whilst similtaneously travelling down to the 3rd basement level where it exploded moving and destrying a 50 ton press.
It also completely destroyed all 3 basement levels leaving only rubble behind at the same time it completely destroyed the lobby and blew the doors off every lift rendering them useless.
Whilst this was going on an inferno had begun at the POI (point of impact), science tells us that nothing in the building could possibly melt the steel science also tells us that black smoke means the fire is oxygen starved but never the less it was hot enough to bring down the building.
Firemen stated there was no inferno, people who survived the impact on the floors stated there was no inferno and yet it was hot enough to melt/weaken the steel beams.
Whilst this is going on numerous explosions were ripping the building apart caused by pockets of Kerosene? Firemen described seeing explosions on the outside walls of the building was this caused by Kerosene?
Moments before the collapse there was a massive explosion near the POI, the explosion was so large that it turned untold amounts of concrete to dust, this dust covered the entire top half of the building and then the collapse began. Was this massive explosion also caused by until now unburnt pockets of Kerosene?
It has been calculated that the building fell at free fall speed which means as the top fell it was meet with no resistance, therefore the entire structure of the building had given way from the ground floor to the top floor instantaneously. This was all due to the Kerosene.
There are many photos taken of the rubble as fireman etc scrambled to try and save any poor buggar trapped inside, there are some photos which show the remains of the core strangely they are not simply bent, twisted or snapped as one would expect from a Kerosene induced collapse but are cut at a 45 degree angle?
I’ve also seen an interview with John Lear (Son of the inventor of the Lear Jet) who has multiple pilot licenses for practically all known aeroplanes. He says if he were placed in the cockpit of a 767 20 miles out from NY he could not accurately fly the plane to hit the WTC at the speed and manoeuvrability these planes fly at.
Molten Steel was present in the basement for days after the collapse of the WTC.
good of you to take the time to put that succinctly and clearly.
Kevin demonstrates a pattern of denial. I mean actual denial. If you look at all his posts (yes all), they show the same thing. Event x or organisation y was not true or is linked to something you never expected and that the commonly held view of event x or organisation y is wrong. It is a consistent posting pattern.
What concerns me for the discussion of AGW is that these types of comments get mixed into the discussion and, frankly, taint anyone who questions the science behind AGW.
Craker at 88 – so you disagree with what Tony wrote (ie a good summary of the official – eek never say official when there is a conspiracy about – explanation)?
You maybe interested to know the temp at flame point in a jet engine is approx 2500 C. In the 450mm odd from there to the first turbine the temp is reduced to under 900 C.So I guess Kero could cut steel.
For Tony I was an engine fitter in the RAAF long time ago.
Craker no doubt you know this but your explanation of “theory” as expressed above is at odds with the generally accepted definition.
the·o·ry Noun/ˈTHēərē/ supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, esp. one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained. e.g Darwin’s theory of Evolution by natural selection.”
These suppositions and ideas do not arise from a vacuum or a fancy, they are applied to explain an observation, measured data and other evidence. Theories cannot be constructed without evidence. Darwin’s writing was almost all about evidence to back the theory (consequently not the easiest to read). If you believe in a conspiracy it is not a slight, and it is quite correct, to call it a “conspiracy theory”.
janama@90 Yes, the molten steel has always been a mystery. Some have suggested that it was ‘Thermite’ that was responsible, traces of this was found in the dust.
I would suggest that the molten steel was actually aluminium which constitutes a greater proportion of the airline structure.
Thermite is a combination of aluminium and metal oxide. If Barium is added to the compound (Thermate) it increases the thermal effect.
Barium is also incorporated in every day products like paint, plastics, rubber, paper and glass.
“[T]here was just an explosion [in the south tower]. It seemed like on television [when] they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions.”–Firefighter Richard Banaciski
“I saw a flash flash flash [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building?”
–Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory
“[I]t was [like a] professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear ‘Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop’.”
–Paramedic Daniel Rivera
Engineer Mike Pecoraro, who was working in the sixth sub-basement of the north tower, said that after an explosion he and a co-worker went up to the C level, where there was a small machine shop. “There was nothing there but rubble,” said Pecoraro. “We’re talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press–gone!” They then went to the parking garage, but found that it was also gone. Then on the B level, they found that a steel-and-concrete fire door, which weighed about 300 pounds, was wrinkled up “like a piece of aluminum foil.” Having seen similar things after the terrorist attack in 1993, Pecoraro was convinced that a bomb had gone off.
Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we’ve just had another explosion.
Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we’ve had additional explosion.
Dispatcher: Received battalion command. Additional explosion.11
Firefighter Louie Cacchioli, after entering the north tower lobby and seeing elevator doors completely blown out and people being hit with debris, asked himself, “how could this be happening so quickly if a plane hit way above”? After he reached the 24th floor, he and another fireman “heard this huge explosion that sounded like a bomb [and] knocked off the lights and stalled the elevator.” After they pried themselves out of the elevator, “another huge explosion like the first one hits. This one hits about two minutes later . . . [and] I’m thinking, “Oh. My God, these bastards put bombs in here like they did in 1993!”
Sue Keane, an officer in the New Jersey Fire Police Department who was previously a sergeant in the U.S. Army, said in her account of the onset of the collapse of the south tower: “[I]t sounded like bombs going off. That’s when the explosions happened. . . . I knew something was going to happen. . . . It started to get dark, then all of a sudden there was this massive explosion.” Then, discussing her experiences during the collapse of the north tower, she said: “[There was] another explosion. That sent me and the two firefighters down the stairs. . . . I can’t tell you how many times I got banged around. Each one of those explosions picked me up and threw me. . . . There was another explosion, and I got thrown with two firefighters out onto the street.”
Fireman 1: “We made it outside, we made it about a block . . . .”
Fireman 2: “We made it at least two blocks and we started running.” He makes explosive sounds and then uses a chopping hand motion to emphasize his next point: “Floor by floor it started popping out . . . .”
Fireman 1: “It was as if they had detonated–as if they were planning to take down a building, boom boom boom boom boom . . . .”
Fireman 2: “All the way down. I was watching it and running. And then you just saw this cloud of shit chasing you down.
Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory said: “I thought . . . before . . . No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. . . . Lieutenant Evangelista . . . asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I . . . saw a flash flash flash . . . [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That’s what I thought I saw.”
“Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash.” and “Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then a red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg GEEAYE but not to worry the Kerosene made the building fall the way it did, all these people made this stuff up.
(I’ll get to the point, but indulge me for a minute.)
Man, coming from the RAAF, where there are 6 Aircraft Trades, each Trade thinks they are superior, and I can see rukidding nodding his head and smiling.
The only real ‘mixing point’ is out on the flight line, and in the Servicing hangars, and even then, the, er, banter , is ‘mainly’ friendly.
However, whilst at ‘The Depot’ I was assigned to a ‘digital’ post, that of the ‘resident’ electrician in the TF30 Hangar, where they overhauled the F111’s Pratt and Whitney Deplorable Dependable Engines, in this case the TF30 engines, from the full engine back to their component parts and then rebuilding them again. These same TF30 engines and their derivatives are in use on most current airliners and have been for decades, minus AB.
That position was supposed to be for 6 months only, but because it was run down when I got there, and I wanted to leave it in a shape that subsequent people could move into more easily and maintain at optimum position, so I specifically asked to be extended in that position, and I was there for 15 Months.
I was, as expected, on first arrival, the new guy, and ‘copped it’ from every front. After around 4 to 5 months, I was finally accepted as an equal. They gained a different perspective of Electricians in general, and vice versa, and in fact, I learned more from them, than they from me, not that I was going to tell them that of course, because after all, impressions had to be ‘maintained’. When I left, they made me an honorary ‘Sumpy’, something I treated with an immense amount of pride, from that point on.
I already knew a fair amount about the engine trade, having already been associated with the Atar 9C from the Mirages, but working around Sumpies for so long gave me a background in aircraft engines that I still think of as priceless, and engines in general.
Now the point I am getting at here is that with a training from an engineering discipline, I have found over the years that when it comes to ‘understanding’ things, those who have a background from an engineering discipline are more inclined to believe what may seem something that cannot readily be understood.
Over those ensuing years since my time in the RAAF, I have found that those who do tend to believe ‘conspiracy’ theories are nearly all of them, people from a non engineering background.
That’s not meant to denigrate them in any way, because I have no worries about what they believe, or their entitlement to that belief. It’s just that they sometimes find an engineering explanation more complex than they can understand, and that engineering explanation is sometimes harder to accept than the conspiracy theory if you can see that.
I have specifically found this when trying to explain the complexities of something that ‘seems’ so simple, electrical power generation.
The problem I also have is that the maths involved takes in numbers so huge as to be almost incomprehensible of itself.
In closing, and back to the 2 planes that did fly into WTC 1 and 2, those 2 aircraft had on board at the time, more than 12,000 Gallons of AVTUR.
12,000 gallons.
The equivalent fuel for 800 standard family cars.
I’m not running down you guys who do believe, but just explaining why I don’t believe conspiracy theories like this.
Lastly, don’t think I’m giving away Military secrets here, as both aircraft have been removed from service, and more’s the pity with respect to the F111, still one of the most capable combat aircraft ever built, and I want to emphasise that, EVER built.
Sorry Crakar24, its too big a conspiracy to be believable.
How many people would have known what was going on? Could they all keep a secret?
And, why? Why would someone plot such an amazing thing against their own people? I mean, I didn’t like George Bush, and he was on his way to being thrown out at the next election- but I have trouble believing that George (or Dick Cheney, because I’m betting George wasn’t in on the conspiracy), could have countenanced such a thing.
If I were to carry out one of history’s greatest and most elaborate conspiracies on behalf of the Zionists, I would take a little trouble not to have five dancing Israelis on site after the big bust. A bit like a mafioso doing the twist with a Cuban on the grassy knoll.
Thousands of dancing and V-signing Palestinians in East Jerusalem are a better, simpler indicator of who-did-what-why.
I dont ask whether it is beleivanle i only ask how the jet fuel from 80 to 90 plus floors above could destroy a fifty ton press and take out 3 levels of basement.
I only ask what were all the explosions created by that many, many , many people have testified to?
What could possibly cause (if not Jet fuel) the explosions that ringed the building going up and down moments before the big explosion that pulverised the concrete moments before the collapse?
I only ask for answers to the obvious questions, so far noone has attempted to do so.
When a ship sinks, those in the water will latch onto the first piece of debris that floats by. Anything to help you survive.
This analogy seems to hold true for our ruling parliamentarians and their stance on the proposed carbon tax and illegal immigration.
Is there anyway to get some sanity into Canberra’s decision making?
According to channel 10, the nsw police force has assembled a task force for investigating corruption in the health services union.
It has come as a result of new information coming to light and an interview with the courageous kathy jackson.
Endgame for this government. I am encouraged to now believe there is a will to root outand investigate corruption claims regardless of the institution involved.
PS For those who don’t know NIST, it is hard to find a better respected organisation in the world that deals with scientific measurement and standards.
Funny – I’d have been prepared to say much the same thing about our own CSIRO and BoM only a few years ago, and look how that’s panned out.
I’ll hang my hat on the official explanation. Can you show me the documentation of these events and the misinterpretation, suppression of or omission of mention of such by officially commissioned reviews? Once you’ve demonstrated that no one has an explanation then I can believe you that one has not been given.
Janama – excellent link. It says it all to me too. This is just the sort of data and careful analysis I can relate to. All that official evidence is banished from my consciousness.
Over those ensuing years since my time in the RAAF, I have found that those who do tend to believe ‘conspiracy’ theories are nearly all of them, people from a non engineering background.
Actually, as someone who has worked almost exclusively with mechanical and structural engineers these past fifteen years, I have found, with regards to this particular “conspiracy theory”, that the exact opposite is true.
In fact, it would be fair to say that I don’t know a working engineer who has expressed an opinion on the matter to me, who has not been extremely sceptical of the “official” explanation.
It’s just that they sometimes find an engineering explanation more complex than they can understand, and that engineering explanation is sometimes harder to accept than the conspiracy theory if you can see that.
I have an extensive engineering background. I have no problems with the math. I have no idea what the truth is in this matter.
However, I’ve got a pretty reasonably informed opinion that the “official explanation” is a load of crap.
Forget it and save your energies for other things. You have no more chance of convincing a committed believer in the failings of the “official” 9-11 explanation, than you do of convincing a committed believer in CAGW.
The reason is simple and the same in both cases.
Both were the subject of a massive, almost global, preparatory subliminal brain washing exercise carried out on September 15, 2000. In the case of 9-11, this was followed up by a similar exercise on September 15, 2001.
In both cases this was initially effective in the minds of about 60 – 80% of susceptible recipients. However over time there has been a lapse rate of about 10 – 30%. This has mostly been with people who were not particularly committed in the first place – example Jo Nova and husband David Evans on CAGW.
If you are lucky enough to meet somebody who has no particular strong view on one or the other of these subjects, helping them to see the obvious shortcomings in the relevant “official” explanation is comparatively easy.
However, where there is commitment, as we see with our trolls on CAGW, and as has been demonstrated above on the subject of 9-11, you CANNOT break the programming. The subject will experience nervous breakdown before programming over-ride is accomplished, a point I regrettably inadvertently proved last year with a CAGW-committed programmee.
And no, I have no idea why some people were susceptible to both programs, some to neither, and some to one or the other but not both.
We at Justgrounds have been pursing a mass E-mail campaign on this,e-mailing labor Mp’s with crucial Data that proves the lies about climate change without a doubt. If Jo would like to help us with this,we’d welcome her suport,as every bit helps.
Yes a sumpy that went on to engine,airframe,electrical,instrument and radio licenced 707,747,767 and DC 10.
Finished my time in the RAAF on vampires at 2OCU now I guess that does give my age away a bit. 🙂
As one who never believed in CAGW, because of its clear resemblance to Puritanism through the ages, I’m prepared to doubt the official explanations for 9/11. However, that’s because every large event is clouded and complicated as it unfolds. Opportunism or accident brings in people and interests that weren’t there at the start; things are covered up because someone is embarrassed or unwittingly embroiled. These things happen even in small domestic matters. In big matters, they occur in a big way.
Did wealthy Jewish capitalists or Bush’s forbears have dealings with Hitler? Possibly. Your local camera shop may have had “dealings” with Hitler. Did the US play footsies with Saddam and with the Taliban in the 80s? Of course! Remember Mullahs and Soviets? In a world of shifting interests, big risks and wild compromises, all these things occur. They must occur. Did the Vatican and the West run rat-lines for Nazis after ’45? With Stalin at the front gate, why wouldn’t they quickly look to reshape alliances and make use of the defeated in a new power balance?
And don’t forget the weirdest conspiracy of last century: Hitler and Stalin invading Poland in the same year and colluding for the first two years of WW2. Was that something Krups thought would be good for business? Was there a Jewish mastermind behind that, and behind the complete reversal of policy that led to Barbarossa and the great land war in the east? No, what was behind that was the temporary triumph of practical interest over deep-seated enmity. The war Hitler really wanted was the war he couldn’t afford: in the end, he bought it anyway.
I believe there are cover-ups and conspiracies. They go on all the time. They are probably going on at every reader’s workplace or local club right now. What I don’t believe in is a neat and united High Council, usually Jewish, of stupendously powerful and cunning people who are always behind everything, with full control. Conspiracies are real, George Soros is real, the world is indeed full of mysteries and cover-ups. But one’s own neighbourhood is full of mysteries and cover-ups.
The official story on 9/11 isn’t true. It’s just a lot closer to the truth than the Secret Templar or Masonic Jew explanations.
mosomoso:
September 12th, 2011 at 7:45 pm
As one who never believed in CAGW, because of its clear resemblance to Puritanism through the ages, I’m prepared to doubt the official explanations for 9/11.
Your deception is to make an unsupported claim (about CSIRO) and then make an argument where it is unclear whether you are making the same claim about NIST or are just saying that NIST MIGHT be like (the unsupported status of) CSIRO.
Please state some evidence that CSIRO is less well thought of now. Is it just your perception, industry, scientists? If you have no data your statement was a deception based on a falsehood.
Gee Aye, I doubt that my IQ is all that high, and I don’t doubt the very high intelligence of many believers in CAGW. But having intelligence and using it are two different things. Most of the people who were impressed by the Hockey Stick, for example, did have very high intelligence and probably an advanced education.
Yet to give even a moment’s credence to that diagram you had to be:
a) Utterly ignorant of history and all past human experience.
b) Dumber than doggy-do.
Mean while in NSW the police have task force to investigate the HSU after some further info was forth coming. That a task force was all ready in place a day or so after the police announced they had stopped their investigations is curious. What they may uncover is curioser.
I have no idea why these things seem to work better (or only at all) in the periods March 19-22 and September 15-21, but that seems to be the case. Similar related things only seem to work at latitude 33 degrees (north or south), but again, I have no idea why.
Obviously it would appear to be based on the Lunar Calendar and/or the equinoxes, or some combination of both, but again, I have no idea why.
After twenty years of intense study, these days I merely observe.
I will leave the “why” to smarter folk somewhere down the track.
mosomoso… a diagram is not data and I looked at the stick on its merits and the merits of how it was produced.
Historical records of climate and CO2 might be relevant but I can’t see how human history and experience comes into it as you can just about find an example of anything in history to support or reject a claim. Was there something in particular you were alluding to?
good population densities at 33 degrees and heat and cold stress not so bad in March and September at these latitudes. Otherwise keep going with creating and testing theories and get that vault pic back.
Please state some evidence that CSIRO is less well thought of now. Is it just your perception, industry, scientists? If you have no data your statement was a deception based on a falsehood.
Just one example from many:
Australia is considered by many to be the “bushfire capital of the world” and the CSIRO did a great deal of research on the subject. For at least a few decades the CSIRO guidelines on land management to counter the threat of bushfires was considered the gospel on the subject throughout much of the Western world, including the USA and Canada where they have similar threats.
I personally used these guidelines when setting up a 40 acre property in the mid 1980’s.
Then some years ago “greenie” councils started taking over in rural areas, particularly in Victoria. There was a man who built his house in a bushfire-prone area and applied the measures advised by the CSIRO despite the council’s edicts. The council fined him.
The man took it to court and called on the current-day CSIRO to back him. Instead, the CSIRO basically gave evidence that, compared to the local council, they knew nothing. The man was fined $50,000.00 plus legal costs.
A year later a terrible fire swept through the area and a lot of people got killed. The ONLY house left standing was that of the man who had implemented the CSIRO’s guidelines. The case got a lot of mainstream publicity so please don’t insult my intelligence by claiming you have no idea what I’m talking about.
There was a Royal Commission, and this particular incident came up. Given the opportunity to reclaim their status as a truly scientific body, instead the CSIRO gave evidence that their previous work on bushfires, renowned the world over for its accuracy and effectiveness, had been done before the implications of CAGW were fully understood, and so should be discounted by the Royal Commission.
And no, I have no idea why some people were susceptible to both programs, some to neither, and some to one or the other but not both.
People believe what they’re invited to believe and any resemblance to the actual truth is purely accidental. Unfortunately the ones who are unable to swallow just about any of the crap they’re being fed only add up to about 12% of the population, oh happy days.
MV… thanks for an interesting excursion via an example (of what?). Now back to my question.Please state some evidence that CSIRO is less well thought of now. Is it just your perception, industry, scientists?
I should add to the question – is it across the whole of CSIRO… or are there bits that are letting the side down? I should also clarify evidence as being something that we can all understand as quantifiable and not just a single example.
When arguing against the CO2/warming theory I quote Dr Ottmar Edenhoffer of the UN who has openly admitted that the carbon dioxide tax is about wealth redistribution. One translation from German interview says
“one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental problems any more.”
I find that as people are directed into reading about what is actually happening in the world, all the hoaxes and distractions fall by the way-side.
Since I thought I was pretty-much entirely alone on this, I’d be extremely interested in how you arrived at the same ball-park figure.
It’s just a guess based on the fact that most so called conspiracy theorists do actually end up with a “belief” no matter how ridiculous it sounds, even as bad as the US government one. That brings the number of skeptics down to pretty bad numbers and I have weak moments where I blame everything on a cartel of little unknown bald men who own banks.
MV… thanks for an interesting excursion via an example (of what?). Now back to my question.Please state some evidence that CSIRO is less well thought of now. Is it just your perception, industry, scientists?
Sorry Gee Aye, I thought I’d given a pretty good example of why the CSIRO is not the respected organisation it used to be, at least in the eyes of rural people.
But I’m prepared to accept that, in the eyes of a suburban-dwelling, coffee-sipping, cafe-latte types, (possibly such as yourself), what I offered is proof of nothing – since it doesn’t affect you personally.
Nonetheless, to a lot of country people (who happen to be taxpayers too), the CSIRO’s performance at the bushfires Royal Commission was a sellout.
Conspiracy stories are pubs stuff but there are many problems with the official explanation for the 9/11 disaster.
A seismograph outside NY picked up the first Trade Centre aircraft impact but prior to that there was another vibration of great magnitude which fits the time-line of an explosion reported by many people which came from the basement. Perhaps the terrorists used explosives but one wonders why they went to all the bother of hijacking aircraft if they already had the ability to place explosives.
A plane with no more structrual strength than a coke can…….
Do you seriously believe this?
Anyway, I encourage any interested in this to think outside the box.
The aircraft mass became added weight to the particular floor/s that it “landed” on.
The speed of impact has to be considered (recall that a tornado has been known to cause straw to be imbedded in wood)
The structures failed at the point of airplane impact.
Once the upper floors started moving en-mass, they would represent a tremendous kinetic energy release. Numbers so high as to be incomprehensible.
Once the upper levels were falling the entire structure looks (to me) like a massive diesel engine moving down on a huge compression stroke. (novel idea eh?)
Regardless, as the upper levels fell, the forces impacting the remaining structure would have been immense. Add to that the speeds involved and you will begin to see how beams would snap at weaker points rather than bend.
While this is happening, all the interior materials are being ground and pulverized in a matter of milliseconds. Those pulverized components could easily have become explosive.
Just a few non- conspiracy notions.
I agree with MV though. Once you believe this was a conspiracy it is likely you’ll always believe it.
Don’t get me going on the JFKennedy assassination though…..
It just so happens that if look out my window at work i can see a pig, sounds like you two were clock winders in the RAAF, its ok no one is perfect. By the way tony the pig did have at least one flaw, the TFR was not the best caused a few crashes i think.
Mark D,
An aircraft is designed to be structually strong when flying not when it hits a solid object at speed, then it is a very weak structure, the engines of course are completely different.
to the rest of your post, OK thats a wonderful story now apply the same theory to WTC7 and get back to me.
Jo, you are usually interested in ‘missing hot spot’ news. See Jeff Id’s post http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/corroboration-again/
about a paper by Fu Manabe and Johansen that shows that the models are way off from the observations regarding tropical troposphere trends.
A friend passed this thought-provoker along to me.
Quoted from Ross Greenwood of Money News.
What is a Billion?
How many zeros in a billion???
This is too true to be funny…
The next time you hear a politician use the word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about whether you want the ‘politicians’ spending YOUR tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.
A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.
NOW THIS IS UNDISPUTABLE!!!
NO MATTER WHAT YOUR POLITICAL LEANINGS.
Ross:
September 12th, 2011 at 8:36 am I haven’t read anything in NZ about this big splash by Gore on Sept 14. Has it been in the news in Australia? I hope not and its turns out to be another poor prediction by Gore.
When I read your first sentence, I thought you were going to tell us about Big Al’s cannonballing into one of his many heated swimming pools.
Hey people, I’d love to chat about the WTC/Pentagon/911/JFK/MoonLandings/ConspiracyDuJour, but… aren’t we forgetting THE CARBON TAX?? It’s the biggest conspiracy of TODAY.
You know, the disaster we still might be able to PREVENT??
“Where was the blogger crowd when public mobilisation was needed to prevent the obvious Air Tax Conspiracy?”
“Oh they were too busy arguing about other conspiracies from a decade ago.”
“Uhuh, figures.”
Hey, here’s a conspiracy theory.. no wait… conspiracy hypothesis for you: introducing the carbon tax to Parliament the same week as the 9/11 anniversary is a tactic by THEM to make sure YOU are DISTRACTED from the REAL CONSPIRACY.
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to be a questioner.
Obviously there are parallels between the 9/11 discussion and the CAGW discussion. Basically comes down to the fact that the explanations given for the phenomenon just don’t add up with the data.
Julia Gillard called Bob Brown into her office one day and said “Bob, I have a great idea! We are going to go all out to win the country voters”..
“Good idea Leader, how will we go about it”? said Brown.
“Well”, said Gillard, “we get ourselves one of those Driaza Bone coats,
some RM Williams boots, a stick and an Akubra hat. Oh, and a blue cattle dog. Then we’ll really look the part. We’ll go to a typical old outback country pub, we’ll show we really enjoy the bush”.
Days later, all kitted out and with the requisite blue heeler, they set
off from Canberra in a westerly direction. Eventually they arrived at just the place they were looking for and found a typical outback pub.
They walked in with the dog and up to the bar. “G’day mate”, said Gillard to the bartender, “two middies of your best beer”. “Good afternoon Leader”, said the bartender, “two middies of our best coming up”. Gillard and Brown stood leaning on the bar drinking their beer and chatting, nodding now and again to whoever came into the bar for a drink. All of a sudden, the door from the adjacent bar opened and in came a grizzled old stockman, complete with stock whip. He walked up to the cattle dog, lifted its tail with the whip and looked underneath, shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the other bar. Over the course of the next hour or so another four or five stockmen came in and lifted the dog’s tail and went away looking puzzled.Eventually, Gillard and Brown could stand it no longer and called the barman over. “Tell me” said Brown, “why did all those old stockmen come in and look under the dog’s tail like that? Is it an old outback custom?” “Strewth no”, said the barman. “Someone told ’em there was a cattle dog in the bar with two arseholes”…
Grand conspiracies cannot be maintained as there would be too many loose lipped conspirators.
The contrary 9/11 and CAGW hypotheses fall on the unreliability of the evidence supporting a conspiracy. Also the weight of other reliable evidence is against a conspiracy. With the latter, the imagined conspirators are quite upfront about their political aspirations that use a nascent climate science, still light on for scientific credibility to further ends that are unrelated to the Earth’s climate. No conspiracy there e.g. if in fact Gillard is still a Fabian Socialist at heart that organisation is also quite upfront about the use of alarmist climate science to further its political designs. She is being consistent with those political beliefs, whether or not she even understands the fragility of the science she says she believes in. Same applies to the Greens.
The CSIRO was a world renowned organisation years ago.
They still do good work BUT.
You must not under any circumstances question MMGW or CAGW or CC or GW or C Tax or ETS — NEVER.
That otherwise intelligent people are forced to publicly acknowledge this crap to keep their jobs and funding is disgusting.
The fact that CAGW must be acknowledged in all work has many debilitating effects on the function of CSIRO in wasted funds and having to carry the monkey on your back while doing other research.
Government wastes huge amounts of cash on Carbon Sequestration ( a total joke).
Just imagine what CSIRO could have done in Solar Research with the $100 plus million wasted on Kev The Sequestrators favorite project.
extremely well put and I agree but it wont convince a conspiracy theorist.
As we’ve seen, according to some, brainwashing of witnesses plus a small and tightly knit group could have accounted for the collapse of the WTC. Therefore they can deny (explain away) that there will be loose tongues. The flying spaghetti monster did it.
For the AGW they can say that just because there is an outward openness as you described, this does not preclude other forces controlling and coordinating the conspiracy.
From reading this thread, with all the interesting speculation about 9/11 and the World Trade Center, i conclude on the observable evidence that regardless of the current riks profile re: the world economy, its a really good time to buy Alcoa shares.
The FSM is responsible for much good in the world. We even had a visitation in the form of a Christmas decoration which Venganza was kind enough to feature many years ago.
If NIST was such an august body then why did they forget to mention WTC7 in their one billion page report? Then under intense public scrutiny they agreed to look at it only to come back with a “we cannot explain why WTC7 fell nor can we explain why it fell the way it did”.
People like Gee aye fail to question the basic tenets of things they cant bare the thought of. For example after repeatedly asking how the WTC7 collapsed the way it did you still get no response thats because they have no answer and to admit they have no answer would require them to accept that all that they beleive in may be false.
It is no different when it comes to AGW they cannot for one moment entertain the idea that the world will not end so they simply refuse to accept anything. *the planet is still warming*, *the seas are still rising* is the call.
What you people need to understand is that 911 just like pearl harbor gave the US a pretext to enter a war, i will leave you with one of the greatest moments in the history of the FBI.
10 August 1941, the top British agent, code named “Tricycle”, Dusko Popov, told the FBI of the planned attack on Pearl Harbor and that it would be soon. The FBI told him that his information was “too precise, too complete to be believed. The questionnaire plus the other information you brought spell out in detail exactly where, when, how, and by whom we are to be attacked. If anything, it sounds like a trap.” He also reported that a senior Japanese naval person had gone to Taranto to collect all secret data on the attack there and that it was of utmost importance to them. The info was given to Naval IQ.
Then of course we have the Gulf of Tonkin which was a trumped up piece of crap to justify the Vietnam war, oh and lets also not forget the USS Liberty and the attack on Egypt., the bombing of the King David Hotel, the Rieshtag (spelling) fire….the list goes……this shit has been going on for years, many, many years but no it was the jet fuel i tells ya, i know coz i watched a show about it once………FOR THE LOVE OF GOD…………..
Tony @ 51. As a regular lurker here I highly respect your knowledge about electricity generation and your common sense approach to such problems. However I would be more circumspect regarding ridiculing possible conspiracy theories about the 9/11 World Trade Centre. For your explanation to have credence you need to explain how WTC Building 7, which was not hit by a plane, also collapsed onto its own footprint. As with climate science it is perhaps best to keep an open mind even if perchance it does sometimes make us feel uncomfortable.
Crakar24:
September 13th, 2011 at 10:06 am
If NIST was such an august body then why did they forget to mention WTC7 in their one billion page report? Then under intense public scrutiny they agreed to look at it only to come back with a “we cannot explain why WTC7 fell nor can we explain why it fell the way it did”.
you made this up. They did the reports sequentially and with available resources. They documented progress the whole time and produced for government but freely available updated reports until the final one. The public was agitated about the time the report took but NIST did not delay it for any of the reasons you state.
Regarding how it collapsed. I supplied you earlier with links to NISTs reports. Their explanation seems reasonable although I never believe that a report can tell a complete story (they just can’t), so if you have specific evidence and data that falsifies the NIST account please present it. Being a sceptic you can do that without having to come up with an unparsimonious explanation that invokes mysterious forces.
My parents always said believe only half that you see and nothing that you hear, but this takes the cake.
FA launches ‘Let’s Kick Climate Change Denial Out of Football’ campaign
Football fans who make offensive chants about wind turbines could face stiff jail sentences under plans by the government and the Football Association to ‘get tough’ with climate change deniers.
‘There is absolutely no place for this type of bigotry in the modern game,’ said Barry Jones, the FA’s new climate change guru and leading light in the zero-tolerance community. ‘We’ve come a long way since the days when it was considered acceptable for players and fans to joke about holes in the ozone layer and melting ice caps, but now we need to stamp it out for good.’
“Combet is not backward in putting a foot forward by calling Tony a liar before things have even warmed up:”
Well, Abbott is a self confessed liar who has been caught out telling outright porkies on national television (the Pell / Lateline episode). Then there was the classic on 7:30 report about gospel truth being the carefully scripted remarks so only believe me if its written down.
Then there is the whole climate change is crap but we are going to act on it anyway dichotomy. Abbott’s head-space must be a fascinating, if confused and grubby place.
Tim Curtin writes about the futility of the ‘carbon’ tax
(a bit of cut and paste)
the Sun God of Australian carbon tax
Many of us, possibly along with some of the staff of Australia’s Commonwealth Government’s Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, will have enjoyed the SBS programme (21st August 2011) on the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten and his superb wife Nefertiti, and on how he built a new capital city to embody his vision of a single god, the Sun, that gave special favour to himself and Nefertiti, superseding all other gods. The DCC’s “Clean (sic) Energy Legislative Package” with its carbon tax is a similar obeisance to the Sun God of Julia Gilliard and Bob Brown that they claim will deliver carbon-free power to Australia and the world provided the tax is enacted at $23 a tonne of emitted CO2, even though the actual tax level to achieve that with solar energy would be between $300 and $600. That means the Government’s dream that the Sun can displace carbon-based energy will not likely outlast the 25 years Akhenaten’s Sun City survived after his death before its total collapse and decay.
Cohenite @151
thanks for the link http://www.debunking911.com/osama.htm which contains this quote purportedly from Bin Laden himself ………….”to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies…………………the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the Mujahideen, bled Russia for ten years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat…………..So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy”.
So, the goals allegedly were to bankrupt the US by making it chase shadows in all the far flung regions of the world, bog down in wars it couldn’t win and exacerbate the economic woes it had inflicted upon itself through fiscal stupidity. The motivation for 9/11 is plain, without having to resort to notions of the USA stabbing itself in the heart to justify waging a religious war or a get square in Iraq for oil, etc.
the classic on 7:30 report about gospel truth being the carefully scripted remarks so only believe me if its written down.
It’s interesting that you would resent any politician so openly for such a remark, by pouring scorn on Abbott for what was a rare moment of candour. That being about how media commentators, in the cut and thrust of an interview, can goad and encourage one to say what one doesn’t intend or mean. Such honesty is something we are unaccustomed too, so I can understand your confusion. And as you are clearly a Labor supporter, I’m sure honesty is anathema to everything your party stands for……. Your party motto should be-“whatever you do out there guys, don’t let them catch you being honest!”
The irony is completely lost on you that, when we know most politicians are completely dishonest creatures who lie and spin as a first instinct, yet the one time someone says something honestly and in an unguarded fashion, their integrity is impugned and tarnished as a result- amazing how these things characterise themselves in the prism of the media.
Not at all the initial report does not mention it as you can see here, they later did a report which once again points the finger of blame at fire. Have you actually seen footage of WTC 7 collapse? Does that look like a fire induced symetrical collapse at 9.8 meters per second?
Looking again at WTC7, it is a very well presented case… if you just look at the conspiracy theory case. Like the moon landing fake photos. Like “agw is bunkum”. When all you look at are websites and blogs that argue in favour of conspiracy, well it would be pretty damn hard not to believe.
“Does that look like a fire induced symetrical collapse at 9.8 meters per second?”
I mean 20 minutes on the internet googling “911 truth” and everyone’s an expert on the physics of building collapse, and knows exactly why the meticulously researched official version is a fraud.
Conservatives need to go with the leader who brings out the huffiness and elitism of the Left. Every time. Foot-in-mouth is good. Sporting boofiness is good. Awkwardness around the arts and gender “issues” is good. Not getting the invite to the christening of Cate’s next preciously-named baby…way to go. Feeling like a caveman when handing out literary awards…good one. Some Old-Guy-in-Sky religion, but no Gaia…perfect! A redneck distrust of all things collective, from unions to corporations to the UN…essential! Some hidden smarts and a touch of Jesuitry? Shshhh…
Just thank the Fairfax-perusing classes for their advice to go with Turnbull…
MattB @ 191- “graphic impact”
Precisely, the symbolism was what Al Qaeda was after- the twin towers the symbol of Big business, Big money and Wall St (the Rockefellers especially- Nelson and David were the nicknames given to each tower).
By extension, I can certainly believe it possible that bombing the base of the towers simultaneously, or nearly, to flying planes into them for visual impact, would give additional destruction and increase the likelihood of bringing the structure down, while the visual impact and audacity of the enterprise would not have been the same without the planes.
The US government would certainly like to hide the fact that such access was gained after previous failed bombing in 1993, which would have suggested a calamitous breach of security and planning that they would not like to admit to. At least, if it was just the planes, the unexpected nature of it could be brushed aside as unforseeable and unavoidable, and more importantly unrepeatable. That would undermine the confidence of the people to know that multiple breaches of security could occur and that therefore everyone was more vulnerable than they could have imagined.
These bills are so unnecessary. There is such a quick means to reduce your carbon footprint, and it doesn’t cost much either.
All you need to do is move to a country which allready has about the lowest carbin footprint per capita.
I would suggest North Korea would be your style. Their political approach is very much in line with australias current regime too. You might want to head over quickly though, the next election isn’t far off.
read paragraph 3.1.1 of the FIRST report to congress on the stated goals of the NIST investigation. It states clearly that WTC 7 was on the agenda from the start.
These bills are so unnecessary. There is such a quick means to reduce your carbon footprint, and it doesn’t cost much either.
Completely wrong. There is no cost free way to abate carbon pollution.
All you need to do is move to a country which allready has about the lowest carbin footprint per capita.
Not interested thank you, I’m a patriotic Australian who likes living in Australia.
I would suggest North Korea would be your style. Their political approach is very much in line with australias current regime too. You might want to head over quickly though, the next election isn’t far off.
Where to start on this absurd comment?
For starters this is a complete affront to all the people who have suffered and died under communism.
Secondly, it is an affront to all the people that voted for the current government at the last election. According to you, there opinion doesn’t seem to matter.
Thirdly, you seem to be suggesting there will be repercussions for supporting the current government at the next election. That isn’t particularly democratic.
So in summary, you have no argument so you revert to snide remarks and barely concealed threats.
COhers in 192… ok you could easily say that with the amount of conspiracy theories out there it is easy to see how people have been sucked in by the AGW scam if you want to see it that way. This issue is that psychologically people love conspiracy and once they head that way they lap things up unquestioningly. You can see that on both sides of the AGW debate where people rant on about things they clearly do not understand and cling to things that are clearly rubbish just because they align with their world view. It is human nature.
There is no conspiracy with AGW and I don’t assert there is one; conspiracies are surreptitious processes; the advocacy and support for AGW, from the UN down [and that may be an oxymoron], has been in your face from day one despite the lies and obfuscation to do with the e-mails and hidden data; nothing secretitive about it.
As for Dr Adam, carbon is not a pollutant; humans do pollute but not through CO2; and one of the detrimental side-effects of the AGW ideology is that real pollution issues have been neglected as funds and process have been focused on the AGW lie.
There I was waiting for my late night sporting news fix, and up comes an ad for Junior Masterchef.
One of their special guests this series is Prime Minister Gillard.
Gee, I hope that episode is on early, otherwise they’ll need to do a pretty hasty episode alteration.
Wonder what she’s going to cook.
I wonder what wine you’d serve with ‘books’, well done of course.
Carbon Tax Scam – Here is the audio of swan and gillard LYING to Australians about NOT introducing a carbon DIOXIDE (PLANT FOOD) tax prior to the last federal election to CON people into voting for them under false pretenses!!
To summarise9/11 (i have bigger fish to fry as it seems the spastic bus has just rolled into town)we know the initial plane impact was not enough to bring down 1 & 2 so we need to invoke the jet fuel theory now if we look beyond the fact that the “inferno” was not hot enough nor was it of the required longevity to do any good but yet somehow blew up a basement etc lets assume these two factors combined did in fact bring down the buildings that still leaves you with 7. Or are you now saying all that fire protection “fell off” aswell and the small fires were misleading and there was in fact an inferno raging there as well. These are the questions that are not yet answered NIST or no NIST, so beleive what you want i do not really care……………..time to go fishing.
ONE MINUTE PER MEMBER PER BILL- This is the time JuLIAR has allowed to “debate” the CO2 Tax Bill in parliament. The greatest economic “reform” in Australia’s history and this is the respect jooLIAR gives it. The gloves are off, time to step up the opposition- before its too late!!!
GILLARD AND HER COMMUNIST “government” HAVE TO GO !
Hey Adam,
how’s about you explain some of them clean energy options for us eh!
I’ve explained this to you many times; I support the use of nuclear power and I support a price on carbon because that will ultimately result in Australia using nuclear power sooner rather than later.
I know you enjoy lecturing people on anything related to energy policy, but you’re basically way behind the times. The world is transitioning to low carbon, and Australia needs to be part of that else it will lose out.
Secondly, it is an affront to all the people that voted for the current government at the last election. According to you, there opinion doesn’t seem to matter.
Surely that’s not a spelling mistake. (their, not there)
Ah, Adam.
I didn’t ask for you to rabbit on about Nuclear Power which is decades away at the absolute soonest.
I asked you to explain the Clean Energy Options that your precious Socialists have in store for us.
Wind, Solar, Adam, explain them for us mate, sorry, Doctor.
Just answer the question. Don’t change the subject.
When Adam first appeared here I thought he was just a glued on laborite, the more he post the more i’m convinced he’s a staffer either in Julia’s office or the overblown climate change department.
So you are confirming this is nothing about the climate and reducing emissions , it is all about tax gathering and redistribution.
WOW! Another person that hasn’t bothered to read the policy document.
The money from the sale of permits will be used to fund income tax cuts. The Coalition will say they will end the ETS, but there’s no way they will say they are going to repeal the income tax cuts. So that means they need to find other funding to cover the ‘cost’ (lost revenue) of those income tax cuts.
That means putting the budget back into deficit.
Opposition’s often say they will repeal taxes, levies, royalties, charges et al, but they never actually do it.
Some examples:
Medicare levy, gold royalties, capital gains tax, fringe benefits tax, and the GST.
The ETS will be just the same. The Opposition will say it the sky will fall in, but if they win the next election, there’s no way in hell they will get rid of it, because they need the revenue from the sale of pollution permits to make the budget add up.
When Adam first appeared here I thought he was just a glued on laborite, the more he post the more i’m convinced he’s a staffer either in Julia’s office or the overblown climate change department.
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
ELECTION NOW !!!
1) George Orwell was a social democrat
2) If the government is being deceitful they have a pretty funny way of going about it. The PM and various ministers have stood up in parliament and described exactly what they want to do and have even put bills to parliament so you’ll be able to read them on the aph.gov.au webpage tomorrow!
Wind and Solar Adam.
Nuclear power is not even on the far distant horizon of Labor Policy.
Don’t obfuscate.
You’re a Doctor.
You have a brain.
Explain Wind and Solar.
If I’m wrong did scaper get it right, either way it seems you’r drawing your wage to spread the government agenda.
I accept that some people have political views diametrically opposed to my own, yet what I don’t need to do is cast aspersions on them and suggest they have ulterior motives for doing so.
You obviously KNOW something that the rest of the Australian public don’t Adam.
Perhaps you might explain then just how soon your Nuclear Power Plants will be up and running then.
Not a wish list Adam.
Firm actual plans with a timeline, that you are obviously an insider to.
You are patently clueless on what actually is planned for Clean Energy, Wind and Solar, and even trying to get you to explain them is a wasted effort, because you just don’t know.
You mentioned this about me:
I know you enjoy lecturing people on anything related to energy policy, but you’re basically way behind the times.
Me behind the times.
You explain Wind and Solar for us then Adam.
“There will be no Emissions trading scheme under a Government I lead”
Gosh MadJak, I had no idea any politician at the last two election campaigns said such a thing!
“That being about how media commentators, in the cut and thrust of an interview, can goad and encourage one to say what one doesn’t intend or mean.”
Winston thats pretty lame. Abbott has shown, with this and particularly the “shuddering brainlock” incident that he really has no ability to think on his feet when there is the slightest bit of pressure on him. Thats not a good quality for a PM mate.
“And as you are clearly a Labor supporter, I’m sure honesty is anathema to everything your party stands for…”
Personal attack?? you lose turkey. 🙂
Carbon Price bills into parliament today. Yeehah! Let the great unhinging of the Opposition commence. Popcorn!!
Its been awhile Matt, did the spastic bus break down on the way back from Canberra that would make it a “convoy of inconvenience” wouldn’t it.
I was listening to Gillard and her boring, wrist slashing, monotonic speech to parliament re the tax. The thing that stood out to me was that she mentioned the words “carbon pollution” many times but “carbon dioxide” never so it prompted me to ask the spastic bus ticket holders a question.
Is Gillard lying…YES or NO.
Now before you rush and hammer away NO on your keyboard i would caution here, firstly if you say NO then:
1, The 6th element on the periodic table is pollution
2, You are 18% (mass) pollution
3, You exhale pollution and are just one piece of legislation away from being taxed every time you breath.
4, Plants love pollution
4A, Wheat, vegetables and fruit are the staples of a human diet but without pollution they would not exist and neither would you….ergo….you rely on pollution to keep you alive
T
herefore
We dig up pollution from the ground, put it into the atmosphere to help plants to grow and keep us alive and you want to tax this process?
So again is Gillard telling the truth or is she a lying sack of shit?
“he Opposition will say it the sky will fall in, but if they win the next election, there’s no way in hell they will get rid of it, because they need the revenue from the sale of pollution permits to make the budget add up.”
Sorry Adam, disagree here. Since when has it ever been demonstrated that it is in any way a priority of this Opposition that they need to make the budget add up?? Remember, they have Hockeynomics to fall back on!!
Adam Smith:
September 13th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
I accept that some people have political views diametrically opposed to my own, yet what I don’t need to do is cast aspersions on them and suggest they have ulterior motives for doing so.
As any one with my view is said to be on the take from big oil, Adam, don’t take things so personally.
Funny times. I’ve now got to go and check my moso bamboo which is about to start gobbling and sequestering carbon dioxide insanely over the next months.
I didn’t get this moso by simply believing in it, recommending it, or by making other things less valuable. It had to be planted, fostered, protected. It had to be grown. It was a thing to be initiated, a thing to be done.
Dr. Adam Smith, please show us the nukes. The how, the when, the where of nuclear in Australia. Show us the initiation, the action, the doing.
Please. I assure you, you have my interest and attention.
Are you the type that believes no jet crashed at all? Cause some here have said that an “official” trained pilot could never do that….
Yes there was a plane of course
What group organized the attacks in each plane?
I dont know thats why i ask questions
Or are you the type that believes that the US government crashed the jets?
As above
Or you believe that additional explosive charges were planted by somebody?
Yes or at least until someone can explain why the hundreds of eye witness are wrong.
If you look into this (and i am not saying you have not) this whole thing stinks to high heaven. There is a lot more going on that you are led to beleive.
Willam Rodriguez, 9/11 Hero and the last man out of the Towers
…….The 9/11 Commission Hearing
At the closed-door 9/11 Commission hearing, Rodriguez testified under oath that explosions were going off in the basement of the North Tower before the first plane impacted the building.
He explained in great detail to the Commissioners the numerous cases of serious injuries he had personally witnessed that were caused by these explosions.
He even provided the panel with a list of firsthand witnesses to the explosions, people who were ready to testify under oath.
One of the individuals Rodriguez recommended the panel summon was his friend and fellow employee, John Mongello.
Mongello was in the lobby of the neighboring South Tower when the first aircraft plowed into the North Tower where Rodriguez was located.
It would be another sixteen minutes before the second aircraft would rip into the one Mongello was in.
Yet, within a minute of the first plane hitting the North Tower, an elevator in the South Tower exploded to smithereens right before his eyes!
Mongello and others were literally blown backwards by the blast, as people—many, horribly burned—began to run willy-nilly shrieking in pain, shock, and sheer terror. Thick, black smoke could be seen billowing out of the now exposed elevator shaft, and the pungent smell of “gunpowder” was very evident.
Again, just as with the North Tower, this explosion occurred inside a building that had not yet been struck by a plane!
How could a plane crashing into the North Tower possibly have caused elevators in the South Tower to explode?
The esteemed 9/11 Commission never bothered to ask.
Worse, and to his utter disbelief, Rodriguez later discovered that his statements were completely omitted from the official record. As a result, not one word of this decorated hero’s startling testimony appeared in the much-ballyhooed 9/11 Commission Report, a document that continues to be touted as “the most detailed, definitive study of the events of 9/11.”
Furthermore, Rodriguez was told, quite emphatically, not to speak about the explosions to others until “further investigations” had been carried out. As the world knows, this has yet to happen.
As a result of much public pressure, the Commission’s investigation records were finally made public—seven years later, in January 2009.
Rodriguez was stunned to find that his testimony was among those marked “restricted,” and thus inaccessible to the public. His crucial evidence remains restricted to this day.
Waking Up
Naturally, Rodriguez was flabbergasted by the Commission’s clearly suspect actions, but anger at the subterfuge was soon eclipsed by his far deeper anxiety.
The bombs.
He was convinced beyond a doubt there were explosives planted within the Towers. The official explanation—jet fuel, which is simply kerosene—made no sense at all.
Besides, he had overheard many exchanges on firemen’s two-way radios that day that confirmed virtually all the jet fuel had burned off, and the few remaining scattered fires looked like they could easily be knocked out.
He was convinced the explosions he had seen, felt, and heard that day were not caused by kerosene.
They were caused by deliberately positioned explosives.
What cemented his belief and reinforced it even further was something he saw on television the next day:
WTC building 7 collapsing into its footprint like a house of cards. In a matter of seconds. [1]
He had walked by that building numerous times. WTC7 was a 47-storey steel-framed skyscraper that was located a few hundred feet away from the Towers, and a plane had not even struck it. But, just like the Twin Towers, it, too, it suddenly collapsed into its own footprint.
The first thought that struck him was, “That building was a fortress. How could it just have fallen like that?”
Having experienced the explosions in the North Tower firsthand, and then having seen footage of Building 7 collapse in freefall, there were no doubts whatsoever left in his mind:
All three buildings were purposely demolished with explosives………
As any one with my view is said to be on the take from big oil, Adam, don’t take things so personally.
I have never accused you of being on the take from big oil.
That’s the difference here. I can accept that some people disagree with me in good faith, but apparently if I present views supporting a government policy, that means I must be working for the government, or for the ALP, or for GetUp et al.
Why can’t we just debate each other’s positions with an understanding that people hold their respective views in good faith?
Sorry Adam, disagree here. Since when has it ever been demonstrated that it is in any way a priority of this Opposition that they need to make the budget add up?? Remember, they have Hockeynomics to fall back on!!
Good point. This is something I haven’t considered.
Hockeynomics can make anything add up to whatever you want it to add to.
“Conspiracy theorist” is just another form of name-calling. Stick with discussing the evidence. Usually those who don’t have any evidence are the first to start name-calling.
Some people are unskeptical about claims that fit their world view (pro or anti-government). Some attack every official announcement, while others compulsively defend “authority” and are just as unskeptical.(Perversely, some of this latter group call the anti-government lot “conspiracy theorists” but bizarrely join clubs to call themselves “skeptics”, as if busting astrology, psychics and spoon-bending is the mark of a true “thinker”.)
Sometimes the people yelling “conspiracy theorist” are the same ones postulating mass conspiracies where thousands of online commentators are somehow paid by “Big-Oil”.
Ultimately, calling someone a conspiracy theorist adds nothing. Only the evidence counts, the rest is a waste of time.
Secondly, it is an affront to all the people that voted for the current government at the last election. According to you, there opinion doesn’t seem to matter.
That is an extremely illuminating comment there, Doctor. The “affront”, as you put it, was to go to an election on one platform- “no carbon tax” (both Swan and Gillard EXPLICITLY ruled it out and everyone knows it, except you of course)- and then backflip, because of alleged “circumstances” (having eplicitly ruled it out prior to the election, the Greens could NOT have insisted on reneging on a core promise unless Labor intended to use the excuse to bring it in by stealth) and do exactly the opposite, fully aware that if this tax been part of the party’s platform at the election, Labor would have lost by a landslide. The overwhelming majority of the population are clearly and completely opposed to the tax in any way, shape or form. So, yes, “their opinion doesn’t matter”- Labor have lived by that motto and demonstrated this fact completely, which is why forgiveness will not follow for your government, in spite of your delusions to the contrary. You have shown utter contempt for the will of the Australian people, and then have the gall to suggest that others are being undemocratic. Hippocracy 101.
Why is everyone hung up on reducing emissions? The governments own reports tell us that by 2050 we will reduce our emissions by 80% (from 2000) 78% of this 80% will come from buying 650 billion dollars worth of credits.
Therefore the tax ETS is not designed to reduce our emissions but to generate money to buy the permits, i thought this was done and dusted!
Some people are unskeptical about claims that fit their world view (pro or anti-government)
I think it is a false dichotomy to describe world views as pro or anti government.
There are some government actions where everyone is anti-government, e.g. I don’t think many people would agree that the police should be able to arrest anyone anywhere at anytime for any reason.
But on other issues most people are pro-government, e.g. most people accept that there should be road rules for example, rather than people just being able to drive however they like.
That is an extremely illuminating comment there, Doctor. The “affront”, as you put it, was to go to an election on one platform- “no carbon tax” (both Swan and Gillard EXPLICITLY ruled it out and everyone knows it, except you of course)-
The government’s policy isn’t a carbon tax. It is an Emissions Trading Scheme that starts at a fixed price then moves to a semi-floating (market) price from July 1st, 2015.
If you want to critique the policy in a sophisticated way, you have to first actually understand what the policy is and what it isn’t.
The overwhelming majority of the population are clearly and completely opposed to the tax in any way, shape or form.
And yet there’s 15 Coalition Senators still in parliament who were elected in 2007 on a policy of supporting an Emissions Trading Scheme.
Why aren’t you condemning them for failing to support the policy that they were elected on? It seems you only consider politicians adopting a policy you disagree with as a lie, if it is a policy you agree with, then you are willing to accept politicians changing their minds. That may make sense to you, but it isn’t consistent, and is arguably hypocritical.
8 Sept: Prime Minister’s Press Office: Australia committed to tackling climate change across the Pacific
This phase of the International Climate Change Adaptation Initiative is part of Australia’s AUD 599 million global commitment to responding to climate change from 2010-2013. At least 25 per cent of Australia’s fast start package will go to help our Pacific neighbours.
Australia will also commit AUD 3 million to support the Pacific Standards and Labelling (Energy Efficiency) Assistance Program. The Program will work with several Pacific Island countries to align with the energy efficiency standards and labelling program in place in Australia and New Zealand, initially targeting products such as fridges, air conditioners and lighting. http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/australia-committed-tackling-climate-change-across-pacific
Oh i get it, the hundreds of testimonies that show you to be incorrect can be tossed out because:
A, you were not present to witness first hand that they are telling the truth
B, Eyewitness accounts are not evidence
C, Restricted in normal terms means “we dont want people to know about this” but in your world it means “hes a liar”
D, So this quote from the designer is also wrong as it does not fit with what you wish to beleive
“The building was designed to have a fully loaded 707 crash into it, that was the largest plane at the time. I believe that the building could probably sustain multiple impacts of jet liners because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door – this intense grid – and the plane is just a pencil puncturing that screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting.”
Why can’t we just debate each other’s positions with an understanding that people hold their respective views in good faith?
Er, that’s what we’re attempting to do here.
WE are asking YOU to tell us:
1. For you to explain your (current) Labor Clean Energy options.
2. For you to explain how soon these Nuclear plants you are so confident about will be up and running.
It’s you who are not engaging.
You are abiding by typical left methods.
Never engage debate on anything other than your own terms.
Never engage on something you know nothing about.
Ignore anything put to you.
Find a way to turn the debate into an attack on the other side.
Always stay on message.
At the moment, you only seek for us to debate what you want us to debate.
Adam, abide by your own statement, and just tell us the answers we seek.
12 Sept: Businessweek: Michael Heath: Australia Business Confidence Falls to Lowest Since 2009
A slump in sentiment is weighing on Australian consumers, who are reining in spending as they face the highest borrowing costs in the developed world…
Australia’s retail sales growth may struggle to rebound from a two-decade low as the nation’s stock market slumps and consumer confidence weakens, curtailing household spending, according to a Deloitte Access Economics report…
Clouding Australia’s outlook is concern the world’s largest economy is slowing. Employment in the U.S. unexpectedly stagnated in August as employers became less confident in the strength of the recovery, and the jobless rate held at 9.1 percent, according to a Sept. 2 report… http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-09-12/australia-business-confidence-falls-to-lowest-since-2009.html
no doubt the following scenario is being followed in australia:
12 Sept: Fox News: Regulation Nation: Drowning in Rules, Businesses Brace for Cost and Time for Compliance
Indeed, the 2010 volume of the Federal Register, the “newspaper” of regulatory agencies, stands at an all-time record-high 81,405 pages composed of final rules, proposed rules, meeting notices and regulatory studies.
“There is something like 180 million words of binding federal law and regulation. It would take a lifetime just to read it,” said Philip K Howard, founder of Common Good…
Manufacturing is the industry hit the hardest by regulatory costs, with per-firm costs at $688,944. But all small businesses pay a steep price — $10,585 for every employee…
Among the industries facing massive regulations is farming, whether it be dust-ups over dirt to the fallout from manure.
“It’s a big concern; I’m worried they’re going to regulate us right out of farming,” said Calvin Haile, of Dunnsville, Va., a grain farmer whose five employees have to keep check on the runoff to the Chesapeake Bay. “Since we’re so close to the bay and you know, we just won’t be able to farm profitably and comply with all the regulations, that’s my concern for the future.”…
American appear to be concerned by the impact of regulation on business. A poll conducted by the Tarrance Group for Public Notice, an independent, nonprofit group that provides information on how government policy affects financial well-being, found that 74 percent of those surveyed say that the U.S. is creating too many rules. The poll of likely voters in 10 states taken Sept. 6-8 also found that 47 percent fear the rules will result in job losses while 22 percent think it will increase the price of goods and services. Seventy percent said they believe increasing the number of regulations on American businesses will result in jobs moving overseas. Howard said he believes in legitimate regulatory goals, but the rules need to be practically applied and enforced.
“You can tell a factory owner that it can’t pollute and it needs to meet certain guidelines for pollution, but if you give them a thousand pages of rules that tell them exactly how to catch the pollution. Chances are they’ll waste huge amounts of money catching the pollution in the wrong place and it probably won’t be effective,” he said.http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/12/regulation-nation-drowning-in-rules-businesses-brace-for-cost-and-time-for/#ixzz1Xm8sjN4p
1) Believes in working towards a zero carbon footprint economy
2) Believes in the Nuclear option
3) Believes in one world government
4) Believes in a command economy being effective
5) Rejoices at the introduction of a new Tax
6) Doesn’t care what the australian people think unless they agree with him.
I can only conclude one thing, could it be that Adam Smith is, in fact, Kim Jong Il II?
Adam Smith:
September 13th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Gillard introducing the Clean Energy bills to the parliament as we speak! http://www.aph.gov.au/house/info/liveminutes/
A great day for our nation.
Adam Smith:
September 13th, 2011 at 12:26 pm
Gillard and Combet get a massive applause after introducing the Clean Energy bills.
Adam Smith:
September 13th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Gillard’s full speech introducing the Clean Energy bills to parliament: http://www.scribd.com/doc/64755307/Carbon-Speech
Political courage at its finest.
My first two replies.
Bob Malloy:
September 13th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
When Adam first appeared here I thought he was just a glued on laborite, the more he post the more i’m convinced he’s a staffer either in Julia’s office or the overblown climate change department.
Bob Malloy:
September 13th, 2011 at 1:13 pm
Adam Smith:
September 13th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
If I’m wrong did scaper get it right, either way it seems you’r drawing your wage to spread the government agenda.
You reply
I accept that some people have political views diametrically opposed to my own, yet what I don’t need to do is cast aspersions on them and suggest they have ulterior motives for doing so.
Your earlier post all hold our PM and Climate minister up for adulation, I may be wrong about you being on the government payroll, but you have to accept your agenda here today was to get exactly the type of reply I gave.
Or explain what were your motives for the top three posts.
the media is not mentioning the carbon (dioxide) tax in any of the stories about plummeting business confidence in australia, especially amongst retailers.
the MSM totally ignores the fact we are already paying dearly for the AGW nonsense, for example via massive increases in water and electricity bills since the construction of already-mothballed desal plants etc and electricity companies have pretended to invest in renewables.
but ABC manages the most dishonest headline, which makes no mention of the fact the article is referring only to WA, which is faring better because of the mining boom:
Dr. Crakar24 (PHD)
My apologies for previous lack of decorum.
For the record I don’t accept the “official” recount of what caused the building failures. That said, I’m as sure as I can be (non government security clearance) that it was a group of Muslim Jihadists that in fact were at the controls of both aircraft. What happened after the aircraft hit the buildings is a matter of physics and there is little experience in the physics of skyscrapers falling from high altitudes.
What I do say is that from my perspective (holding two doctorates) is that they fell without a deep conspiracy.
And as for Juliar gillard being corageous to introduce the tax on carbon based life forms, these are not words I would choose, something more along the lines of
Suicidal Jihad
based apon a misinformed and misinterpreted cult belief system that believes that all pollution is ok, but c02 is so bad they must martyr our economic system to combat the trace gas.
But thats ok by mattb and adam smith – they might get their very own fukishimas to plah with.
Craker… no I’m done with WTC. Claim victory (victory by endurance) if you like but I feel that the debate is going in circles and that I’m not seeing new evidence, or anything that directly falsifies the NIST reports.
stop you are creeping me out. I am a person and the leaf is an avatar – a gravitar even. I don’t wear a leaf although there is a fig growing next door should I care to wear one.
“There will be no Carbon Tax Under the Governmeng I Lead”
Excellent find MadJak. What part of the sentence:
They are introducing an ETS.
Do you find it hard to comprehend??
Its an ETS, with an initial, transition period of fixed price permits.
I know the untruth about it being a Carbon tax is fashionable in certain deluded and hysterical circles. But, if you actually look at what they are proposing instead of subscribing to the crap that the current opposition and some of the media are so desperate to have you believe, then its obviously not a “Carbon Tax”.
“Gee Aye”, “Catamon”, “Adam Smith”, “John Brookes”, “MattB” etc. all USEFUL IDIOTS as the infamous Communist Starlin referred to these types of individuals.
Vacuous and devoid of any ability to reason and think logically for themselves.
Clearly all are products of the dumbed down Leftist biased “education” system.
Wake up you MORONS and try and think for yourselves instead of being LEMMINGS following the religion of the Gaia God.
Obviously some Homo Sapians such as yourselves have not progressed past the Cave Man Animist beliefs……..
Stupidity Personified…….
Please elucidate on who precisely you think that you are “saving the planet for”. Certainly not for your fellow human beings! Maybe the Aliens???
“Gee Aye”, “Catamon”, “Adam Smith”, “John Brookes”, “MattB” etc. all USEFUL IDIOTS as the infamous Communist Starlin referred to these types of individuals.”
Personal attacks from Damien?? Tin Foil Hat loser. I must buy Alcoa shares……
If you want to critique the policy in a sophisticated way, you have to first actually understand what the policy is and what it isn’t.
Amazing how you can manage to be evasive and insulting all at the same time. There is nothing “sophisticated” in anything even remotely associated with you or your opinions. You merely parrot the party line, evade and obfuscate to your heart’s content, and then bask in the glory of self satisfaction and smug self-aggrandissement. What was said, was said. Plain and simple, no matter how many times you want to rewrite history or pretend that we were ignorant in hearing it. It’s a matter of public record and even her apologists acknowledge that, except you- a majority of ONE, your opinion being the only one that counts obviously.
Btw last time I looked, the coalition wasn’t in government currently, so how can they be breaking any promises about an ETS when they are in opposition and not formulating government policy.
An interview by one of the top IPPC men given to NZZ am Sonntag on November 10 2010.
Ottmar Edenhofer is a German economist who deals with climate change policy…….. He is currently professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University of Berlin, co-chair of Working group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and deputy director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research…… In 2004 he was a lead author for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore.
In the interview Edenhofer freely admitted that the goal of Climate Policy is to transfer wealth from the West to the Third World by imposing economy eviscerating carbon caps on the West.
As i mentioned earlier, i zone out when liars speak.
You can spin all you like, Juliar got to power with the help of a massive lie.
Any doubts on this that even the most selfish supporters of this government have had has dissolved today.
Any defence of gillard on the carbon tax demonstrates a selfish ignorance which is unworthy of expressing imo.
To actively celebrate its introduction also demonstrates the self serving nature of what is left of the labor movement. It is this pathetic display which will ensure the union heavies stay out of power for a long time to come.
And if the next government comes down hard on workers rights, the workers will have their very own corrupt and nepotistic labor movement to blame for the imbalance of power.
12 Sept: ABC World Today: Report reassesses worth of our oceans
Australia’s marine ecosystems are worth $25 billion. At least that’s the value put on them by the Centre for Policy Development, which has just released a report that looked beyond oil, gas and fishing to assess the worth of Australia’s oceans…
LAURA EADIE: We estimate that the currently economically invisible value of our marine ecosystem services is $25 billion a year. That is for things like carbon storage which we estimated was $15.8 billion a year, for nursery services and disease prevention which we estimated at $6.9 billion a year and for recreation and food for recreational fishers which we estimate at $1.85 billion a year.
SARAH CLARKE: Some might argue how can you put a price on some of these areas that you’ve looked at. How can you do that?
LAURA EADIE: What we’ve done is look at how people interact with nature so we looked at things such as how much time people spend fishing, we looked at natural processes for carbon storage and we estimated what that would be worth once we have a carbon price. In doing this we relied on a lot of international studies that have estimated similar values around the world…
SARAH CLARKE: And what recommendations will you be making to the Federal Government?
LAURA EADIE: We have five simple recommendations for the Federal Government that we think are very important to secure our marine resources.
So first of all, protect the assets that underpin our marine estate by establishing marine protected areas. Rebuild fish stocks, currently 42 per cent of Australia’s Commonwealth stocks are overfished or unknown so they need to be rebuilt.
Ensure all commercial fisheries are sustainably managed, establish accurate data on recreational catch and what fish levels, what fish stocks would be in undisturbed ecosystems and then finally support local communities through marketing and business innovation… http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2011/s3315457.htm
Laura on ABC in July:
July 2011: ABC: Laura Eadie: Why is a carbon tax like the Tour de France?
With support of the Greens and key independents, the legislation will pass through the Senate. Come the next election, a teensy little carbon price won’t seem so painful…
With the help of the Greens, Labor seems to get it now. With the help of Turnbull, there may even be hope for the Liberals. But we’ll need an independent coach to keep us focused and honest about how carbon-fit we really are… http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/07/11/3266223.htm
Laura Eadie is also connected to Climate Friendly as Carbon Strategy Manager. Qantas and News Ltd feature as clients on their home page:
Climate Friendly
Manage and reduce your carbon emissions and help slow global warming by purchasing carbon credits through Climate Friendly…
(from another page) Climate Friendly is pleased to be a Founding Member, and currently, only Australian Member of ICROA. ICROA is a not-for-profit alliance of leading carbon reduction and offset organisations…
(from The Board of Directors)
Joel Fleming
Joel sits on the board as Climate Friendly’s Founding Chairman. He is an experienced environmental scientist, former CSIRO software developer and industry expert in carbon markets and trading…
Michael J. Robison
As Trustee of the Emerald Planet Trust, Michael pioneered the commercialisation of environmental technology and service companies. These activities resulted in investment of over $5M of seed capital and $20M of venture capital directly into emerging companies involved in the environment as well as the mitigation of climate change and the carbon economy. He is a founding Director and shareholder of Climate Friendly.
More recently Michael formed Emerald Planet Limited to continue the work of the Trust in Asia. In Indonesia, Emerald Planet provides specialist consulting and advisory services to private and public sector clients, specialising in land use, renewable energy and carbon-related projects, policy and investments. It is a co-initiator of the development of one of the world’s first REDD projects, is a founding partner in a pioneering Jatropha-based renewable energy business…
Dr. Karol Nolles
Dr Karee Nolles is an Associate Director with Macquarie Global Investments. He joined the Macquarie Capital Utilities and Climate Change team in June 2007…
As well as Climate Friendly, Karel also represents Macquarie on the boards of Envex, NextGen and The Waterexchange… https://climatefriendly.com/
wonder why ABC never mentioned that Chair of the Centre for Policy Development is a former staff member of the ABC. guess they wouldn’t want the public to know that:
Centre for Policy Development
Board of directors
Share Kate Miller (Chair)
Kate Miller has extensive senior executive experience in media, government and arts organisations. Kate worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a broadcaster and senior manager from 1974 till 2000. After many years as producer and broadcaster for ABC Radio particularly Radio National she became ABC Manager Regionals in Western Australia and then Radio Manager, State Manager and State Director of the ABC in New South Wales…
Tony Douglas
…Prior to EMC, Tony was a broadcast journalist, designing and producing Australia’s first national environment radio program, ‘Watching Brief’, and helping design and manage Radio Australia’s regional environment information project with AusAID (1990-1992)…
Nadine Flood
Nadine Flood is National Secretary of the CPSU. After studying Economics at Macquarie University and being a union delegate in universities and local government, Nadine began as an organiser with the CPSU in 1995, representing members across government agencies and in Telstra. She has also worked with the ACTU and with international unions such as the SIEU in America…. http://cpd.org.au/people/board-of-directors/
Without exception, the environmental threats from AGW are entirely hypotheticals. They are things which might or could happen at some uncertain time in the future
Craker… no I’m done with WTC. Claim victory (victory by endurance) if you like but I feel that the debate is going in circles and that I’m not seeing new evidence, or anything that directly falsifies the NIST reports
.
I am quite done too however this bit stops me from letting go “I’m not seeing new evidence, or anything that directly falsifies the NIST reports” i remember reading about NIST speculation about cheap chinese fire retardent falling off and speculation about raging inferno’s but i dont remember NIST speculating explosive devices as evident in eye witness accounts. As i said you rely heavily on an appeal to authority.
No scaper not global warming but our lack of action on global warming, if we had of acted then flying would only be permissable for the elite in private jets, therefore no planes to hijack……………..
Thank god I tought it was going to be a Carbon Tax!
I feel a whole lot better knowing it isn’t going to cost any of us anymore. Thankyou for the news I can go on with my wearisome life now and not worry.
I can actaully see the logic in the exercise. Introduce an ETS to abate a non problem and give the money to someone overseas so we can generate power and they can have guns. I feel a whole lot better now !!!
Damian, I sent you an email and it bounced, can you email me? joanne At joannenova.com.au
Adam Smith: lol.
A false dictomy? Indeed, and you illustrate your point with two inane issues that are not remotely being debated. You could pretty much nullify all discussion about anything with that kind of reasoning.
I know the untruth about it being a Carbon tax is fashionable in certain deluded and hysterical circles. But, if you actually look at what they are proposing instead of subscribing to the crap that the current opposition and some of the media are so desperate to have you believe, then its obviously not a “Carbon Tax”.
Google Julia Gillard and Carbon Tax
Last week, Ms Gillard announced a carbon tax would begin in July 2012.
The Prime Minister explained that a fixed-price period, for an interim three to five years, would effectively operate as a carbon tax.
“A carbon tax is where you fix price,” Ms Gillard said.
Nothing gladdens my heart more than to see people like Doctor Smith come to blogs like this.
It gives us insight into the thinking of people, who for the sake of gloating over what will be one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in our history, it in effect graphically shows us that there are people who just could not care less about their fellow Australians.
Their reliance upon legislation to push a party political line, and their complete and utter lack of knowledge about any aspect of electrical power generation shows that when it does come to their fellow Australians, they are fully prepared to send us back into the dark ages (emphasis on dark) safe in the knowledge that they got their legislation through.
Harsh I know, but closer to the mark than you might think.
1) Believes in working towards a zero carbon footprint economy
Well actually no I don’t believe in this. I believe that Australia’s electricity generation and transportation sectors shouldn’t produce CO2.
2) Believes in the Nuclear option
I believe Australia should generate electricity from nuclear power.
3) Believes in one world government
Wrong!
4) Believes in a command economy being effective
Wrong!
5) Rejoices at the introduction of a new Tax
Can’t you see how this contradicts your previous point? If I believed in a command economy, why would I be supporting a market price for carbon pollution?
6) Doesn’t care what the australian people think unless they agree with him.
Wrong!
I can only conclude one thing, could it be that Adam Smith is, in fact, Kim Jong Il II?
Tony from Oz-
Thanks for putting the meat on the bone , I have learnt a lot of interesting facts from your comments.
Thanks. I have copied that one about the cascade effect to our Galileo Movement discussion on justgrounds.
Let me know if you don’t approve and I will take it off.
Adam Smith: lol.
A false dictomy? Indeed, and you illustrate your point with two inane issues that are not remotely being debated. You could pretty much nullify all discussion about anything with that kind of reasoning.
I wasn’t trying to nullify discussion at all. I was simply pointing out that simply presenting two categories “pro government” and “anti government” simply doesn’t enable a serious discussion of what governments do and what governments should and shouldn’t do.
The fact no one has argued that we shouldn’t have road rules demonstrates that to some extent we are all pro-government and in other respects we are all anti-government.
Given that is the case, the terms are as useless as “conspiracy theorist”, which was your initial point.
It gives us insight into the thinking of people, who for the sake of gloating over what will be one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in our history, it in effect graphically shows us that there are people who just could not care less about their fellow Australians.
This snide attack on my patriotism may be a ‘clever’ piece of rhetoric, but it doesn’t actually make any sense.
How can you say I don’t care about other Australians when today the Government put a bill to parliament to increase the tax free threshold to almost $21,000 by 2015?
Why the hell should anyone on half of median yearly earnings pay any income tax? Yet at the moment you have part time workers working for $17 an hour at Coles and Woolies paying $2000 a year. How is that fair? How does that show care for our fellow Australians who are working on the minimum wage?
Their reliance upon legislation to push a party political line
What an absurd thing to say? Are you suggesting the Government should institute laws WITHOUT legislation? Who’s the one attacking democracy now?
…and their complete and utter lack of knowledge about any aspect of electrical power generation shows that when it does come to their fellow Australians, they are fully prepared to send us back into the dark ages (emphasis on dark) safe in the knowledge that they got their legislation through.
I know this is a difficult day for you seeing that your whole understanding of energy policy has turned out to be a sham. Feel free to keep lecturing us on whatever it is you think Australia’s energy policy should be, but just keep in mind that it was the Keating Labor government that set up the grid which resulted in significantly cheaper power prices than would’ve otherwise been the case.
Dr Adam is a supporter of a market price for carbon; what mirth, what folly, what glorious stupidity!
Of course it doesn’t matter how much abuse you throw at me, the fact is the carbon price will start on July 1st next year, and there isn’t anything you can do to stop it. So just deal with it, get on with your life, write that book that you’ve been thinking about for the last decade. Make love to your husband / wife / partner. Go on a holiday. Do whatever it takes you to realise that you’re powerless to stop this from becoming law.
Adam Smith believes arguing right from wrong is a false dichotomy, so what does that say about him?
Kindest regards to you Jo,
Winston
This is simply absurd. You’ve completely missed my point.
My point is simple. Even people who believe in the minimalist state believe that governments should do SOME things, even if that simply means running a judicial system.
Therefore everyone is pro-government on some issues.
Of course it doesn’t matter how much abuse you throw at me, the fact is the carbon price will start on July 1st next year, and there isn’t anything you can do to stop it. So just deal with it, get on with your life, write that book that you’ve been thinking about for the last decade. Make love to your husband / wife / partner. Go on a holiday. Do whatever it takes you to realise that you’re powerless to stop this from becoming law
If you seriously believe this you are seriously dumb. This depends on the government staying in power until the first of July next year,which is debatable at best given the fact that Wilkie has said that he’d withdraw his support for the government if his bill fails to pass next year. Also there is a Queensland election coming up next year,which may give the opposition the numbers to pass a no-confidence vote with the Gilard government,if they last that long.. I know for a fact that some people are proposing legal action over the underhanded way the tax was bought in in the first place,via lies and deceit.
Surely you jest comrade. You believe transportation and electricity generation shouldn’t produce any co2.
You’re kidding right? I guess you would prefer to have a good old yellowcake by product to deal with. The germans and the japanese are right behind you. Oh, wait, no they aren’t are they?
You cannot be against a command economy whilst supporting an ets. The ETS is a command economy construct. The ets cannot be a free market with government intervention. If you can’t see this you fail economics 101 bud.
And no you don’tcare what the australian people think provided it supports your misguided green dreams. Otherwise you would not be rejoicing at the introduction of this tax ” on carbon”.
Dr Smith,
again, that’s why we love having you here.
just keep in mind that it was the Keating Labor government that set up the grid which resulted in significantly cheaper power prices than would’ve otherwise been the case.
What. Wasn’t there a power grid before him.
Every time you open your mouth, it’s just to change feet.
Immediately prior to Keating doing what you say he did, Australians were paying 9/10 cents per KWH for electricity.
Right now we are paying more than double that.
Why?
Because renewable power plants and their Government subsidies at the front end and the delivery of power to the grids has forced the price up.
And now your Carbon Abatement Clean Energy Bill will drive that cost up even further again, by around a further 3 cents per KWH (14%) and further renewable energy plants will drive it up even further again.
I have a rather firm feeling that the consumption of tar & feather will soon rise, and that’s with You ‘Down Under’ as well as with us here in Sweden… 😉
If you seriously believe this you are seriously dumb. This depends on the government staying in power until the first of July next year,
It does have to stay in power until then. Pollution permits will be auctioned starting in around March next year. Compensation payments start going out in May and June.
which is debatable at best given the fact that Wilkie has said that he’d withdraw his support for the government if his bill fails to pass next year.
Wilkie has been very conveniently ambiguous on this. Sure he has said he will no longer support the government, but what he hasn’t said is that he will support the Opposition. Even if Wilkie says he is no longer supporting the Government, if he isn’t willing to support a no confidence motion then he is by default still supporting the Government. Wilkie is in a notional Labor seat, if he makes Abbott PM he has absolutely no chance of retaining his seat at the next election.
Also there is a Queensland election coming up next year,which may give the opposition the numbers to pass a no-confidence vote with the Gilard government,if they last that long..
What on earth are you going on about? How does a QLD state election change the numbers of the House of Representatives?
I know for a fact that some people are proposing legal action over the underhanded way the tax was bought in in the first place,via lies and deceit.
Err, what? Underhanded? The legislation was introduced to the parliament today the way all legislation is introduced (well actually the Opposition was only given the WorkChoices draft legislation 8 days in advance!).
I know for a fact that any legal action against the ETS won’t have a hope in hell of going anywhere.
I know for a fact that some people are proposing legal action over the underhanded way the tax was bought in in the first place,via lies and deceit.
So in your opinion Lying blantally about “there shall be no carbon tax under the government I lead” and than imposing one anyway after the election is acceptable behavour? And it’s no legal action it’s legal action Against Mrs Gillard for lying to the Australian people,or isn’t being accountable for your actions required anymore?
So in your opinion Lying blantally about “there shall be no carbon tax under the government I lead” and than imposing one anyway after the election is acceptable behavour?
1) The policy isn’t actually a carbon tax, it is a fixed price emissions trading scheme which reverts to a market price from 2015.
2) Gillard didn’t say she wouldn’t price carbon in this parliament. An ETS is a pricing mechanism for pricing carbon
3) Politicians are under no obligation to keep the same policies before and after elections. For example there’s 15 Coalition Senators still in parliament who were elected in 2007 on a policy of supporting an Emissions Trading Scheme. Why shouldn’t they be held to account for now changing their position?
4) Politicians often change their policies after elections. For example Tony Abbott during the 2004 election campaign said that the Medicare safety net thresholds wouldn’t be changed, but then he went and changed them 3 months after the election which increased medical costs for about 40,000 Australians.
And it’s no legal action it’s legal action Against Mrs Gillard for lying to the Australian people,or isn’t being accountable for your actions required anymore?
Gillard isn’t married. Her correct title is The Honourable Ms Gillard.
There’s no law that says politicians can’t lie, that is purely a political matter. John Howard lied constantly for 11.5 years when he was PM, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be PM or that someone could take him to court for lying.
The policy isn’t actually a carbon tax, it is a fixed price emissions trading scheme which reverts to a market price from 2015
In hwer latest speech she is referring to it as a “carbon tax” not an ETS.
Politicians are under no obligation to keep the same policies before and after elections. For example there’s 15 Coalition Senators still in parliament who were elected in 2007 on a policy of supporting an Emissions Trading Scheme. Why shouldn’t they be held to account for now changing their position?
Because said politicians didn’t win a minority government election over a lie. Can you honestly can that labor would be in office if they had honrstly said”there will be a carbon tax”
Gillard isn’t married. Her correct title is The Honourable Ms Gillard.
She’s forfeited all honour with her current antics. How can I honour someone that seems to put her own personal power in office over everything else?
Mrs Gillard is her latst speech referred to it as a “carbon tax”
Here is an interesting thread on BishopHill which TonyfromOZ , in particular, will like. Maybe Tony could work on aa app like this for Australia. Also read the comments on the issues facing the UK in the near future as the base supply gets closed down.
This has to be the only tax ever introduced that came with it’s own activist cheer squad. Fascinating.
Err what? You can’t remember the endless “Unchain My Heart” Joe Cocker TV adverts that the Government used ($200 million worth!) to convince us how brilliant the GST was going to be? The GST this year will raise nearly $49 billion, compare that to the ETS which next financial year will raise about $7.4 billion.
If the ETS is a great big new tax on everything. Then the GST is a Great Big New Tax on Everything times 700%.
What on earth are you going on about? How does a QLD state election change the numbers of the House of Representatives?
It doesn’t but it does change the senate numbers in the Coalition’s favour. Explain to me what happens if they pass a bill repealing the tax and it gets rejected in the House of Representatives 3 times.
Because said politicians didn’t win a minority government election over a lie. Can you honestly can that labor would be in office if they had honrstly said”there will be a carbon tax”
And who knows, if Abbott didn’t lie about the Medicare Safety Net in 2004 how do we know Howard would’ve won?
But Gillard clearly said a day before the election that she would seek to price carbon in this parliament. It was reported as such in The Australia:
JULIA Gillard says she is prepared to legislate a carbon price in the next term.
Gillard made good on that promise today by introducing bills to parliament to acheive that policy promise.
I again bring you to the case of the 15 coalition senators elected in 2007 on a policy of supporting an ETS. Why won’t you condem them for going back on the policy promise they took to voters in 2007?
I also bring your attention to John Howard who said there would “never, ever” be a GST.
I also bring your attention to Tony Abbott who lied about changing the Medicare safety net.
She’s forfeited all honour with her current antics. How can I honour someone that seems to put her own personal power in office over everything else?
You don’t have to honour her at all. I just pointed at that her official title is The Honourable Prime Minister.
It doesn’t but it does change the senate numbers in the Coalition’s favour. Explain to me what happens if they pass a bill repealing the tax and it gets rejected in the House of Representatives 3 times.
I’m sorry but you are clearly utterly confused about how Australia’s electoral system works. State elections have absolutely nothing to do with the make up of the Australian Senate. The Australian Senate make up is determined by Senate elections.
The Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate until at least July 1st, 2014, and quite possibly until July 1st, 2017.
I would point out one thing though. If Bob Katter’s Queensland Party does well in the QLD state election, then it is quite likely that they will win 1 Senate seat off of the LNP at the following Senate election.
Explain to me what happens if they pass a bill repealing the tax and it gets rejected in the House of Representatives 3 times.
Absolutely nothing.
A double dissolution trigger bill must originate in the House of Representatives. The Senate can pass as many bills as it likes and the House can vote them down as many times as it likes but that won’t constitute a D.D. trigger bill.
But Gillard clearly said a day before the election that she would seek to price carbon in this parliament. It was reported as such in The Australia
Wow a whole day before the election. Why wasn’t she straight from the start?
But Gillard clearly said a day before the election that she would seek to price carbon in this parliament. It was reported as such in The Australia
Again a day before the election. If she had said this from the beginning..
JULIA Gillard says she is prepared to legislate a carbon price in the next term
And she’s done this over the protests of 3 states and against all scentific advice to the contary and is now attempting to rush it through parliament in a month,against the protest of the Australian people. Given the GST was given a much longer period to go through,and this is a greater tax by far,how does rushing the bill through give it a adequate period of debate and review for such a large tax,and how does ignoring all contary advice help?
I believe that Australia’s electricity generation and transportation sectors shouldn’t produce CO2.
No CO2 at all??? Does that seem anything other than moronic, pie in the sky, bottom of the garden with the pixies logic to you, does it? Wind and solar only provide their optimum capacity for 15-30% of the time and not at the times when people need them. Nuclear is years away because we haven’t even had the debate yet, let alone commenced planning or construction on any facilities for it. We won’t build more dams and geothermal on the most geologically stable continent in the world is totally impractical. It’s not just a case of believing you want something- it has to be practical (it isn’t), feasible (it isn’t), affordable (it isn’t)……so you wonder why people think you don’t have a clue what your talking about. Oh I know….apply a tax and these things will materialise instantly out of fresh air. Seriously, what are you smoking? Not to mention where are we going to get all the rare earth metals for all the wind turbine monstrosities….after all they are called RARE earth metals for a reason.
Doctor Smith,
seeing as how you’re back, and you mentioned earlier that you wanted debate, how about doing what you actually asked for.
We’re still waiting for your debating points on Comments 211, 223, 232, 240, 247, and 267.
We also waited at two other threads for the same answers, and all you did was change the subject, and attempt to ‘bury’ the comments, and Doctor Smith, read comment 267 again, very carefully.
So I gather the workers at your mythical nuclear powerplant wouldn’t be allowed to exhale.
I’ll tell you what. You can lead by example. Don’t exhale now until I say you can and I will personally build you your green powerplant for you.
I’ll call it Adam smiths’ memorial fukishima mkII zero C02 producing power plant. We can call the reactors Fukishima 1, Chernobyll 2, long island 3, and muriroa 4.
Under the entry sign we could have the slogan. Nuking crap to avoid making plant food. Don’t exhale you capitalist pig dog! All parts manufactured overseas via the cheapest and most envirinmentally responsible methods.
We need to consider the possibility that the CO2 deal is indeed done, though we may not wish to take compassionate advice on what to do with our lives to help us find acceptance. (Please don’t give us leave to make love or take holidays or frolic while our fate is being determined. We know who often come after the smiley-faced mensheviks.)
Here’s a thought. If an Abbott government can’t unpick the CO2 tax/price/ETS from the economic fabric, could it use the revenues to remove the single worst tax ever conceived? Is there a way the monies could be diverted to the states in return for abolishing the ripe, steaming turd that is payroll tax? Also, instead of converting low income earners to voting fodder by selective cuts to income tax, could we manage more general cuts to income tax? (And maybe Tony could accidentally misplace or shrink those deluxe maternity breaks?)
Of course when this “price”, which is, in effect, a transferable pre-paid fine, starts getting traded about, who knows what will happen? Something tells me that carbon credits will make derivatives and junk bonds look like solid gold bullion.
So you have now shifted your position and admitted that Gillard didn’t lie.
Thank you for being honest
.
I’ll thank you to not put words in my mouth, I never said that she didn’t lie,the fact that she said “there shall be no carbon tax under any government I lead” is a blatant lie. If she intended to put one in place,why say that?
I would point out one thing though. If Bob Katter’s Queensland Party does well in the QLD state election, then it is quite likely that they will win 1 Senate seat off of the LNP at the following Senate election.
Given that they hold power by only one seat,that might be enough for a vote of no-confidence in the current government.
And she’s done this over the protests of 3 states and against all scentific advice to the contary and is now attempting to rush it through parliament in a month,against the protest of the Australian people. Given the GST was given a much longer period to go through,and this is a greater tax by far,how does rushing the bill through give it a adequate period of debate and review for such a large tax,and how does ignoring all contary advice help?
Well more people voted against the GST at the 1998 election than for it.
But what about WorkChoices? The Howard government never mentioned that during the 2004 election campaign. It then rammed it through parliament in just 1 month, including only giving the opposition and minor parties 8 days to read the ~100 page bill.
The Government released the draft bills for public consultation a month ago, and it has accepted about 18 technical amendments to them. That’s a hell of a lot more than what the Howard government did for WorkChoices (which it never mentioned during the election campaign).
But no, it seems that anti-government outrage only runs one way.
In line with Rereke’s thoughts @ 1 “What can we do”, would you have the time to dissect the Hepburn wind farms featured in the Government’s ads in a similar manner to the following: (Christopoher Booker has a similar article on the huge imposts facing Britain in using wind power to comply with EU imposed “renewable targets”> That article can be accessed by Googling Climate Realists – it’s under Headline Stories on the site.) Apologies for the huge C & P but there’s a lot at stake!
Our least sustainable energy option By Paul Driessen
“From a land use, economic, environmental or raw materials perspective, wind is unsustainable
President Obama and a chorus of environmentalists, politicians, corporate executives and bureaucrats are perennially bullish on wind power as the bellwether of our “clean energy economy of the future.”
In reality, wind energy may well be the least sustainable and least eco-friendly of all electricity options. Its shortcomings are legion, but the biggest ones can be grouped into eight categories.
Land. As American humorist and philosopher Will Rogers observed, “They ain’t making any more of it.” Wind turbine installations impact vast amounts of land, far more than traditional power plants.
Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear plant generates 3,750 megwatts of electricity from a 4,000-acre site. The 600-MW John Turk ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant in Arkansas covers part of 2,900 acres; two 600-MW coal-fired units in India use just 600 acres. Gas-fired units like Calpine’s 560-MW Fox Energy Center in Wisconsin require several hundred acres. All generate reliable power 90-95% of the year.
By contrast, the 600-MW Fowler Ridge wind installation (355 turbines) spans 50,000 acres of farm country along Indiana’s I-65 corridor. The 782-MW Roscoe project in Texas (627 turbines) sprawls across 100,000 acres. Oregon’s Shepherds Flat project (338 gigantic 2.5 MW turbines) covers nearly 80,000 wildlife and scenic acres along the Columbia River Gorge, for a “rated capacity” of 845 MW.
The Chokecherry-Sierra Madre project will blanket some 320,000 acres of sage grouse habitat and BLM land in Wyoming with 1,000 monstrous 3-MW turbines, to generate zero to 3,000 MW of intermittent power. That’s eight times the size of Washington, DC, to get an average annual output one-fourth of what Palo Verde generates 90% of the time. But C-SM has already received preliminary approval from BLM.
To replace just 20% of the United States’ 995,000 MW of total installed generating capacity, we would need to blanket an area the size of Kansas with wind turbines, and then add nearly a thousand 600-MW gas-fired backup generators…and thousands of miles of new high voltage transmission lines.
Raw materials. Wind turbine installations require vast amounts of steel, copper, rare earth metals, fiberglass, concrete, rebar and other materials for the turbines, towers and bases.
A single 1.7 MW wind turbine, like 315 of the Fowler Ridge units, involves some 365 tons of materials for the turbine assembly and tower, plus nearly 1100 tons of concrete and rebar for the foundation. Bigger units require substantially more materials. Grand total for the entire Fowler wind installation: some 515,000 tons; for Roscoe, 752,000 tons; for Shepherds Flat, 575,000 tons; for Chokecherry, perhaps 2,000,000 tons. Offshore installations need far more raw materials.
To all that must be added millions of tons of steel, copper, concrete and rebar for thousands of miles of transmission lines – and still more for mostly gas-fired generators to back up every megawatt of wind power and generate electricity the 17 hours of each average day that the wind doesn’t blow.
Money. Taxpayers and consumers must provide perpetual subsidies to prop up wind projects, which cannot survive without steady infusions of cash via feed-in tariffs, tax breaks and direct payments.
Transmission lines cost $1.0 million to $2.5 million per mile. Landowners get $2,000+ a year per turbine, plus royalties on all energy produced from the turbine, plus payments for every foot of access road and transmission lines. However, taxpayers pay more, while the landowners’ neighbors suffer property devaluation, scenic disruption, noise, health problems and interference with crop spraying, but no monetary compensation. Direct federal wind energy subsidies to help cover this totaled $5 billion in FY 2010; state support added billions more; still more billions were added to consumers? electric bills.
The Other People’s Money well is running dry. The “manmade catastrophic climate change” thesis behind the wind energy campaign is in shambles. Voters and consumers are understandably fed up.
Energy. Mining, quarrying, drilling, milling, refining, smelting and manufacturing operations make the production of metals, concrete, fiberglass and resins, turbines, and heavy equipment to do all of the above very energy-intensive. Ditto for transporting and installing turbines, towers, backups and transmission lines. That takes real energy: abundant, reliable, affordable – not what comes from wind turbines.
In fact, it probably requires more energy to manufacture, haul and install these monstrous Cuisinarts of the air and their transmission systems than they will generate in their lifetimes. However, no cradle-to-grave analysis has ever been conducted, for the energy inputs or pollution outputs. We need one now.
Health. Whereas environmentalists garner scary headlines over wildly speculative claims about health dangers from hydraulic fracturing (to extract abundant natural gas for wind turbine backup generators), they ignore and dismiss a growing body of evidence that wind turbines cause significant health problems.
Principal health issues are associated with noise – not just annoying audible noise, but inaudible, low-frequency “infrasound” that causes headache, dizziness, “deep nervous fatigue” and symptoms akin to seasickness. “Wind turbine syndrome” also includes irritability, depression, and concentration and sleep problems. Others include “shadow flicker” or “strobe effect” from whirling blades, which can trigger seizures in epileptics, “vibroacoustic” effects on the heart and lungs, and non-lethal harm to animals. Serious lung, heart, cancer and other problems have been documented from rare earth mining, smelting and manufacturing in China, under its less rigorous health, workplace and environmental regulations.
To date, however, very few health assessments have been required or conducted prior to permit approval, even for major wind turbine installations. Perhaps the trial lawyers’ guild could redress that oversight.
Environment. Raptors, bats and other beautiful flying creatures continue to be sliced and diced by wind turbines. Thankfully, the Bureau of Land Management has included an “avian radar system” to track the slaughter within its 500-square-mile Chokecherry region – and banned mining among the turbines.
Wind turbines are supposed to reduce pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. But because backup generators must repeatedly surge to full power and back to standby, as wind speed rises and falls, they operate inefficiently, use more fuel and emit more – much like cars forced to stop repeatedly on freeways.
Jobs. The myth of “green jobs” is hitting the brick wall of reality. While the turbines are installed in the USA and EU, the far more numerous mining and manufacturing jobs are in China, where they are hardly “green.” As Spanish and Scottish analysts have documented, the “green” installer and maintenance jobs cost up to $750,000 apiece – and kill 2.2 to 3.7 traditional jobs for every “eco-friendly” job created.
Electricity costs and reliability. Even huge subsidies cannot cure wind power’s biggest defects: its electricity costs far more than coal, gas or nuclear alternatives – and its intermittent nature wreaks havoc on power grids and consumers. The problem is worst on hot summer afternoons, when demand is highest and breezes are minimal. Unable to compete against cheap Chinese and Indian electricity and labor, energy-intensive industries increasingly face the prospect of sending operations and jobs overseas. Bayer Chemical’s warning that it may have to close its German facilities is just the tip of the iceberg.
When it comes to wind, Nat King Cole might have sung: “Unsustainable that’s what you are, unsustainable though near or far. Unsustainable in every way, and forever more that’s how you’ll stay.” Maybe not forever, but certainly for the foreseeable future, especially compared to increasingly abundant natural gas.
So take a hint from Spoon’s lively tune and “cut out the middleman.” Forge a direct relationship with energy you can afford, energy that works nearly 24/7/365, energy that causes the least ecological damage and is far more sustainable than wind power: the hydrocarbon, hydroelectric and nuclear power that have sustained our society and brought unprecedented health, prosperity and living standards to billions.
Then help the planet’s least fortunate people to do likewise. ”
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death
Dr. Smith is a cut and paste merchant – the questions you have put to him are out of his expertise. He’s have to call in aid!
Just a question – until 2015 the price per tonne on CO2 will be paid by 14 (electricity generators) and after 2015 – What is the reduction they have to meet each year after that – it will only be a short time until they have no money, no credit & govt will have to bail them out?
Have you people talking about explosions in the WTC heard of strain energy? When brittle materials exceed their strain limit they fail suddenly and catastrophically. This can look and sound like an explosion. How about we apply Occam’s Razor to this and conclude that yes, a bunch of Saudi extremist Muslims carried out the WTC attacks?
Anything else requires so many people to keep quiet it is like trying to fake the Moon landings. As one Apollo guy said, it would be easier and simpler to just go to the Moon.
Frankly the posts on this thread leave me afraid that those of us sceptical of AGW because of our backgrounds in meteorology, earth sciences, engineering etc will be dismissed as a bunch of nutters.
This open thread may not have been a good idea, Jo.
As for John Lear’s alleged statement, I doubt that he made it. There’s a little John Lear autobiography on the net of his aviation career. It’s quite funny and as he said he is lazy and has a bad attitude. Hell. I could fly a jet into a skyscraper given 20 miles to line up Why would I want to?). What the hell do you think any pilot does when he or she lands? I’ve landed everything from gliders to light aircraft (thousands of times) to single engine jets at night from the back seat and I’ve landed the F/A 18 successfully in the RAAF simulator (night on one engine)as well as 4 consecutive successful landings in a Boeing 737 simulator and oh yeah, a space shuttle sim. Impressed the heck out of some 12 year old kid watching “you must be a pilot!” (That science exposition thing in West Perth.)
Dr. Smith is a cut and paste merchant – the questions you have put to him are out of his expertise. He’s have to call in aid!
Stick to the issues mate. I have repeatedly answered Tony’s questions but he doesn’t accept that I support Australia using nuclear power, so now he is just asking the same questions over and over again.
It is said that he is only good at dealing with his pre-existing ideas of what his political opponents believe, rather than dealing with their actual position.
The carbon tax looks like being a replacement for income tax – rather difficult to evade, come to think of it, and I wonder if it is the catch-up for the Technocracy movement that finally now has the technological means to monitor are daily energy usage.
Adam Smith is right, the tax will be in, and as happens in any taxation system, there will be loopholes discovered, and some of us will beat the system. The only way to nip this in the bud is to implement a totalitarian system in which our behavior is totally regulated.
Err what? You can’t remember the endless “Unchain My Heart” Joe Cocker TV adverts that the Government used ($200 million worth!) to convince us how brilliant the GST was going to be? The GST this year will raise nearly $49 billion, compare that to the ETS which next financial year will raise about $7.4 billion.
If the ETS is a great big new tax on everything. Then the GST is a Great Big New Tax on Everything times 700%.
You’ve lost me with the Joe Cocker reference. John Howard spending money spruiking a GST which his government took to an election in which they lost seats has nothing to do with a certain keyboard commando getting all excited about the Gillard deception. Unless of course you’re being payed $200 million dollars by the ATO to spruik for Julia. Actually that makes sense and fits with the ALP’s financial acumen.
The carbon tax looks like being a replacement for income tax
This makes no sense. This financial year income taxes will account for $150 billion worth of federal government revenue (that’s about 40%), whereas in the first year the ETS permits will raise about $7.4 billion.
The GST will raise $49 billion this year, yet strangely I don’t see anyone in this forum campaigning against the GST even though it is 7 times bigger than the ETS.
Adam Smith is right, the tax will be in, and as happens in any taxation system, there will be loopholes discovered, and some of us will beat the system. The only way to nip this in the bud is to implement a totalitarian system in which our behavior is totally regulated.
Are you planning on opening your own coal power station? Because if not you won’t directly pay the tax.
Your assertion of totalitarian system is just fear-mongering.
I may be wrong about you being on the government payroll, but you have to accept your agenda here today was to get exactly the type of reply I gave.
I don’t think you are wrong Bob. In fact, I think you are spot on.
There is a certain “smell” to the PR that leaks from political bubbles. They don’t just stretch the truth, they stretch it with an air of superiority; something they find it impossible to hide.
It is being close to the great and powerful that does it. It is having those in power address you by your first name. It is so satisfying to be part of history in the making; to be at the centre of events.
I am not that au fait with the who’s who of Canberra, so I cannot put names to the writing style. But there was I time when I could do it with the Westminster Press Secretaries (P.Sec’s), and even with one or two in White House, back in the day.
These hacks are not that good. They are annoying certainly (much like the Melbourne summer flys), but good political PR has to stay on message, and be subtle, these “persons” are all over the place, and are more concerned with “winning” the “debate”, than progressing their and our understanding.
Witness the very amateur comment from Adam Smith at #332:
Thank you very much for continuing to revert to such abusive name calling, it means I have won this debate.
He/she is obviously emotionally involved with their own right hand.
This has to be the only tax ever introduced that came with it’s own activist cheer squad. Fascinating.
What would be the hilarious part Paul if wasn’t so serious, is that most of the Get Up luvvies and the starry-eyed “One Million Women” “saving the planet” cheer squads now shouting for outrageously expensive, visually polluting , land-eating, bird-slicing monstrosities of grossly inefficient wind turbines as outlined in my post at 355, would have been out in force a few years ago chanting “save our mountain” when authorities suggested putting a tower up to give decent widespread TV and/or other communications reception!
If the tax does become law I’d do the following things,as son as I came into power:1. Cut the Co2 tax to 0%.
2: immdiately cancel all Carbon certicate deals made overseas.
3: Cancel all grants and other means made for alternate energy development under said taxc laws.
That’d do a lot for fixing most of it,as labor will be destroyed at the next election,it’s just a matter of time of when said election will be.
There is a certain “smell” to the PR that leaks from political bubbles. They don’t just stretch the truth, they stretch it with an air of superiority; something they find it impossible to hide.
Sounds like you have a bit of an inferiority complex mate. Why not just debate the issues rather than coming up with what are is ultimately baseless speculation about why I participate here?
If the tax does become law I’d do the following things,as son as I came into power:1. Cut the Co2 tax to 0%.
2: immdiately cancel all Carbon certicate deals made overseas.
3: Cancel all grants and other means made for alternate energy development under said taxc laws.
Both of these things would require passing a bill through parliament which could only happen if Labor supports it.
Thanks for that extract on wind. I’ve recently walked a thousand miles across France and Spain along pilgrim trails. I have learned to hate those turbines most heartily. I have a separate compartment in my heart just for hating the cabling that goes with the turbines. Let’s hope the proponents soon run out of money and spin, as finally happened with Spain. In Australia, many of our high places are still forested, our fire-risk greater and our wild-life more abundant.
On the brighter side, the Golfech nuclear reactors at the confluence of the Tarn and Garonne Rivers are an inspiration. And I love the antique hydro-scheme on the Allier River further back in the Auvergne.
Mind you, I love coal. Chocolate sunshine, as far as I’m concerned.
If the tax does become law I’d do the following things,as son as I came into power:1. Cut the Co2 tax to 0%.
2: immdiately cancel all Carbon certicate deals made overseas.
3: Cancel all grants and other means made for alternate energy development under said taxc laws
And after the next election,just how many seats will labor have,given the current lack of confidence in them currently? That’s why they are pushing this through,or trying to,as they’ll be destroyed at the next election. I’d be suprised if they had enough seats to opose it.
And after the next election,just how many seats will labor have,given the current lack of confidence in them currently?
How many seats Labor has in the House won’t be relevant. The Greens will still have the balance of power in the Senate until at least July 1st, 2014, and probably until July 1st, 2017.
That’s the Coalition’s problem. Any attempt to repeal the ETS would require the support of Labor. If Labor and the Greens decide to oppose any such bill, then they can just keep sending the bill of to every Senate committee under the sun, including a few new Senate committees that they can create simply for the purpose of delaying the bill. It would take something like a full year just for the Coalition to get a D.D. trigger on the bill.
This means in practical terms the ETS could only be repealed by early 2015 at the earliest. By then everyone will just have accepted it and will be even enjoying the tax cuts which will be substantial for people on low and low to middle incomes.
If the Coalition is in government, it will have to find something like $8 billion in savings a year just to fund those tax cuts. Where does the money come from?
History shows us that Oppositions often say they will get rid of a tax if elected, but they never do it. The Coalition opposed the fringe benefits tax, the capital gains tax, mining royalties on gold, and the Medicare Levy, but it didn’t get rid of any of them when it won in 1996. Labor campaigned against the GST in 1998, but it didn’t get rid of it when it won in 2007.
If you think the Coalition is going to get rid of the ETS, you are basically just asking to be mislead / lied to.
Adam @367
You are very selective about what you will and won’t debate. Since nuclear power is years away in this country, what are we practically to do in the meantime as far as power generation to meet domestic requirements?
That’s the Coalition’s problem. Any attempt to repeal the ETS would require the support of Labor. If Labor and the Greens decide to oppose any such bill, then they can just keep sending the bill of to every Senate committee under the sun, including a few new Senate committees that they can create simply for the purpose of delaying the bill. It would take something like a full year just for the Coalition to get a D.D. trigger on the bill.
May I remind you that Ms Gilard is ramming the Tax through under one commmitee, If they can do it,there’s no reason the Coalition can’t do the same. Your theory of making up new committee’s specially as delaying tactics are flawed.
You are very selective about what you will and won’t debate. Since nuclear power is years away in this country, what are we practically to do in the meantime as far as power generation to meet domestic requirements?
The carbon price alone will kill off brown coal and shift investment from coal to gas. That will happen in the medium term, and then from 2020 onwards we should be building nuclear plants.
I certainly would make nuclear eligible for clean energy funding (which is where about 30% of the revenue from permits will go).
May I remind you that Ms Gilard is ramming the Tax through under one commmitee,
Um, excuse me? The committee has been given 3 weeks.
What about the Senate committee on WorkChoices that was given ONE DAY!
If they can do it,there’s no reason the Coalition can’t do the same.
Completely wrong. Labor and the Greens will have the numbers in the Senate, so they can determine which committees the bills are sent to and how long the committees have to report back to the Senate.
Your theory of making up new committee’s specially as delaying tactics are flawed.
No it actually isn’t. Because Labor and the Greens together will have the numbers to do what they like.
So your theory that my theory is flawed is itself flawed.
Completely wrong. Labor and the Greens will have the numbers in the Senate, so they can determine which committees the bills are sent to and how long the committees have to report back to the Senate.
After the next general election they won’t have the numbers to “do as they like”
So your theory that my theory is flawed is itself flawed.
Sounds like you have a bit of an inferiority complex mate.
Not at all. I have nothing to prove, I have had my career, and made my share of mistakes. But I have also contributed to society and peace in the world, and I am content with what I have managed to achieve. There is nothing complex, or inferior, with that.
Why not just debate the issues rather than coming up with what are is ultimately baseless speculation about why I participate here?
Because there is no debate going on here. You are merely game-playing. Debate is based on accepting the other persons point of view, and then building on their position, in a rational way, in order to make your own point. You do not debate, mate.
You participate here because you get a vicarious thrill out of scoring points, or perhaps you are being cheered on by your adoring acolytes. But nobody here really cares how many points you have scored. Actually, nobody is taking any notice of the points you are trying to make, because you have managed to sacrifice your own credibility in the way you have conducted yourself on this thread.
Take a look at your comment rate – and consider the old saying, “Empty vessels make the most noise”.
After the next general election they won’t have the numbers to “do as they like”
Um yes they will, because the Senate change over won’t occur until July 1st, 2014.
Assuming the Coalition is in government, by that stage the bill to reject the ETS would’ve been blocked once, and the coalition would then have to wait 3 months in order to set it up as a D.D. trigger.
This means in practical terms the ETS could only be repealed by early 2015 at the earliest. By then everyone will just have accepted it and will be even enjoying the tax cuts which will be substantial for people on low and low to middle incomes.
If you believe this garbage words fail me. The Australians people have proved in the past that they don’t “just accept” garbage like this. Also I Challenge you to prove those taxcuts which will be substantial on paper here where we all can see.
Um yes they will, because the Senate change over won’t occur until July 1st, 2014.
Assuming the Coalition is in government, by that stage the bill to reject the ETS would’ve been blocked once, and the coalition would then have to wait 3 months in order to set it up as a D.D. trigger
What’s 3 months? It still can happen as you’ve said.
Thanks for proving that a DD trigger can happen still.
Enough of these Watermelon Puritans, enough of these Green finger-waggers.
If you want to see something gorgeous, here are some postcards of the world’s biggest power plants. http://www.industcards.com/top-100-pt-1.htm
Because there is no debate going on here. You are merely game-playing. Debate is based on accepting the other persons point of view, and then building on their position, in a rational way, in order to make your own point. You do not debate, mate.
That’s a very funny definition of debate. I see no reason to accept points of view that are logically flawed. I mean I have seen several tonight alone, such as the following assertions made in this thread:
1) The Queensland state election will change the numbers in the Australian Senate
2) A bill originating in the Senate can become a double dissolution trigger (it simply isn’t so, read Section 57 of the constitution: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s57.html
3) A motion of no confidence passed by the Senate can bring down the government
4) The ETS can be stopped without a bill passing parliament
5) The Greens won’t control the balance of power in the Senate straight after the next election.
All of these things are completely wrong, so I am under no obligation to accept them.
That’s a very funny definition of debate. I see no reason to accept points of view that are logically flawed. I mean I have seen several tonight alone, such as the following assertions made in this thread:
1) The Queensland state election will change the numbers in the Australian Senate
2) A bill originating in the Senate can become a double dissolution trigger (it simply isn’t so, read Section 57 of the constitution: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s57.html
3) A motion of no confidence passed by the Senate can bring down the government
4) The ETS can be stopped without a bill passing parliament
5) The Greens won’t control the balance of power in the Senate straight after the next election.
All of these things are completely wrong, so I am under no obligation to accept them.
Seeing all the garbage you post here is wrong, I’m under no obligation to accept your garbage either. Just why do you bother to post here,apart from scoring points at your own expense,as your seem to “pick and choose” just what posts you answer here?As was said earlier
Actually, nobody is taking any notice of the points you are trying to make, because you have managed to sacrifice your own credibility in the way you have conducted yourself on this thread.
What’s 3 months? It still can happen as you’ve said.
Read section 57 of the constitution:
If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, and if after an interval of three months the House of Representatives, in the same or the next session, again passes the proposed law with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor‑General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously.
Let me also draw your attention to the very first clause “If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law…”. This is why the earlier assertion that a trigger bill for a D.D. election can originate in the Senate is completely wrong. It MUST pass the House first, and then be rejected by the Senate.
Thanks for proving that a DD trigger can happen still.
I haven’t claimed otherwise. It just can’t happen in practical terms until late 2014 or early 2015 at the earliest.
I see no reason to accept points of view that are logically flawed.
Ah, but you did accept my point of view regarding the definition of debate, even though you thought it was, “a very funny definition of debate”. I observe this, because you then went on in a rational way to make your own point, by listing five examples, from other contributors, with which you did not agree.
So perhaps my definition of debate is not “funny” after all, perhaps it is merely unusual, and not what you are used to?
Let me make myself very clear. I am not suggesting in any way, that you should accept what you see as falsehoods. But some people do hold to those points of view, false or otherwise. If you really want to debate, you need to accept that they hold these opinions; that they believe in what they say, and then explain by rational argument why you hold different opinions and beliefs. And if you can demonstrate the superiority of your position with examples, and empirical evidence, then that is all to the good.
The Coalition opposed the fringe benefits tax, the capital gains tax, mining royalties on gold, and the Medicare Levy, but it didn’t get rid of any of them when it won in 1996. Labor campaigned against the GST in 1998, but it didn’t get rid of it when it won in 2007.
And none of those were as big as the Carbon tax. This is a tax,based on fraudulent or misleading at best information,which has been widely circulated,without any semblance of the truth being allowed to appear.Explain to me,and to everyone else here,in details,what’s “right” about this tax because we can tell you what’s wrong about it. As with everything the day will come when this tax is repealed,and until that day we won’t give up fighting.
“I support the use of nuclear power and I support a price on carbon because that will ultimately result in Australia using nuclear power sooner rather than later. …………. The world is transitioning to low carbon, and Australia needs to be part of that else it will lose out.”
Adam. Since you say you do, I accept you support Australia using nuclear power (as I do).
Would you kindly expand on your comments above?
How do you see a price on carbon dioxide ultimately resulting in Australia using nuclear power?
Is it because you think the carbon dioxide tax will prove so meaningless climatically and/or environmentally and be so financially costly for the country that the Greens, Labor/Liberal supporters of the tax, activist organisations like Get Up, One Million Women et al will accept the nuclear option?
Which political party and /or which current politician do you see as having the courage to even try to legislate for the use of nuclear?
Some of the world is being stampeded into transitioning to low carbon (unfortunately in my view)but in exactly what way do you see that Australia will lose out if it’s not part of it?
I understand that China, many financiers and others who got in early to take aadvantage of the huge subsidies available, the market opportunies in trading “credits” and all the other scams that are already surfacing will certainly benefit, but Australia?
I’ll be genuinely interested in reading your reasons.
Adam Smith , What time do you need to go to work mate,
Seems to me your patients are being neglected ,Off you go and do your best for your patients .
A Doctor that has so much time on his hands to blog all day , Who would have thought!
I thought I would browse the thread and see what generated 300+ posts, fearfully I clicked the mouse whilst hoping that it was not another mountain of AS posts, full of regurgitated propaganda.
(sigh) Alas… , we seem to have a lot of “AS whole” (complete) posts.
I think it is time for Jo to take action and rename the site to as’s_julia_fan_club.com (sound it).
“May I remind you that Ms Gilard is ramming the Tax through under one commmitee, If they can do it,there’s no reason the Coalition can’t do the same.”
They could do that, if they win the next election AND they gain control of the Senate at that election. Given the makeup of the current Senate, and the fact that the Greens hold BoP at the moment, its unlikely that an incoming Coalition Govt in 2013 would control the Senate that comes in after the 2013 election, which i think first sits in mid 2014 anyway.
By then, Carbon Price and the associated tax changes, pension increases, and compensation for households will have been a functional reality for 2 full years.
Doctor Smith,
Define near term.
You say 2020.
You may be a Doctor, but you’re also a fool of the highest order.
Coal fired plants closing in the near term.
Your precious legislation does not have enough money to buy out the legal ‘contracts to supply’ that are current until the mid 30’s.
In the interim, there will be NO electrical power if your dream comes to pass.
And Nuclear plants by 2020.
Hey Doctor, not even you believe that.
Should we be puzzled? Since the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, recently advertised that yet another non-academic (John Connor of the Climate Institute) will be lecturing publicly on the 28th September, 2011, on climate change, there has been absolute silence – nothing, zero, zilch, nada, naf’ all, from the earnest signatories of the petition earlier this year to ban such talks in universities. The Conversation (aka ‘The Monologue’) has offered up nothing…a complete blackout. From usually outspoken climate commentator Dr Lewandowsky…an atypical and utter noiselessness. From The Drum’s gaggle of resident carbonistas…an uncharacteristic quietude. The Australian Youth Climate Coalition?….as mute as a biodynamic turnip. The planned lecture by John Connor, a lawyer and high-profile environmental activist, is a clear breach of the well-known warmist principle that non-academics with partisan viewpoints should be barred from the halls of ivy and restricted to pubs and soapboxes. Perhaps the event has slipped under their radar? http://www.nd.edu.au/downloads/Policy%20and%20Climate%20Change%20Debate.pdf
Yeah, TonyfromOz, those contracts!
All quite apart from the complete lack of alternative infrastructure.
The infrastructure that is supposed to appear by a “shift”.
A “shift” meant to result osmotically from overtaxing and overpricing existing energy supply.
And then those contracts!
Funny times ahead.
wow so many posts in a few hours but did someone really try to engage in apolitical debate thinking that state elections affect the composition of the senate? The Black Rod would be at their throats if they tried to take a seat.
But Gillard clearly said a day before the election that she would seek to price carbon in this parliament. It was reported as such in The Australian
Don’t bother, Michael. Adam Smith, as usual, is playing footloose and fancy free with the truth.
Yes, Gilllard said this, and yes, she technically SAID it “the day before the election”.
However, she said it in an interview EMBARGOED until midnight Friday night, so it ONLY appeared in the Australian on Saturday morning, with no opportunity for it to be repeated anywhere else prior to people voting.
That means ONLY readers of the Australian were ever aware that she said it PRIOR to casting a vote.
I wonder how many “swinging” Mum and Dad family voters read the National Affairs section of the Australian first thing Saturday morning?
Adam Smith also conveniently left out this line from the interview:
She would legislate the carbon price next term if sufficient consensus existed (emphasis added).
Remember, this was said at a time when Gillard had also “promised” a “Citizen’s Assembly” to “build” “consensus” for a carbon pricing mechanism.
Attempting to have an honest debate with Adam Smith is like attempting to wrestle Jello.
He has utterly no qualms in twisting, spinning and distorting the truth to make black into white if necessary for his purpose.
We also waited at two other threads for the same answers, and all you did was change the subject, and attempt to ‘bury’ the comments, and Doctor Smith, read comment 267 again, very carefully.
Standard Adam Smith tactics.
He isn’t here to debate, only to contradict, mislead and confuse.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for anything like a straight answer.
Wind Turbine science has a lot to be debated.
Blade Design (1)
Generator in the Head of each Turbine (2)
Hydraulics and Turbines (3)
Hydraulics and hydraulic accumulators (4)
If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which House will not agree, and if after an interval of three months the House of Representatives, in the same or the next session, again passes the proposed law with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor-General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously. But such dissolution shall not take place within six months before the date of the expiry of the House of Representatives by effluxion of time.
I have pointed this out before but still Smith bangs on about how a hostile Senate can keep shuffling Bills back and forth to committees to indefinitely postpone a Double Dissolution process. He needs to reread where the Constitution specifically states“…rejects or fails to pass”. Smith is good at ignoring things which are at variance to his mindset.
In plain words; Government submits bill to hostile Senate. Senate sits on the bill. After three months, the bill is submitted again. Any attempt by the Senate to delay the bill may be taken by the Prime Minister as failure to pass and he can then ask the Governor General to dissolve parliament providing a normal election is not due within six months. It is easily seen that Smith’s interpretation is just plain stupid. There would never have been a DD election because of a hostile Senate under Smith’s asinine suggestion!
He is so full of himself that he imagines that he has written the Constitution and has sole rights as to its interpretation. He is so dumb that he cannot imagine that the founders (themselves politicians) could not forsee that a hostile Senate might attempt the very process he describes.
Finally, the fool still can’t get it through his (thick) skull that there is no such thing as unrepealable law. A referendum of the Australian people at white heat with anger will very quickly put paid to the traders and their “nice little earner” sans compensation. Given that their reputation is already worse than secondhand car dealers and they serve much less useful purpose, they won’t have much of a bargaining chip.
Are you planning on opening your own coal power station? Because if not you won’t directly pay the tax. (emphasis added)
Interesting comment coming from a person who has made least 30 posts over the last week or two (including some on this thread) insisting IT ISN’T A TAX.
And just what exactly does “directly pay the tax” mean, anyway? If I am a PAYG wage earner I don’t DIRECTLY PAY my income tax either – my employer does.
Adam never let’s pragmatism stand in the way of dogma. I’m sure he believes these radical shifts in power provision will occur instantly and seamlessly. Normal service will not even be interrupted while his co-conspirators “kill off” coal as he so flippantly suggests. With the wave of a pen or the touch of a keyboard, these things will just happen. Legions of coal miners will automatically become wind turbine or solar panel installation/maintenance experts in spite of no prior qualifications, after passing the prerequisite 2 week TAFE transition course no doubt, then relocate to the areas where the phantom green jobs are, uprooting family from their communities at lightning speed, etc. Or perhaps those with suitable qualifications will just drop the jobs they are currently doing to join the grand green army on the road to carbonless nirvana. It will all happen with no unforeseen budget overruns, no administrative costs, no massive bureaucracy soaking up large wads of cash and shuffling meaningless reams of paper around between themselves to make themselves look busy and useful. And I’m only scratching the surface of problems even if the “dream” of new green energy economy was anything other than a mirage. Much more likely is that coal related jobs will vanish, as will the areas that depend on them, as well as other energy intensive industries like steel and the like which will just die out, the businesses that serve them will also suffer and wither on the vine. All the green jobs will be in China, not more than a trickle here. And then we will be looking for explanations from the “Adam Smith’s” of the world and they will have slunk back into their anonymity, unrepentant for their part in selling their country down the tubes through having no practical concept of how things work, how people organize their lives and how change, while desirable, needs to be managed in a timely, sensible and well thought out fashion to minimize avoidable pain and suffering.
Instead of casting aspersions on why I choose to post here, why not just engage in the debate?
Or is that too hard?
Followed almost immediately by
Adam Smith @ 370
Both of these things would require passing a bill through parliament which could only happen if Labor supports it.
Interesting two comments Adam Smith.
You made the second only a few days ago, to which I replied with the example of Gough Whitlam and his disbanding of National Service back in 1972, with no legislative backing whatsoever.
In typical fashion, rather than either debate, or admit you were wrong, you simply sidestepped the issue and went off on a tangent – like you ALWAYS do.
Then come back and REPEAT the lie here now, as though you were never challenged the first time you made it.
Which just goes to underline the utter hypocrisy of your first comment highlighted above.
That’s a very funny definition of debate. I see no reason to accept points of view that are logically flawed.
And yet you expect no less from the rest of us.
You have made several posts just tonight (and many more at other times) claiming that nobody will be able to change the ETS legislation because the Greens have the Senate locked up until 2017.
At exactly the same time, interspersed with exactly those same comments, you have claimed that “nuclear” is the way to go, and Australia should (and will) be moving to nuclear to replace that “dirty coal” by 2020.
Now given that the Greens (the SAME ones who control the Senate) are utterly opposed to even MINING Uranium, let alone USING it, how on earth do you explain the very obvious logical flaw in your comments?
If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, and if after an interval of three months the House of Representatives, in the same or the next session, again passes the proposed law with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor‑General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously.
Sorry Adam Smith, I STILL can’t see the bit that reads “ONLY IF THE PRIME MINISTER TELLS THE GG TO DO SO” – as you have insisted ad nauseum here over the last few weeks.
A simple experiment devised to utilise the ‘greenhouse gas’ properties of carbon dioxide and demonstrate the Greenhouse Effect theory yields a null result.
Hopefully the experiment can be used by mass replication as a tool to liberate young brainwashed minds.
Perhaps it can help restore integrity to science.
The experiment was put up to the journal ‘Nature’ but rejected with a kind reply from the editor who said inter alia, ‘In this case, while your simple experiment appears nicely to demonstrate the Greenhouse Effect theory using simple kitchen ingredients and equipment, we [are] unable to conclude that this manuscript contains the sort of significant conceptual advance in understanding that will be of immediate interest to a broad readership of researchers in the climate community…
Yours sincerely, Rory Howlett Editor Nature Climate Change’
One can take this to mean the experiment demonstrates a principle already well known and understood by ‘researchers in the climate community’.
The principle being that the second law of thermodynamics holds true – no matter what ‘climate scientists’ would have us believe.
The experiment at point is published here http://www.galileomovement.com.au/blog/?p=25/
I suspect Dr Adam is either senator Milne or works for her; tonight the feisty ratbag was reported as saying:
“This is a great day,” Senator Milne said.
“You have no idea how excited people, particularly young people, are across the country right now.”
I believe these are the words ‘Dr Adam’ used to describe this day of agnotology.
There is so much Dr Adam has neglected or ignored as TonyOz and others have noticed; for instance the cost of the stinking tax, that is, how much it will extract from the economy is not $7.4 billion but at least double that, per annum; and the economic shrinkage will be $50 billion per annum.
But all that is beside the point; this tax is aimed at cheap energy; nuclear, a diversion by Dr Adam, will not be available for decades due to the cowardice of Australian pollies, and, since wind and solar DO NOT WORK [which makes the $10 billion direct subsidisation of wind and solar another monumental waste of money], and given that coal powered stations will be closed down, it is inevitable that power shortages will occur.
Adam Smith,
You’re so bossy!
You spend most of your time here telling everyone how you think they should argue.
It is patently clear that you are a blind supporter of the current govt….we get it OK?
It is also patently clear that you like the nuclear power option….we get it OK?
What you haven’t explained to us…despite many different people asking you very politely…is how you’re going to get nuclear power passed and imbedded in the new legislation?
Most people here think Nuclear power is a sensible option.
We are asking you, mr Bossy Boots Dr Smith, how and when it is going to happen?
Instead of pointing out numerous flaws in our debating capabilies…..ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!
A simple experiment devised to utilise the ‘greenhouse gas’ properties of carbon dioxide and demonstrate the Greenhouse Effect theory yields a null result.
Sorry Adam Smith, I STILL can’t see the bit that reads “ONLY IF THE PRIME MINISTER TELLS THE GG TO DO SO” – as you have insisted ad nauseum here over the last few weeks.
The Governor General can’t dissolve any house of parliament unless asked to do so by the Prime Minister. That’s how our system works, if you think it works otherwise then you are ultimately asserting that Australia is a dictatorship.
Excuse me? The GST isn’t bigger than the ETS? You want to make a bet about that. The GST this year will raise a bit over $48 billion, whereas the ETS in its first year will raise around $7.4 billion.
Do you seriously want to argue that 7.4 is bigger than 48?
Where is the outrage about the GST? Why aren’t people planning a convoy of no confidence in the GST? After all, it is 650% bigger than the ETS!
To put this in context, the ETS will be less than the Medicare levy, which throughout the 1980s the Coalition said they would repeal if they won government. But of course they didn’t do that did they, yet that now raises something like $12 billion a year. Yet people in this forum seriously think the Coalition will repeal the ETS!
You made the second only a few days ago, to which I replied with the example of Gough Whitlam and his disbanding of National Service back in 1972, with no legislative backing whatsoever.
I’ve dealt with this inanity before. That didn’t immediately require legislative backing because the relevant Minister had the power to end National Service as a ministerial regulation. In 1973 the parliament then passed this Act to end the national service, which as you note has retrospective effect: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_act/nsta1973300/index.html
This simply meant that it would require ANOTHER bill to start the scheme up again, rather than just a new minister over turning the previous minister’s administrative decisions.
The current Government has made sure to avoid any such instruments in the Clean Energy bills so the system can only be ended by a new bill repealing the legislation.
In plain words; Government submits bill to hostile Senate. Senate sits on the bill. After three months, the bill is submitted again. Any attempt by the Senate to delay the bill may be taken by the Prime Minister as failure to pass and he can then ask the Governor General to dissolve parliament providing a normal election is not due within six months. It is easily seen that Smith’s interpretation is just plain stupid. There would never have been a DD election because of a hostile Senate under Smith’s asinine suggestion!
In correct. This would not constitute a D.D. trigger because the bill needs to be formally blocked once. I do agree with you that “failure to pass” is ambiguous on the second attempt and has never been defined by the High Court.
But I disagree with you that shuffling it off to Senate committees the first time around would constitute “failure to pass”, and the reason is obvious. The House can’t reintroduce the same bill while it is being considered by the Senate. It has to either be passed by the Senate or formally blocked by being voted down at the third reading.
What Doctor Smith very conveniently neglects to tell you is that the intent of the legislation is not actually to close down those coal fired power plants.
When we discussed this legislation here ad infinitum in the days following its release, I explained about how the Government proposes in the legislation itself to keep those plants actually open and doing what they always do, supply their huge levels of power.
This was something even Professor Garnaut himself explained in the round of interviews following the release of the legislation.
Remember how I pointed out security of supply.
Now I can understand why Doctor Smith hasn’t mentioned this, because having no understanding whatsoever about electrical power and how it is generated, this is outside of his understanding, so he just ignores it. I can understand that. If you don’t know, then don’t mention it.
What this means Doctor Smith, as explained by Ross Garnaut is that this legislation sees those coal fired power plants that supply huge levels of power fall into difficulty due to the legislation placing restrictions on their emissions, then the Government will provide loans to those power plants to keep them in operation, hence securing the supply.
Now I can understand why Doctor Smith prefers not to mention this, because, in effect, the Government is paying to keep the plant emitting, hence ensuring one thing only.
Not the reduction of those CO2 emissions, but the continuation of them paying the CO2 tax. Doctor Smith would have you believe the legislation will magically lower those emissions, when all it does is ensure they stay doing what they always have done.
We need to remind Doctor Smith of this, because we have already discussed this when the legislation was first released, but as he’s late here, he thinks he’s the only one who has actually read the legislation.
Doctor Smith, I really can’t see why you bother staying here.
You arrive after the fact, condescendingly accuse us in your smarmy manner as being ignorant dolts who are not as superior as you undoubtedly are, and then, when we stick it to you to answer pertinent questions, you say we have somehow lost the debate.
Well debate us with the answers to the questions we ask Doctor Smith.
What Doctor Smith very conveniently neglects to tell you is that the intent of the legislation is not actually to close down those coal fired power plants.
Well the part of the legislation that says the government will pay to shut down 2000 MW of the dirtiest power certainly is designed to close down a brown coal power station or perhaps one large one and one small one. Keep in mind that Hazelwood, Loy Yang and Playford B are three of the LEAST efficient coal power stations in the OECD.
When we discussed this legislation here ad infinitum in the days following its release, I explained about how the Government proposes in the legislation itself to keep those plants actually open and doing what they always do, supply their huge levels of power.
Come on, this is clearly misleading when part of the policy package is to shut down brown coal power source.
What this means Doctor Smith, as explained by Ross Garnaut is that this legislation sees those coal fired power plants that supply huge levels of power fall into difficulty due to the legislation placing restrictions on their emissions, then the Government will provide loans to those power plants to keep them in operation, hence securing the supply.
This is an extraordinary thing for you to write because it demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the policy. Unlike the Coalition’s scheme which will pay polluters to acheive certain emissions intensity benchmarks, and if they don’t make them after a certain period will then fine them, the government’s scheme simply requires polluters to purchase sufficient permits to cover their pollution liability. Setting aside the specific 2000 MW scheme, for all other coal power-stations whether they stay open or not is left up to each generator to decide based on their existing and future liability. That’s the beauty of the market system, it isn’t an idiotic set of, dare I say it, socialist mandates like the Coalition’s scheme. The price for pollution is put into the market and then polluting businesses figure out the best way to deal with that added cost.
If you don’t support a market mechanism, then by default you are ultimately supporting the Coalition’s scheme which is based on the assumption that politicians and bureaucrats in Canberra can pick and choose carbon abatement projects more efficiently than the price signal that is generated by the purchasing decisions of millions of businesses and consumers. And yet some people in this forum call me a socialist!
Not the reduction of those CO2 emissions, but the continuation of them paying the CO2 tax. Doctor Smith would have you believe the legislation will magically lower those emissions, when all it does is ensure they stay doing what they always have done.
Well now your argument has become completely incoherent. On the one hand you are saying that the cost of permits is going to be a burden, but on the other you are saying that it won’t matter and that pollution emissions won’t decrease.
Which one of your positions is the right one?
I guess I atleast should commend you for a level of incoherency that doesn’t match that of Tony Abbott. You know, on the one hand it complains that the price of permits at $23 per tonne is going to wipe entire industrial towns off the map, but on the other hand he goes around everywhere saying that carbon dioxide is weightless, which if true means there won’t be any ‘tax’ to pay.
Doctor Smith, I really can’t see why you bother staying here.
Because I enjoy debating politics and policy issues. Of course you can’t have any problem with that because you are one of those strong defenders of democracy, and free speech and all of that. There’s no way that you could possibly complain about a fellow Australian visiting this forum to share their views on various issues.
You arrive after the fact, condescendingly accuse us in your smarmy manner as being ignorant dolts who are not as superior as you undoubtedly are, and then, when we stick it to you to answer pertinent questions, you say we have somehow lost the debate.
I have not accused anyone of being an ignorant dolt.
I have been called stupid, a ninny, a socialist, a North Korean, Kim Jong Il, and an operative for the ALP, the Greens, and GetUp!
But all I have done is presented my views and on occasions corrected statements that were clearly in error. Some of these include:
1) The claim that a state election held in Queensland will change the make-up of the senate
2) The claim that the state election held in Queensland will result in Labor losing federal government
3) The claim that a double dissolution trigger bill can originate in the Senate
4) The claim that a double dissolution trigger bill can be created even if the Senate doesn’t block the bill once
5) The claim that a double dissolution trigger bill doesn’t require a three month gap between blockings.
6) The claim that the Whitlam government somehow illegally ended National Service
7) The claim that the GST raises more revenue than the ETS will
8) The claim that the ETS can be ended without a bill passing federal parliament
Adam Smith:
If you don’t support a market mechanism, then by default you are ultimately supporting the Coalition’s scheme which is based on the assumption that politicians and bureaucrats in Canberra can pick and choose carbon abatement projects more efficiently than the price signal that is generated by the purchasing decisions of millions of businesses and consumers. And yet some people in this forum call me a socialist!
What you are describing as a free market mechanism is in fact an unwarrented intrusion of government into people’s lives. There is no natural reason for anyone to trade “carbon credits”, other than that the government is going to force them to. (The government’s bought-and-paid-for “science” of “climate change” is a joke and an excuse for a power grab, not a rational reason.)
Perhaps the government could sell permits for breathing (source of much CO2) and let people buy and sell them on the “free market”. Then you could tout that this creates an “efficient price signal” for the right to breath.
To anyone who is not a statist whacko, this is simple tyranny.
Sorry adam, while I agree CO2 is a GHG (the magnitude is the question), SciAm is not a reputable source. It probably was many years ago, but in the past 10 years has become a mouth piece for Gore and Trenberth.
Adam Smith:
September 14th, 2011 at 12:47 am
The Governor General can’t dissolve any house of parliament unless asked to do so by the Prime Minister. That’s how our system works, if you think it works otherwise then you are ultimately asserting that Australia is a dictatorship.
Best get yourself over to Wiki and fix it then, because they disagree with you:
Governor-General the power to dismiss the Government.
the powers are explicitly given to the Governor-General in the Constitution but it is their use that is the subject of convention.
The reserve powers are:
The power to dissolve (or refuse to dissolve) the House of Representatives. (Section 5 of the Constitution)
The power to dissolve Parliament on the occasion of a deadlock. (Section 57)
The power to withhold assent to Bills. (Section 58)
The power to appoint (or dismiss) Ministers. (Section 64)
These powers are generally and routinely exercised on Ministerial advice, but the Governor-General retains the ability to act independently in certain circumstances, as governed by convention.
Interesting, what’s much less known is that he also warned in that same speech about academia being subverted by the government and monied interests and more to the point he also warned of the danger that public policy could be subverted by what he called a scientific/technological elite
It would be interesting to know what discipline the blinkered “Adam Smith” has a doctorate in. Some aren’t worth the paper they are written on even if purchased from the “best” colleges in the States Neither is a doctorate a guarantee that the owner has a grasp on some aspects of reality.
It should be obvious even to the simple minded that there is something irrational about the imposition of a tax, claimed, by the government, to be aimed primarily at reducing CO2 and on the other hand promoting the sales of Australian mined coal, which is the highest export earner we have, to be combusted in places like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, India and Europe. The latter where Aussie coal is used mostly for steel making, with a smaller portion used as steaming coal.
That is why one wonders if A Smith has a doctorate in one of the social sciences or its cousin, economics, which like alarmist climate science relies heavily on mathematical models that also invariably seem to get it wrong. That sort of penny a dozen doctorate would help explain why he promotes the irrational carbon tax imposed on Australians as a perfectly rational response to perceived anthropogenic global warming when seventy five percent of our mined coal is exported. Presumably to produce about three times the CO2 that the portion we retain for our own use does.
Perhaps Adam Smith labours under the delusion that Aussie coal only produces CO2 when combusted in the homeland.
The bottom line is that Adam Smith does not think rationally on this topic.
Adam Smith (@417), replying to the claim that the EXPERIMENT shown at http://galileomovement.com.au/blog/?p=25/ shows that the greenhouse effect has little or no effect:
Smith, that is the biggest pile of weasels I’ve ever seen in one place. To wit:
Both youtube videos simply demonstrate that CO2 has an absorption spectrum in the infrared — like water vapor and most complex (i.e., not diatomic) molecules ). No one denies this, and it has no bearing on whether the atmospheric “greenhouse” mechanism hypothesized to cause heating of the earth is true or false. The videos show real experiments, but the claim that they prove the greenhouse effect is a lie.
AS for the Scientific American “debunking”:
First: They ask Gavin Schmidt, who is a mathematician and computer programmer, not someone with any documented education in physical science who might be able to authoritatively discuss a physical effect.
Second: Gavin doesn’t even try to address the described experiment, but simply takes issue with other statements that are irrelevant to the experimental results.
Not does the Scientific American article not “debunk” the Galileo Movement experiment, they don’t even mention it. WTF indeed.
The only question left is: Is Adam Smith so dense he can’t see this for himself, or dosen’t he care?
Strange forum, Adam Smith (now there is a guy who supported free markets) brings you the facts (GG has restrictions on how he/she can dismiss the elected houses) and people don’t like it.
Getup can get 10’s of thousand out to a pro Carbon Tax, you lot can get a couple of trucks out to a convoy of irrelevance. You really should take the hint, your a small group of angry people; there will be no revolt; I’d be surprised if the Murdock press; with all their opinion published as news; succeeds in stampeding the horses.
Indeed, that is exactly what happened in 1975. GG John Kerr (appointed by Labor) sacked Whitlam because of the existing Senate impasse on the Supply bills. The Senate had kept deferring debate which, of course, constitutes a “…fails to pass”.
The GG acted in the only way he could and left it to the people to resolve which they did in spades. Smith’s previous response to this was to flippantly claim that 1975 is ancient history. What a bogan!
in amongst all the other stuff here I have missed out on getting back to you.
I’ll be running up something on the Hepburn Community Wind Farm.
It may take me a day or so, and I have no way to contact you other than here with this comment.
When it’s done It will be at the site I contribute to.
Best get yourself over to Wiki and fix it then, because they disagree with you:
You’ve done it again Phil! Your lecturing us on how our system of government works. But you don’t understanding that dismissing the government isn’t the same as dissolving parliament.
I see that Smith confirms his delusions of grandeur. He clearly cannot comprehend three small words “…fails to pass”. Like a typical ALP spin doctor, he puts his own irrelevant spin on the words to suit himself.
Again, there could NEVER be a DD election because of a hostile Senate under Smith’s rationalisation if all the Senate had to do was to keep contentious bills from a vote.
Smith must be a very frustrated individual. To think he can’t berate and browbeat others to his viewpoint must make life intolerable for him. He states he likes debate yet all he does is harangue. It doesn’t matter if one is right all the time (and we never are), if you can’t convince others, you have wasted your time and only succeded in alienating everyone.
Can’t help wondering why he never eimigrated to North Korea. Command economy, half-starved servile people who can’t talk back. Ticks all the boxes for Smith.
The GG acted in the only way he could and left it to the people to resolve which they did in spades. Smith’s previous response to this was to flippantly claim that 1975 is ancient history. What a bogan!
He did no such thing. He sacked Whitlam, which meant he sacked the entire ministry, he then asked Fraser to form government.
Fraser didn’t have the confidence of the House of Representatives, so the only thing Fraser could do is ask the Governor General to call an election. In fact, Fraser was able to request a Double Dissolution election using 22 D.D. trigger bills that had been accumulated when Whitlam was PM.
So again, you can’t get around the fact that the G.G. can’t unilaterally dissolve parliament, s/he can only do so when requested to do so by the PM.
Everything else is simply re-writing history and / or lying.
I see that Smith confirms his delusions of grandeur. He clearly cannot comprehend three small words “…fails to pass”. Like a typical ALP spin doctor, he puts his own irrelevant spin on the words to suit himself.
Well actually I AGREED that the second time around sending the bill off to committees COULD be a “Failure to pass” (the High Court has never ruled on the precise meaning of that section).
But the bill would have to be formally blocked the first time by being voted down. The Parliament can’t debate the same bill in both houses at the same time.
Again, there could NEVER be a DD election because of a hostile Senate under Smith’s rationalisation if all the Senate had to do was to keep contentious bills from a vote.
COMPLETELY WRONG! You are seemingly willfully ignoring my point. The bill MUST be voted down ONCE simply to enable the House of Representatives to reintroduce the bill. The House of Representatives can’t just introduce the bill again while the Senate committees are waiting to report!
Can’t help wondering why he never eimigrated to North Korea. Command economy, half-starved servile people who can’t talk back. Ticks all the boxes for Smith.
Thank you very much for reverting to abuse, it means you obviously can’t handle the quality of my arguments.
Adam Smith lives in a strange little world of his own making, where, unable to answer some point put to him, he simply claims the commenter wrote something completely different, then attacks the strawman he himself has created.
There is a typical example at post # 423:
But all I have done is presented my views and on occasions corrected statements that were clearly in error. Some of these include:
6) The claim that the Whitlam government somehow illegally ended National Service.
Adam Smith simply bysteps the fact that in my post which he is referring to, I never made any claim that what Whitlam did was illegal. I simply pointed out that Whitlam disbanded active National Service without (needing to pass) any new legislation.
It was in response to a claim by Smith himself that Abbott could not undo the ETS without passing new legislation, which of course, is poppycock – ANY government can choose simply not enforce existing legislation simply by instructing the relevant Federal departments.
If Adam Smith cannot twist the commentator’s words to create a strawman more to his liking, he simply ignores the post. Case in point, the GG and the “Reserve Powers”.
Time and time again Adam Smith has made the claim the the GG “can’t” do this, that or the other, without the Prime Minister’s say-so, despite this being contrary to what is written as law in the constitution (and as pasted above by another poster above).
Time and again Adam Smith has claimed “convention” as being above the written constitution.
And yet, last week, when Abbott threatened to disallow “pairing” – another “convention” – there was nothing the PM, the Parliament, or even the GG, could do about it, because, after all, it was “just a convention” with no legal backing.
When I challenged Adam Smith to explain how one of his “conventions” could be so easily ignored, NOT by the PM, but just by the Leader of the Opposition, he simply ignored the post.
It wouldn’t be so annoying, except that it is Adam Smith himself who keeps claiming we won’t “debate the issues” with him.
I know what taxes are. I see them every day in too many manifestations. They are everywhere, but there is no trace of a tax on carbon in the 18 pieces of legislation which will be debated in Parliament from today.
Now, I have on rare occasions come across speeding fines – penalties designed to encourage me to drive at acceptable speeds. The “clean energy” legislation has what closely resembles a speeding fine, except in this case it is intended to encourage acceptable levels of carbon emissions.
It is not a tax on carbon, just as a speeding fine is not a tax on cars.
You wouldn’t know it from what the Opposition has been saying for the past 12 months, and even the Government has surrendered to the word “tax” to describe its carbon pollution pricing scheme.
But that doesn’t make it correct, and it doesn’t mean voters are being appropriately informed about what Opposition Leader Tony Abbott calls the “toxic tax”.
Adam Smith simply bysteps the fact that in my post which he is referring to, I never made any claim that what Whitlam did was illegal. I simply pointed out that Whitlam disbanded active National Service without (needing to pass) any new legislation.
Oh great, so in that case you have explained absolutely nothing of interest.
And you certainly haven’t explained anything that relevant to the Clean Energy bills currently before the Parliament.
It was in response to a claim by Smith himself that Abbott could not undo the ETS without passing new legislation, which of course, is poppycock – ANY government can choose simply not enforce existing legislation simply by instructing the relevant Federal departments.
Wrong! If you actually believe these coalition lies you’ll end up very disappointed.
The Government has deliberately had the Clean Energy bills drafted so the scheme can not be shut down by administrative decision, it will require the passage of a new bill through parliament.
Time and time again Adam Smith has made the claim the the GG “can’t” do this, that or the other, without the Prime Minister’s say-so, despite this being contrary to what is written as law in the constitution (and as pasted above by another poster above).
Completely wrong. You can’t give me ONE example of the G.G. dissolving parliament without being first asked to do so by the Prime Minister.
And the reason for that is obvious. If the G.G. could unilaterally dissolve parliament, Australia would be a dictatorship.
And yet, last week, when Abbott threatened to disallow “pairing” – another “convention” – there was nothing the PM, the Parliament, or even the GG, could do about it, because, after all, it was “just a convention” with no legal backing.
This is completely irrelevant and has nothing to do with how and when parliament is dissolved.
When I challenged Adam Smith to explain how one of his “conventions” could be so easily ignored, NOT by the PM, but just by the Leader of the Opposition, he simply ignored the post.
I didn’t ignore the post at all. I explained quite strongly that Abbott’s refusal of a paired vote so that Malcolm Turnbull could attend the funeral of a close family friend demonstrated that Tony Abbott is heartless scum.
I didn’t ignore the post at all. I explained quite strongly that Abbott’s refusal of a paired vote so that Malcolm Turnbull could attend the funeral of a close family friend demonstrated that Tony Abbott is heartless scum.
As I said – Ignore the original point, create your own strawman, and then knock it down and claim a victory.
Just what, pray tell, does Abbott’s ethics have to do with the failure of one of your precious “conventions” when one party to them (not even the PM) chooses not to play along?
THAT was the question, NOT whether Abottt is “heartless cum”**.
**PS – Abbott is a POLITICIAN – you think they come with hearts – or brains?
Just what, pray tell, does Abbott’s ethics have to do with the failure of one of your precious “conventions” when one party to them (not even the PM) chooses not to play along?
You’re dealing in irrelevances mate. The Clean Energy bills will pass whether or not Abbott allows paired votes. You’ll just have to get on with your life when that happens.
And of course you still haven’t cited ONE election that has been held after the G.G. unilaterally dissolved parliament.
Abbott is pretty funny though. When two Liberal MPs threatened to cross the floor and vote against their party late last year he forced them to pair their votes!
So it seems his policy on who is deserving of a pair (person who is about to vote against Coalition policy, YES, person who has just had open heart surgery or wants to attend the funeral of a friend, NO) is at the very best hypocritical and inconsistent.
Slink, slither, slide… anything but admit you get things wrong, Smith.
Laughable. You clearly have no notion of how insufferably arrogant and boorish you seem to others. You don’t win discussions simply by declaing victory as you so tediously do.
Adam Smith,
You seem to missing a vitally important point about the ‘market’.
In a market that works effectively and profitably for all involved, there simply has to be an ‘end user’ who sees a commercial value in purchasing the product.
If that ingredient is missing….we simply don’t have a market.
Every thing else is just intellectual mumbo jumbo.
Your arguments about ‘market mechanism’ are just simply not about a true market, they are about something else entirely.
No good market needs to be based entirely on tax payer funding. That is just a recipe for economic disaster.
Yes, Govts can and do interfere in the market place all the time.
Sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it is not.
This one that you are espousing is not the same as that either.
It isn’t rocket science….it is actually income redistribution with no productive end game.
The whole scheme will suffer from the dodo bird syndrome….you know….ever decreasing circles until…:)
Adam Smith,
You seem to missing a vitally important point about the ‘market’.
In a market that works effectively and profitably for all involved, there simply has to be an ‘end user’ who sees a commercial value in purchasing the product.
Well you implicitly identify the problem with the economy remaining carbon intensive, there is a negative externality which isn’t priced into the transaction.
At the moment a company that runs a coal power station buys coal and burns it to make electricity. It then sells the electricity to distributors and they ultimately sell it to retailers who sell it to homes and businesses.
A simplistic understanding of this transaction is that the electricity generator pays for the coal because it is more valuable than the cost, the distributors pay for the electricity from the generator because it is more valuable, and so on to the consumer.
But there’s a problem here. Currently there is not price put on the pollution put into the air from the generation of that electricity. So in some ways consumers are better off because they pay for electricity, but in another longer term way they are worse off because more carbon has been put into the atmosphere.
So this is ultimately an example of market failure because the external cost of pollution isn’t included in the cost of the transaction. That’s why we need a carbon price, because it puts the cost of pollution back into the transaction cost. It then leaves things to the market. Electricity can still be made from pollution intensive methods, but over time it will be more cost effect to, for example, stop using brown coal, shift to more efficient black coal, from black coal to gas, and (in my opinion hopefully) from gas to nuclear.
So you say the carbon price isn’t a market solution. But what you haven’t considered is that the existing ‘market’ doesn’t actually work efficiently or effectively because there is no price associated with putting carbon pollution in the air. This is an example of market failure which the government is going to correct with a market instrument.
The alternative is the coalition scheme. Take billions and billions and billions of dollars of your income taxes, and hand the cash to polluters and hope that will encourage them to increase the efficiency of their plant. But the problem is, how will the politicians know which companies to hand money over to? If you think politicians are better at markets at allocating resources, by all means support the Coalition policy. But if politicians are so good at figuring out where to hand over money, why stop at pollution abatement? Why not get politicians to tell us directly which brands of cereal to buy, or which toothpaste is best, rather than leaving it up to our purchasing decisions?
No good market needs to be based entirely on tax payer funding. That is just a recipe for economic disaster.
The market won’t be based on tax payer funding. The market will price the cost of carbon abatement permits. It is the complete opposite to tax payer funding, that’s the coalition’s tax and spend socialist scheme.
Yes, Govts can and do interfere in the market place all the time.
Sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it is not.
Seriously, congratulations for at least conceding that sometimes government intervention in markets is justified. Sadly I couldn’t get a single person in this forum to make such a concession yesterday.
And by the way. You are COMPLETELY WRONG in that the Senate has to vote a bill down first. READ THE BLOODY SECTION you idiot. It states clearly “…fails to pass! EVEN THE FIRST TIME.
If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which House will not agree, and if after an interval of three months…
You are absolutely full of crap and lies Smith as well as being a waste of education. The doctor who can’t read! Oh, I get it. You are going to rewrite the constitution now are you. Talk about 1984 and the Ministry of Truth!
Your statement about the High Court ruling on the matter is also WRONG and irrelevant. Nowhere in S.57 is the High Court mentioned as a remedy. It is the people’s parliament, not a tool of the High Court however much you may choose to dissemble about it.
Your statement about the High Court ruling on the matter is also WRONG and irrelevant. Nowhere in S.57 is the High Court mentioned as a remedy. It is the people’s parliament, not a tool of the High Court however much you may choose to dissemble about it.
HOLY CRAP! What? The High Court, that is the Supreme Federal Court and the constitutional court of Australia doesn’t have a role in interpreting the meaning of the words in the constitution!?
Okay then Doctor Smith,
give us a timeline on when all this move to new power technologies will come into place, and we want serious considerations here.
Keep in mind, any new power plant will take at least ten years from the ‘thought bubble’ stage to actually delivering power, and please we already concede that we agree Nuclear power is an option, but that is at the very least 2o years way, so give us realistic plans on replacing coal fired power, timelines, costs, where the money comes from, and what they will be.
In the interim, the end users, the power consumers will be paying this new impost, because the power plant operators are just the middlemen, because as each permit is purchased, that cost is passed directly down to all consumers.
38% of consumption is in the residential sector, 37% in Commerce and 24% in Industrial.
The government is compensating only the 38% sector, the residential consumers.
Please, Doctor timelines, and realistic proposals.
I know you have no concept, but at least TRY and find out.
Dr Adam is probably a committee given the rapidity and glossy vapidity of his provocative replies; he [sic] is also a liar; he extols the virtues of the adjustments to the tax scales as bribes for the introduction of the CO2 tax; this is wrong or at least misleading; it is true that the tax free threashold is lifted from but so to are the marginal rates of tax at the ist and 2nd scales!
The basic, ineluctable flaw in Smith’s position is that CO2 is not a pollutant and that the tax is designed to make the economy LESS efficient; fossil fuels are cheap and abundant; not only do they give Australia a competitive edge, but they could also greatly assist other nations achieve our SOL. In this respect there is NO comparison with the GST, which was and still is an efficient tax which does not impact on economic efficiency.
Okay then Doctor Smith,
give us a timeline on when all this move to new power technologies will come into place, and we want serious considerations here.
See, unlike you I don’t believe in a command and control economy of 1,2,3,5,10 year plans. That’s too socialist for my liking.
What we need is a price on carbon pollution to drive the use and development of cleaner alternatives to what is currently in use.
For everything you have written you haven’t actually explained why that is a bad idea and why the only alternative, tax and spend socialist nonsense with politicians picking winners, is a more desirable alternative.
this is wrong or at least misleading; it is true that the tax free threashold is lifted from but so to are the marginal rates of tax at the ist and 2nd scales!
Well this is wrong and misleading as no one will pay a higher proportion of tax relative to their income under the new tax scales!
The Government is getting rid of the high marginal tax rates people on low incomes pay as the low income tax offset is withdrawn. It is far simpler to just increase the tax free threshold instead of making people rely so heavily on the low income tax offset, which gets withdrawn quickly thus creating perverse effects such as high marginal rates.
See, an objective observer would say that – irrespective of your view on the ETS itself – the associated income tax reform is a GOOD simplification of the tax system that will make it fairer and encourage people on low incomes to work a bit more if they can. Frankly I have no idea how the federal government saying that someone earning almost $21,000 doesn’t need to pay income tax, or even fill in a tax return, is a bad thing.
But no, apparently in this forum everyone must be pure in condemning absolutely everything the current government does while failing to criticise any of the idiotic policies the Opposition has put forward.
No, not nonsense. Doesn’t matter how much you dissemble, Smith. This is parliament and the GG and issue stays there. The GG MAY dissolve the parliament and call elections if the parliament becomes unworkable.That is what settles the matter, not a bunch of judges and that is what happened in 1975 even if that is too far back for you to consider relevant.
Still can’t admit you were wrong about a bill not needing to be rejected. Doesn’t matter. Everyone sees you for what you are even if you can’t.
No, no Dr Adam, no weasling out of this; you said people would be better off under the concurrent adjustments to the tax scales with the introduction of the CO2 tax; as I said the tax free threshold goes from $6001 to $18201 but the first scale marginal rate [above $18201] goes from 15% to 19% and the second scale [above $37001] goes from 30% to 32.5%. So, given that what evidence do you have that people will not pay a “higher proportion of tax relative to their income under the new tax scales”?
No, no Dr Adam, no weasling out of this; you said people would be better off under the concurrent adjustments to the tax scales with the introduction of the CO2 tax; as I said the tax free threshold goes from $6001 to $18201 but the first scale marginal rate [above $18201] goes from 15% to 19% and the second scale [above $37001] goes from 30% to 32.5%. So, given that what evidence do you have that people will not pay a “higher proportion of tax relative to their income under the new tax scales”?
Do the sums! As a proportion of a person’s income, the amount of tax everyone pays will go down.
There was too much reliance on the low income tax offset which meant people on low incomes paying extremely high marginal rates. That is being dramatically reduced and ‘converted’ to just increasing the tax free threshold.
I am sorry if you can’t understand that this is genuine tax reform.
I am sorry if you can’t understand that this is genuine tax reform.
This is not tax reform this is just tax adjustment, so what if i pay less tax up 18K, what i save there i lose in the higher brackets……….how is this reform?
I would not mind paying a tax if it went to produce something else, for example lets say all the tax revenue went to building a nuke plant (i would much prefer a thorium plant but no matter)then it would be OK. This is taxation with representation, but this is not the case the revenue from this tax/ets wil go OS never to be seen again which means ot is taxation without representation and very, very undemocratic.
Loy Yang A have a contract with Alcoa till 2036. That’s while Loy Yang A and B are providing Victoria with one third of its power. Loy Yang B is newer and more efficient than most other coal plants in Oz. (You get that when you modernise stuff.) Good chance that few will be pushing to shut all that down in a hurry.
Aging Hazelwood (25% of Vic’s power) seems to be the prime target for closure by activists for “clean” energy. I’m wondering if TonyfromOz has any idea what immediate effect, if any, closure of Hazelwood would have on a still active Loy Yang. I know you’ve already commented on this, but my curiosity is about Day One. It’s a question about how quickly and directly the demand would be transferred to Loy Yang and Yallourn. That’s all apart from what financial pressure falls on these suppliers. (For the sake of argument, I’m assuming compensation will be adequate – though that may be as wise as a young girl believing her teenage boyfriend when he promises to “get off at Redfern”.)
I may earn myself a few thumbs-down for saying this, but I’m largely in agreement with Dr. Adam Smith on Constitution as well as the conventions which help it along. I haven’t had time to read all, and I do wonder how he finds the time to write all, but a skim would have me more on his side. I’m not disparaging all counter-arguments, but I believe one should hesitate to test an important boundary just because it’s vulnerable. I’m also grateful to Dr. Adam Smith for stating so clearly his dislike of Tony Abbott. That helps me in so many ways.
Since Dr. Adam Smith has been so generous with his time and efforts on this forum, I was wondering if he could chime in with his view on the matters I just posed to Tony. Dr. Adam Smith is an enthusiast for nuclear energy, as so many of us are. He has already explained the broad mechanism by which he believes a shift to nuclear energy will occur. No need to re-state. I wonder if he could describe the practical measures which will be in place on that Day One of Hazelwood’s closure. Or will no practical measures need to be in place on that day? Since I don’t want to make too many claims on his time, I’ll make it clear that I’m not asking any other question except this. If Dr. Adam Smith does not desire the closure of Hazelwood, then, of course, this question need not concern him.
So, guys, Hazelwood closes. Day One. What happens?
When you say: “Stick to the issues rather than just name calling, it strongly suggests you have no confidence in your position.” — you are not addressing the science, a topic that you are totally ignorant on, so I thought I’d just fool around a bit.
Hey man — lighten up!!
This is serious.
Are you confused?
If not keep reading there’s more!
Right now I’m sitting in a chair and my position is fine so I have great confidence in it.
So there.
You might believe that the above is pointless rubbish, but it does have a point
In keeping with the open thread policy, i see the holy crusades are moving on, next stop Syria. As we all know Syria has been fighting an uprising of late so obviously NATO now feel obliged to blew the shit out of the place.
What i find interesting is that the US and Israel have been trying to goad Iran into a fight for quite some time but so far have been unsuccessful, however Syria and Iran have a deal in which if either are attacked the other will support (Like China and Nth Korea) So if a US led NATO attack Syria then they also attack Iran, funny how these things all work out in the end aint it.
To all the readers here, I humbly apologise for keeping Doctor Smith doing his ‘political’ thing here. He understands politics really well, but has no understanding whatsoever of electrical power generation.
So, I’m again going to mention something that I have mentioned (many) times previously, and as much as you are all already aware of it, I’ll try this time to word it differently.
Let’s just do the exercise for Bayswater, and this is not singling one plant out in isolation. It is indicative, because of the top 500 so called ‘polluters’, the bulk of the money will be coming from the top 20 or so, and of that top 20, electrical power producers make up 14 of that 20, with the Top 3 being power producers.
So Bayswater.
It burns around 8 million tons of coal each year, and at the average multiplier of 2.86 tons of CO2 for every one ton of coal burned, this means an emission of 23 million tons of CO2 and at the start price of $23 per ton of CO2, the impost for Bayswater is around $530 million.
All the 17,500GWH of power it produces each year go to the grid where it is consumed 38% Residential, 37% Commerce and 24% Industrial, (and crakar24, that last 1% is to the Transport Sector)
So now Bayswater has to purchase Carbon credits for the CO2 it emits.
That total cost ($530 Million) is passed down to consumers, all of them.
The Residential sector component of that is $200 Million.
All of this, is refunded to (most of) the people, plus a little extra as a bribe.
The Government keeps the rest from the Commerce and Industrial sectors, to fund the other bribes policies, in effect boosting its bottom line of incomings.
Bayswater is just the middleman here, as they pass the lot down to all consumers, who are the ones who pay, Bayswater increases its wholesale cost, and the providers then increase their retail cost, hence it is the people who pay ALL of this money.
Start the ETS.
Permits are purchased from the Govt, keeping in mind they have to return the amount equal to what they emit.
These can be traded at specified auctions throughout the year, but the plant has to return the amount equal to their emissions.
The plant, already burning the absolute minimum coal to produce their power, keeping in mind they need to purchase the steaming coal, has to burn what it already does to produce the power that is required for consumption.
Any less emissions, and keep in mind here it’s not a ton here or a ton there, it’s tens to hundreds of thousands of tons, hence considerably less power is now available for consumption.
So they burn what they always have.
If Bayswater emits any more over their allocation, they then have to purchase the make up credits at the last auction buying price, and keep in mind that credit price everywhere else in the World has ‘tanked’ considerably, so the Govt covers its fundament here by setting a base price, so if the price falls, the plant can only sell at the tanked auction price, but has to buy any over allocation from the Govt at the base price.
Then on top of that, for exceeding their limit, the Govt imposes a fine equal to 1.5 times the cost of the excess permits needed as a make up, base price also applying here. That’s on top again.
Year One ends, The plant’s cap is lowered. They buy the new number of permits etc.
Same make ups, same fines.
Year two etc cap lowered again. Etc etc.
If they abide by the legislation, then they MUST by extrapolation produce less power, and the NSW grid is already at the maximum consumption, because Labor for so many years in that state did not introduce any new power to cover that, and the NSW grid reaches criticality at the end of 2012.
So less power, and we all go without, because as I have also mentioned many times, it’s 7 to 10 years to build new plants, and Coal fired is out of the question, and gas fired still emits CO2.
So Doctor Smith, all of this is in your legislation.
It’s just a shell game for the Govt to raise money to bolster its bottom line, and throwing a piddlingly small amount at renewables, enough for a tiny boutique power plant and thinking this is their ‘Clean Energy Future’.
Tell us now how YOUR market mechanism works.
Tell us also what power your legislation proposes to replace what YOUR mechanism does.
Again people, I apologise for beating my head against a wall labouring the point, but you won’t get answers from Doctor Smith, and there mmay be people who might be swayed by his political speak, remembering the old adage ….. “Trust me, I’m a Doctor.”
Well, Doctor Smith, how about some answers mate, sorry, almost forgot the required Post Nominal … Doctor.
The grids total out at around 90% give or take, eg, at maximum consumption it is around 90% of absolute total power generation.
Remove Hazelwood, and, still having the same consumption, you now only have 75% of that consumption being generated.
On a rotational basis, whole sectors of the grid will have to be shut down for hours on end.
Now, keep in mind that Industry and Commerce need to be kept running, because that;s where people work.
So, most of the areas where there is predominantly residential only will be blacked out, centering mainly around daylight hours (working hours)
If that doesn’t cover it, then large areas, probably in large Country areas will be blacked out, because blacking out Melbourne is out of the question.
Now perhaps you see why closing Hazelwood is tantamount to absolute political suicide, and will not happen, in the medium to long term, let alone the short term.
Hazelwood CANNOT be closed down by a piece of paper, sorry, market mechanism, sorry, legislation, no matter what it says, UNTIL, (repeat that UNTIL) replacement power is on line and delivering power.
I’ll bet Doctor Smith is not aware of this, and if he lives in Victoria, I can see his eyes widening right about now.
You’re dealing in irrelevances mate. The Clean Energy bills will pass whether or not Abbott allows paired votes. You’ll just have to get on with your life when that happens.
More aversion of the point under discussion – and you talk of irrelevancies!!
The question was, what happened to your “cast in stone” “conventions” when Abbott refused to play along?
Answer – they went out the window, because unlike the written law (constitution) they have NO legal backing other than what the involved parties choose to give them.
Ditto for what the GG can and cannot do – much as you may hate it.
The fact, for instance, that no GG has ever directly dismissed a Parliament is neither here nor there. The fact remains that under the reserve powers of the constitution the GG CAN under certain specific circumstances.
Section 57 – . . . .the Governor-General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously.
End of story. No mention of permission from ANYBODY – not the PM, not even the monarch.
It’s entirely irrelevant as to whether this has yet happened, or will happen in the future or even (note to msosomo) if it would actually be desirable or not.
in addition to Comment 478, this is something that has to be intricately done, and then watched on a minute to minute basis, because if demand rises any further than what they have ‘on tap’, then the cascading effect I mentioned in Comment 43 falls into play.
Exceed the demand, and plants shut down, and that happens automatically.
Any one plant shuts down, and you’re looking at all of them then cascading into shutdown, and then you’ll have a State wide blackout, and with power being brought across borders, you’re then looking at it affecting the grids in NSW and South Australia as well.
Once large scale plants shut down, it may take days of careful planning to get them back up and running delivering power.
As it is, areas of both those States as well will be going through blackouts.
It happened in NSW in the early and mid 70’s, and here I’m talking 4 hours at a time, and in some areas up to 8 hours at a time.
Victorian grid controllers will be watching the demand and isolating vast areas at a time.
See how power that just ‘flows out of the plug’ whenever you ‘flick the switch’ and is always there leads to complacency. People automatically think it will always be there.
Coal fired power means exactly that.
It always will be there.
Take that away, and what I have mentioned here becomes the ‘situation normal’.
Thank you for those fast and interesting responses, TonyfromOz. It would be very interesting to hear from someone who is keen for the closure of Hazelwood to explain what, specifically, should be in place on Day One after closure. We are all aware by now of the theory that increased emissions-abatement costs will lead to the eventual establishment of alternative facilities. However, it has proven difficult – devilishly difficult! – to get responses as to the timing and feasibility of new installations. Will the alternatives be available on the very day that Hazelwood becomes inoperative? Will these alternatives provide similar amounts of power with similar reliability?
Or is this a mere detail, a blip in that Great Arc of social and environmental renewal?
There will be a change over period of time.
Any new plant will be brought onto the grid delivering its power on the same basis that Hazelwood delivers, 24/7/365.
After that is achieved, then, and only then, can Hazelwood be closed.
Most probably, it will be a gas fired solution, probably CCGT. (Combined Cycle Gas Turbine)
Natural Gas runs a turbine which drives a generator. The waste heat from the turbine exhaust is used to boil water to steam to drive a secondary turbine which then drives a smaller turbine.
These plants are way more complex than Coal fired power, hence more expensive.
The advantage is that from the turning of the first sod on the site, they are the fastest to actually deliver their power, in the range of 18/24 months.
However, prior to that turning of the first sod, we need the thought bubble, the comprehensive planning, the discussion, the legislation, the studies, the approvals, the financing, and on and on.
That process prior to the first sod being turned is in the vicinity of 4 to 6 years if all the ducks line up first time round.
Then of course, the construction of the gas pipeline and all that planning, approvals financing etc.
So, all this in place prior to Hazelwood closing.
See now the problem.
It’s not a matter of a photo op holding up the legislation after the Senate has approved it with a backdrop of a poster saying ‘Mission Accomplished’.
That is the first step.
After that comes the thought bubble for the replacement plant, the legal battles to wangle out of a State Government approved contract to supply, and working out a price to pay that out.
That legislation passing the Senate will be years and years and years earlier than Hazelwood closing, no matter what ‘market mechanism’ is in place.
In the interim, the Government bleeds the people dry in the name of making that ‘derdy polluder’ pay, a classic case of misdirection.
Then, as Doctor Smith postulates, that whole process starts again with his Nuclear option.
Because keep in mind, this new CCGT Plant still emits CO2, so his paper mechanism means this plant will also be forced to close.
So now we need that whole process to start all over again, again keeping in mind that before the CCGT plant opens they also will have a contract to supply for up to 40 years to recover the costs etc, so that legal process continues with this plant.
Prior to all of that, we need the nuclear discussion to actually explain it to the public so it is acceptable, then the legislation, then the planning etc for a processing plant, then a reprocessing plant dry disposal option, then plans for a plant financing, approvals legislation etc, and on and on and on.
No worries though.
Doctor Smith’s piece of paper is in fact a magic wand.
No operator, or Government for that fact will even consider a thought bubble for a CCGT if Doctor Smith’s magic wand has that Nuke at the end of it, no matter what time frame.
TonyfromOz; many thanks for your perseverance. The gap between those people who can understand and deal with practical realities and those folk with an ideological bent, based somewhat on dogma, is vast. Unfortunately, it will be those practical people who will have to “pick up the pieces”.
Dr Adam Smith, when you can show that you actually understand the inverse logarithmic relationship between increasing temperature and atmospheric CO2 from all sources (natural and anthropogenic) and that without a positive water vapour feedback, for which there is still no empirical evidence (ie the science is definitely not settled) then you will understand that there is no danger of runaway or catastrophic global warming. In other words your premise for a carbon tax/ets, or whatever you wish to call it, is invalid and your comments regarding such are dogmatic.
If, on the other hand for instance, you were to argue about reducing black carbon or soot, which does have a measurable anthropogenic impact, then you might have a valid argument.
So now back to post 462 which forced poor old tony to bang his head repeatedly against a wall, according to Dr “the pain the pain” Smith (apologies to Lost in space fans)
What we need is a price on carbon pollution to drive the use and development of cleaner alternatives to what is currently in use.
In light of Tiny’s recent posts can you please explain/defend the above statement in more detail?
For everything you have written you haven’t actually explained why that is a bad idea and why the only alternative, tax and spend socialist nonsense with politicians picking winners, is a more desirable alternative.
Do you think Tony has now explained why it is a bad idea? If not please explain why you think this.
Oh by the way i read somewhere (no link sorry) that they are considering turning off your fridge for a few hours a day to meet peak demands (no more coal/windy mills and glass are crap etc)wow what a good idea that is i never imagined we would finaly be ranked among some of the greatest dictatorships in the world thatnks to the current gov.
Great dictatorships that turn off power to its people are Saudi Arabia, Nth Korea, China, Russia (well communist but still), Iraq (both pre and post invasion),Idi Amin? .We are now truly in great company.
crakar24,
that process is termed euphemistically as ‘Smart Meters, another case of naming something in an acceptable manner instead of what it really means, sort of like calling a CO2 tax a ‘Clean Energy’ Bill.
When this new piece of paper starts closing down power plants with nothing to replace them, then demand will surely outstrip supply, so instead of rolling blackouts for whole areas, those smart meters will enable grid operators to isolate individual users, eg heating in Winter and cooling in Summer.
Throw in Media control, internet filtering, loss of freedom of speech, CCTV on every corner, speed cameras (to curb road toll of course), plain packaging of smokes/coco pops and paddle pop lions etc and we should re name Australia to Auchwitzlia.
Thanks in advance Tony. Sorry to load it onto you but I have neither the technical knowledge nor the IT skills to do it myself. I enjoy all your articles.
Not to detract from any of Oz Tony’s excellent posts above, but there’s a few additional factors that need to be considered.
First, one does simply walk into some heavy-engineering equivalent of a Bunnings store and throw a few 500MW+ generators, or even more importantly, the gas or steam turbines that drive them, into a shopping trolley. The lead times on delivery are already measured in years, and manufacturing capacity is not something that can be significantly increased at short notice.
Now consider what is going to happen as the world gets cooler – which it is.
As people start to freeze to death in places like the UK, governments are going to have to start building REAL power stations or face civil riots. As the panic spreads in the NH, lead times on generators and turbines will only get longer. How far down the delivery list do people imagine we will be when reality finally bites here?
Second, as Tony points out, the quickest solution is gas turbines. But on the East Coast do we have the gas to replace Hazelwood and Loy Yang?
If you think that is a stupid question against a background of daily news items about gas discoveries every day of the week, let me tell you a little story.
Back in the the early 2000’s Western Power in WA decided to convert Kwinana power station from coal to gas. A bucketful of millions of dollars was spent on the conversion.
Only when it was finished, and they had actually started to dismantle the coal delivery systems, did they go into the market place to buy the gas.
“Sorry” said the suppliers, “all our gas is contractually obligated. We haven’t got any spare to sell you”.
And this was in WA at a time that state was leading the world in bringing new gas delivery projects online. And in the grander scheme of things, Kwinana is quite a small power station.
There was an attempt last year to introduce legislation requiring gas field developers to set aside a certain amount of their product for Australian consumption. This was voted down by the Bligh government.
So, the question remains – is there gas even available to power replacements for Hazelwwod and Loy Yang? Has anybody even asked?
Finally, all Tony’s excellent comments are predicated on a return to sanity “somewhere down the track”. Unfortunately, Bob Brown’s brownshirts now control the Senate and will likely do so until mid-2017. Sanity is NOT their strongpoint.
These people WANT rationed electricity. They WANT old people (useless eaters) to freeze in their homes. They WANT manufacturing to come to a standstill, with all the attendant unemployment and misery that brings.
These people earnestly believe they are working to build a “better world” (by their definition), and to accomplish that they are happy to fully subscribe to the Stalinist philosophy:
“You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs”.
I find the viewpoints of those who live outside of the “West” interesting
“It would appear that the United Nations is now but another mask for the world elite, who own it, and who are bent on using it as an instrument to gain control of all independent nations in their quest to establish a world fascist government. The government of the United States in particular is already controlled; their Congress, Senate and President continually bought and directed by the Council on Foreign Relation (CFR). The United Kingdom and France are similarly run by elitists. It is an affront to any critical thinking person to call these countries democracies.
To call these countries democracies is an abject farce in view of the fact that the politicians do not honour their commitments to the people who they are supposed to represent but instead act on instructions from the corporations who contribute to their elections or sponsor their political parties! What these countries have become are corporate fascist dictatorships. Their policies no longer reflect the wishes of the people but the interests of elitist corporations who own them.”
On that note are they actually allowed to close these plants,without the State Government in question’s approval? I believe there’s a law that says that the Federal Government isn’t allowed to tax state-owned assests. Surely that would apply for shutting state-owned assests down?
I can’t comment specifically without googling, but I’m pretty sure that the stations in question – Hazelwood and Loy Yang – have long been “privatised”.
Which means the federal government can do pretty-much what they like, as long as they are prepared to fork out enough taxpayer’s money in compensation.
I personally believe – PROVIDED the Gillard-Green unholy alliance lasts long enough – that both stations will be closed AND dismantled within two years.
Pity in that case. I can’t imagine the Victorian government allowing the Federals to meddle with a state owned power station,if they were state owned as they were oposed to the tax as well as the NSW,and WA state governments.
)n the same lines, this is an excerpt from Chistopher Booker’s excellent article on the wind turbine madness in the UK that I’ve linked to previously at Climate Realists.
“My main aim had to be to bring home to people just how grotesquely inefficient and costly wind turbines are as a way to make electricity – without even fulfilling their declared purpose of reducing CO2 emissions. Alas, despite all the practical evidence to show why wind power is one of the greatest follies of our age, those who rule our lives, from our own politicians and officials here in Britain to those above them in Brussels, seem quite impervious to the facts.
The Government’s proposed changes to our planning rules (already being implemented, even though the “consultation” has scarcely begun) are drawing fire from all directions. On page 43 of the Government’s document, is a proposal that local planning authorities must “apply a presumption in favour” of “renewable and low-carbon energy sources”.
What this means in plain English is that we can forget any last vestiges of local democracy. Our planning system is to be rigged even more shamelessly than before, to allow pretty well every application to cover our countryside with wind turbines – along with thousands of monster pylons, themselves up to 400 feet high, marching across Scotland, Wales, Suffolk, Somerset and elsewhere to connect them to the grid.
All this is deemed necessary to meet our EU-agreed target to generate nearly a third of our electricity from “renewables” – six times more than we do now – by 2020. This would require building at least 10,000 more turbines, in addition to the 3,500 we already have – which last year supplied only 2.7 per cent of our electricity.
Obviously this is impossible, but our Government will nevertheless do all it can to meet its unreachable target and force through the building of thousands of turbines, capable of producing a derisory amount of electricity at a cost estimated, on its own figures, at £140 billion (equating to £5,600 for every household in the land).
Another of last week’s news items, a prediction by energy consultants Ulyx that a further avalanche of “green” measures will alone raise Britain’s already soaring energy bills in the same nine years by a further 58 per cent.
A significant part of this crippling increase, helping to drive more than half Britain’s households into “fuel poverty”, will be the costs involved in covering thousands of square miles of our countryside and seas with wind turbines. The sole beneficiaries will be the energy companies, which are allowed to charge us double or treble the normal cost of our electricity, through the subsidies hidden in our energy bills; and landowners such as Sir Reginald Sheffield, the Prime Minister’s father-in-law, who on his own admission stands to earn nearly £1,000 a day at the expense of the rest of us, for allowing a wind farm to be built on his Lincolnshire estate.
Even more damaging, however, will be the way this massive investment diverts resources away from the replacement of the coal-fired and nuclear power stations which are due for closure in coming years, threatening to leave a shortfall in our national electricity supply of nearly 40 per cent. If we are to keep our lights on and our economy running, we need – as the CBI warned in a damning report on Friday – urgently to spend some £200 billion on power supply,
But our politicians have been so carried away into their greenie never-never land that they seem to have lost any sight of this disaster bearing down on us. Instead of putting up turbines on the fields of Northants, E.On should be building the grown-up power stations we desperately need. But government energy policy has so skewed the financial incentives of the system that the real money is to made from building useless wind farms.
Sooner or later, this weird policy will be recognised as such a catastrophic blunder that it, and the colossal subsidies that made it possible, will be abandoned. That will leave vast areas of our once green and pleasant land littered with useless piles of steel and concrete, which it will be no one’s responsibility to cart away.
If the Government really wishes to make a useful change to our planning laws, it should insist that every planning permission to build wind turbines should include a requirement that, after their 25-year life, they must be removed at their owners’ expense. Alas, by that time the companies will all have gone bankrupt, and we shall be left with a hideous legacy as a monument to one of the greatest lunacies of our time. ”
Google Abandoned Wind Farms for some examples of some of these “monuments” already abandoned round the world!
The Gas and Oil Potential and Output from the Northwest shelf of WA has long been Neglected by the Federal Government.
Federal Government(Not the WA Government) Receives all Royalties from offshore Mining Company`s.
Federal Governments lack of Foresight into offshore Resource Security and Management has a lot to answer for !
No Investment in Infrastructure in the Northwest .
No contracts Locking Gas prices cheaper for Australia.
No pipeline Infrastructure from the Northwest to all over Australia .
The number of Decades our Federal Governments have neglected these issues .
Our Sovereign Assets have been sold off very cheaply , To Foreign Country`s .
Stick to the issues rather than just name calling, it strongly suggests you have no confidence in your position.
[this is not name calling. Stick to accurate terms in your debate otherwise it appears that you have no confidence in your position] ED
Err, how is calling someone “Committee” when their name is “Adam” not name calling?
[Is your name Adam? Sorry, in my copy of “Roget’s lexicon of pejoratives” I don’t find the word “committee”. I could suggest some real pejoratives if you need examples?] ED
Former Malaysian PM: ’Bush lied about 9/11 terror attacks’
Voltaire Network | 10 September 2011
Mahathir Mohamad says it is not unthinkable for former US President George W. Bush to lie about who was responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks on the American soil. [Editor’s note: Then-Prime Minister Mohamad is shown in the photo (L) with William Rodriguez, 9/11 hero and the “last man out” of the Towers at a private 9/11 presentation.]
In a post published in his personal blog chedet on Friday, former Malaysian prime minister said that the attacks on the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, New York City, and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, could not have been carried out by Muslims. The acts of violence could have rather been the work of other groups.
The Malaysian politician pointed out that “for some Americans, the deaths of nearly 3,000 people was not the scariest thing about 9/11. It was realizing who carried out the attack: yes, the American Government.”
Mohamad said although Arab Muslims are angry enough to sacrifice their lives and become bombers, they are not capable of planning and strategizing attacks similar to the 9/11 ones.
“The planning [for the 9/11 attacks] must have taken a considerable length of time. The candidates had to learn to fly in tiny aircrafts…. Planning to hijack four aircraft simultaneously would require great precision in timing and logistics. One aircraft maybe. But four simultaneously!! I don’t think extremists from Saudi Arabia can carry out this highly sophisticated operation with such success,” former Malaysian prime minister commented.
Turning to the collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers, he said, “They came down nicely upon themselves without toppling against the other buildings close by. It looks more like planned demolition of buildings than collapse consequent upon being hit by aircraft.”
Mohamad stated, “A third building also collapsed in the same fashion; although it was not hit by any aircraft. What is the explanation for this untouched building, which collapsed upon itself and did not damage other buildings nearby?”
He also questioned the total disappearance of the aircraft, which hit the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia. “There was no debris of any kind, no broken parts of the aircraft, no black box, and no human bodies flung into the surroundings. Is it possible for an aircraft to vaporize totally after a crash?” former Malaysian prime minister said.
Mohamad further raised questions over the loss of the fourth aircraft, which was supposed to have crashed in an open field. “Again no sign of any debris. No big crater. Did it vaporize into nothingness? Did the innocent passengers also vaporize?” he stated.
The Malaysian politician noted that the American press was strangely silent about 9/11 attacks.
He also emphasized that Bush is the one that lied about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. “The legacy of the former US president is that two countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) have been devastated, and fratricidal wars have become endemic. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans and a few thousand of young American soldiers have died. Thousands more are wounded, maimed for life, and suffering from mental breakdowns,” Mohamad pointed out.
Former Malaysian prime minister also said that human lives do not seem to mean much to the former US president.
Mahathir Mohamad says it is not unthinkable for former US President George W. Bush to lie about who was responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks on the American soil. [Editor’s note: Then-Prime Minister Mohamad is shown in the photo (L) with William Rodriguez, 9/11 hero and the “last man out” of the Towers at a private 9/11 presentation.]
Um, that would be the same Mahathir Mohamad who had any potential political opponent locked up so he didn’t have to face them at a democratic election.
I’m not accusing the Greens of rationality, and I think Julia Gillard can be summed up in three words: Slater and Gordon. But it’s hard to see how any government, state or federal, could cause or allow the closure of both Loy Yang and Hazelwoood.
I’m not claiming any special knowledge here, but Tony’s idea is about the only one that makes sense. We’ll keep on burning brown coal in plants that get older and crappier, while government imposes what is best termed massive pre-paid and transferable fines on those industries. (In addition, there will be straight-out post-paid fines for excess.)
As some kind of gigantic fashion statement, whirlygigs and solar panels will begin uselessly to cover the landscape. Geothermal will do its ultra-expensive boutiquey thing in the middle of nowhere…
And, since nukes are great at everything but existing in Australia, we’ll just go on burning that brown coal.
Eventually, some ALP/GetUp spin-dude will realise that, by calling brown coal by its other name, lignite, there’ll be no more brown coal. All the brown coal gone!
So instead of burning lots of brown coal in old facilities, we’ll burn lots of lignite in very old facilities.
And when the lignite thing starts to wear thin with the urban knit-browed set, an ALP/GetUp spin-dude will realise that lignite is also known as rosebud coal. All the lignite gone!
And we’ll go on burning rosebud coal in facilities that are falling apart.
But it’s hard to see how any government, state or federal, could cause or allow the closure of both Loy Yang and Hazelwoood.
They will do it by buying the generation capacity off of the owner and then shutting it down. Both Labor and Liberal have policies to shut down such capacity. The Government’s policy is to shut down 2000 MW, while the Coalition will either shut down 1 power station or pay to convert it to gas (you know the socialist Direct Action policy).
The Coalition will also pay beyond the market price to ensure that generation costs from that generator don’t rise, which energy sector analysts have estimated will amount to a one off payment of about $500 million.
Yep, that’s right, from your income taxes straight over to the power generator.
BUBBLE #6 – GLOBAL WARMING
Fast-Forward to today. It’s early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs – its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign – sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.
AS ENVISIONED BY GOLDMAN, THE FIGHT TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING WILL BECOME A “CARBON MARKET” WORTH $1 TRILLION A YEAR.
Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm’s co-head of finance) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits – a booming trillion-dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an “environmental plan,” called cap-and-trade.
The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that’s been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won’t even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.
Here’s how it works: If the bill passes; there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy “allocations” or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions. President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billions worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.
The feature of this plan that has special appeal to speculators is that the “cap” on carbon will be continually lowered by the government, which means that carbon credits will become more and more scarce with each passing year. Which means that this is a brand-new commodities market where the main commodity to be traded is guaranteed to rise in price over time. The volume of this new market will be upwards of a trillion dollars annually; for comparison’s sake, the annual combined revenues of an electricity suppliers in the U.S. total $320 billion.
Goldman wants this bill. The plan is (1) to get in on the ground floor of paradigm-shifting legislation, (2) make sure that they’re the profit-making slice of that paradigm and (3) make sure the slice is a big slice. Goldman started pushing hard for cap-and-trade long ago, but things really ramped up last year when the firm spent $3.5 million to lobby climate issues. (One of their lobbyists at the time was none other than Patterson, now Treasury chief of staff.) Back in 2005, when Hank Paulson was chief of Goldman, he personally helped author the bank’s environmental policy, a document that contains some surprising elements for a firm that in all other areas has been consistently opposed to any sort of government regulation. Paulson’s report argued that “voluntary action alone cannot solve the climate-change problem.” A few years later, the bank’s carbon chief, Ken Newcombe, insisted that cap-and-trade alone won’t be enough to fix the climate problem and called for further public investments in research and development. Which is convenient, considering that ‘Goldman made early investments in wind power (it bought a subsidiary called Horizon Wind Energy), renewable diesel (it is an investor in a firm called Changing World Technologies) and solar power (it partnered with BP Solar), exactly the kind of deals that will prosper if the government forces energy producers to use cleaner energy. As Paulson said at the time, “We’re not making those investments to lose money.”
The bank owns a 10 percent stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange, where the carbon credits will be traded. Moreover, Goldman owns a minority stake in Blue Source LLC, a Utah-based firm that sells carbon credits of the type that will be in great demand if the bill passes. Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, who is intimately involved with the planning of cap-and-trade, started up a company called Generation Investment Management with three former bigwigs from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood, Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris. Their business? Investing in carbon offsets. There’s also a $500 million Green Growth Fund set up by a Goldmanite to invest in green-tech … the list goes on and on. Goldman is ahead of the headlines again, just waiting for someone to make it rain in the right spot. Will this market be bigger than the energy-futures market?
“Oh, it’ll dwarf it,” says a former staffer on the House energy committee. ….
“If it’s going to be a tax, I would prefer that Washington set the tax and collect it,” says Michael Masters, the hedge fund director who spoke out against oil-futures speculation. “But we’re saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That’s the last thing in the world I want. It’s just asinine.”
Cap-and-trade is going to happen. Or, if it doesn’t, something like it will. The moral is the same as for all the other bubbles that Goldman helped create, from 1929 to 2009. In almost every case, the very same bank that behaved recklessly for years, weighing down the system with toxic loans and predatory debt, and accomplishing nothing but massive bonuses for a few bosses, has been rewarded with mountains of virtually free money and government guarantees – while the actual victims in this mess, ordinary taxpayers, are the ones paying for it.
It’s not always easy to accept the reality of what we now routinely allow these people to get away with; there’s a kind of collective denial that kicks in when a country goes through what America has gone through lately, when a people lose as much prestige and status as we have in the past few years. You can’t really register the fact that you’re no longer a citizen of a thriving first-world democracy, that you’re no longer above getting robbed in broad daylight, because like an amputee, you can still sort of feel things that are no longer there.
But this is it. This is the world we live in now. And in this world, some of us have to play by the rules, while others get a note from the principal excusing them from homework till the end of time, plus 10 billion free dollars in a paper bag to buy lunch. It’s a gangster state, running on gangster economics, and even prices can’t be trusted anymore; there are hidden taxes in every buck you pay. And maybe we can’t stop it, but we should at least know where it’s all going.
The bubbles don’t come ’til the end of the program… Turn off the bubbles… Turn off the bubble machine!
How do you see a price on carbon dioxide ultimately resulting in Australia using nuclear power?
Well, pretty simple really. Nuclear costs slightly more than the most efficient coal power stations, but with even a low carbon price, nuclear becomes cheaper than all existing coal and even gas.
Is it because you think the carbon dioxide tax will prove so meaningless climatically and/or environmentally and be so financially costly for the country that the Greens, Labor/Liberal supporters of the tax, activist organisations like Get Up, One Million Women et al will accept the nuclear option?
Um, no, nuclear will become attractive when 1) the carbon price makes fossil fuels far more expensive than nuclear and 2) when people realise that solar and wind will remain very expensive and not viable baseload options.
Which political party and /or which current politician do you see as having the courage to even try to legislate for the use of nuclear?
Well, short answer none. Slightly longer answer, Paul Howes.
Some of the world is being stampeded into transitioning to low carbon (unfortunately in my view)but in exactly what way do you see that Australia will lose out if it’s not part of it?
Well, quite simply. If Australia doesn’t have a price on carbon, then in a decade or so Australia will be subject to carbon tariffs which would be a massive shock to the entire economy that we simply wouldn’t be prepared for.
I understand that China, many financiers and others who got in early to take aadvantage of the huge subsidies available, the market opportunies in trading “credits” and all the other scams that are already surfacing will certainly benefit, but Australia?
Um, what subsidies? We are adopting a carbon price so that we can end the wasteful round of subsidies. The Coalition not only wants to keep the subsidy schemes, in order to acheive anything like the abatement they say they want they will have to radically increase the subsidies by something like $11 billion a year, which ultimately comes out of your and my income taxes.
As the member for Fraser Andrew Leigh (who has a Ph.D. in economics) said in parliament today. For the coalition scheme to work you’d need a bureaucracy that would make Vladimir Lenin blush.
Adam Smith:
September 14th, 2011 at 10:24 am
You’ve done it again Phil! Your lecturing us on how our system of government works. But you don’t understanding that dismissing the government isn’t the same as dissolving parliament.
#1 – I am not lecturing.
#2 – I pointed out a contradiction between you and Wiki
#3 – I suggested you fix Wiki if you are right.
I am learning about Australian Politics. However, you appear to want to remain fixed in your biases, regardless of what anyone says. So you may want to stop lecturing until you can resolve the differences between what you contend, and what is printed in your own constitution. I merely provided links to where others claim you are wrong.
Adam Smith:
September 14th, 2011 at 10:26 am
He did no such thing. He sacked Whitlam, which meant he sacked the entire ministry, he then asked Fraser to form government.
You fail to understand that which you read. You have stated numerous times that the GG cannot act without consulting the PM. You have been shown where in the past he did. And where in the Constitution it says he does not need to consult with the PM.
A man would admit he is wrong. An idiot will just double down on stupid.
Adam Smith:
September 14th, 2011 at 10:42 am
And the reason for that is obvious. If the G.G. could unilaterally dissolve parliament, Australia would be a dictatorship.
Or a monarchy. There was a little thing about 235 years ago where one land renounced the monarchy. For that very reason. King, Queen, Emperor, “Leader for life”, Banana republic Despot, or Number one Citizen. It matters not what you call them, they are dictators. That does not mean they are all bad. just they are accountable to no one else. From the PM on down in Australia, to the President in the US, both are accountable to others (the people). The Queen is not.
Perhaps I should have been clear that I am not interested in the legal or procedural mechanisms of closing Loy Yang and Hazelwood. My mind was on another matter altogether: the fact that these plants represent maybe 75% of Victoria’s power. And with Yallourn, another brown coal plant, representing another 22% of Victoria’s power, and adding 75 to 22…
How differently our minds move, Dr. Adam Smith!
Nonetheless, it is interesting to read a summary of the policies or declared intentions of the two major parties.
I prefer what is being called the socialist Direct Action policy of the coalition, since it seems merely ruinous, as opposed to calamitous. Mind you, both policies smack of “non-core” promise. Not being given to indignation or idealism, I’ll hope for the least foolish outcome.
However, none of this addresses the question of how closure is to be timed and made feasible should it actually occur. I am starting to suspect that those who favour such closures haven’t a clue as to timing and feasibility.
Perhaps “closure” is one of those seemingly plain words which can be spun many ways. “Lord, make my Latrobe pure…but not yet!”
The nuclear feasibility question has been asked many times but still goes without response. It is now clear that certain proponents of nuclear energy in Australia are in haste to construct many sentences, but no nukes.
Thank you for responding Adam. Too tired to respond tonight in detail but there are quite a few points worth discussing further, such as subsidies and bureaucracies. However, as a general comment: With the current governments in power round the world and the absolutely massive amounts of financial investments in “renewables” from financiers of various descriptions, Pension Funds of a vast array of vested interest organisations, such as Churches, Government bodies including the BBC, Unions etc.,etc., I think you are living in your own land of “wishful thinking.”
Oddly perhaps, I share some of that wishful thinking but for far different reasons than you.
BTW. I do not support the policies of either party in regards to the AGW fraud. IMO the Liberals have tied their hands behind their backs by supporting any action at all on what is a non-problem and which will be proved to be so within a few short years.
There will be many days to come when people of the world will rue the fact that based on the flimsiest of ideologically motivated “computer-modelled virtual reality” guesses, so much money was wasted on the idiotic and unachievable quest to either control or contain the Earth’s naturally variable chaotic climate and/or temperature, rather than spending it on preparation for future natural catastrophes that we know from history will occur again and again, no matter what the cause.
Perhaps I should have been clear that I am not interested in the legal or procedural mechanisms of closing Loy Yang and Hazelwood. My mind was on another matter altogether: the fact that these plants represent maybe 75% of Victoria’s power. And with Yallourn, another brown coal plant, representing another 22% of Victoria’s power, and adding 75 to 22…
Well you have answered your own question really.
The carbon price comes in and very quickly makes it uneconomic to run brown coal power stations. Thus they scramble to take up the government offer to close down. This then creates pressure on generation where Victoria needs power from other states, but the cost of that power rises quickly along with permit prices.
At the same time various solar and wind projects get off the ground, but the problem comes back to insufficient baseload, which just makes nuclear more and more attractive, and the political downside less and less persuasive.
Ergo, nuclear becomes a reality faster than it would’ve without a carbon price.
I prefer what is being called the socialist Direct Action policy of the coalition, since it seems merely ruinous, as opposed to calamitous.
The best existing direct action abatement policies cost $45 per tonne, yet the ETS will start at half that price.
So at the very least, the coalition’s policy will cost the economy double whatever the ETS will cost.
Mind you, both policies smack of “non-core” promise. Not being given to indignation or idealism, I’ll hope for the least foolish outcome.
The Government’s ETS isn’t not core. if it was they wouldn’t be putting it to parliament. And once it starts up it would cost tens of billions to shut down, because the companies buy permits which become their property and could only be taken off them by first paying out compensation.
Banana republic Despot, or Number one Citizen. It matters not what you call them, they are dictators. That does not mean they are all bad.
What an absurd thing to write. Of course dictators are bad, because they have no moral authority to make decisions on behalf of anyone else, because they don’t have a valid reason for being in the position they are in.
Adam Smith (@454):
But there’s a problem here. Currently there is not price put on the pollution put into the air from the generation of that electricity. So in some ways consumers are better off because they pay for electricity, but in another longer term way they are worse off because more carbon has been put into the atmosphere.
Uh, Adam; Perhaps you have forgotten where you are posting. The blatant claim above is precisely what is challenged in this blog. The proponents of the view that “we are worse off because more carbon [dioxide] has been put into the atmosphere”, have totally failed to substantiate that claim with facts, and are thus reduced to pathetic arguments from authority that depend on the claim that government-funded climate scientists are some kind of intellectual and ethical supermen. That claim also founders on the facts.
Thus, there is currently no justification for your assumption that governments should intervene in energy markets for the purpose of minimizing CO2 release.
The fact that this intervention will not result in reduced CO2 emissions (since Australia continues to export most of its coal to China) just illustrates how fraudulent the entire thing is. The most obvious conclusion is that it is just a political power grab.
*******************************
This may not be welcome, but I must warn my Australian friends that the Australian government appears to be moving toward tyranny. It has already taken your guns — an action that our founder, Thomas Jefferson, would have seen as extremely dire — and now it seems to be moving toward total control of the population. Beware.
On the subject of aliens visiting Earth, it seems they already have. Apparently they were here in the 1970’s.
The gist is that representatives of The Culture (an advanced, post-scarcity society) arrive on Earth and try to decide what to to with us. There is a split decision on whether to save/improve us (presumably before introducing us into the galactic community) or just wiping us out to put us out of our misery. In the end they decide…
Uh, Adam; Perhaps you have forgotten where you are posting. The blatant claim above is precisely what is challenged in this blog.
Oh sorry, I didn’t realise that there is a sort of censorship / group think mentality where people simply aren’t allowed to put forward certain propositions.
Adam Smith:
September 15th, 2011 at 12:16 am
What an absurd thing to write. Of course dictators are bad, because they have no moral authority to make decisions on behalf of anyone else, because they don’t have a valid reason for being in the position they are in.
No, it is not absurd. Morality is very subjective, and I stay away from it in discussions. I wrote objectively. Dictators are not in and of themselves bad. it is how they rule that determines if they rule well, or badly. You are trying to interject a different subject into the discussion. Morality. I did not speak of it, only said that dictators come in many names.
Stop creating strawmen out of nothing. You are wrong.
Uh, Adam; Perhaps you have forgotten where you are posting. The blatant claim above is precisely what is challenged in this blog.
Oh sorry, I didn’t realise that there is a sort of censorship / group think mentality where people simply aren’t allowed to put forward certain propositions.
You did not respond to the quote. No one STOPPED you from posting, or thinking what you will. A poster merely pointed out the subject of the blog. Another strawman, and another irrelevant response on your part.
The subject was closure of Hazelwood and Loy Yang. In talking of “non-core” promises, I was clearly responding to your own earlier comment:
The Government’s policy is to shut down 2000 MW, while the Coalition will either shut down 1 power station or pay to convert it to gas (you know the socialist Direct Action policy).
Trust me, we are well aware that an ETS is a core promise of Labor and the Greens…and a core aspiration of too many Libs.
You quite often quote text without responding to the text quoted. This gives the appearance of analysis without the substance. I’m not at all hostile toward you, and I appreciate many of your comments in defense of convention and tradition re the Constitution. But your particular method of quoting comes across as a stunt.
As to your belief that nukes will become more attractive, I don’t doubt it. With pre-paid fines/price/ETS on CO2 burdening and then crippling nearly all of Victoria’s power output, I do not doubt it at all. Burning your granny’s rosary beads will be attractive under those conditions.
As to the feasibility and timing of those nukes…well, I’m starting to sound like a broken record, aren’t I?
At first glance it would seem to be no competition to our generous host’s own Skeptic Guide. Here’s why:
* No tables or graphs of relevant data.
* No references to their sources of facts and figures, yep, none at all.
* The lead author bills himself as “a poet”, which in practical terms is unlikely to inspire public trust in this messenger even if every part of his message is true.
These objections are more about style than substance, but they will reduce the document’s ability to convert the great unwashed (for whom arguably this document is not intended).
Once you push past the terse format you will find most of the essential points are covered quite well and in depth, including a bit of history behind the scam. With the new Afterword it’s also up-to-date regarding Svensmark theory. Add this to the barrage of available documents when debating fence-sitters. For the patient reader virtually no stone is left unturned.
Quirky fact: One of the co-authors is the chairman of Citigroup. Would be interesting to see how this can be reconciled with the hypothesis that all the banksters are keen to cash in on carbon trading, wherein Citibank would be a usual suspect.
Uh, Adam; Perhaps you have forgotten where you are posting. The blatant claim above is precisely what is challenged in this blog.
Oh sorry, I didn’t realise that there is a sort of censorship / group think mentality where people simply aren’t allowed to put forward certain propositions.
Of course, Adam, you can put forward any proposition you like. If, however, you make a blatant assertion (without supporting argument) of something that has been, in excruciating detail shown to be false, then you simply expose yourself as an idiot.
By all means — don’t censor yourself: Keep acting like an idiot.
Jo, according to the Bolta on MTR this morning, bloggers such as yourself could find yourself caught up in the media censorship enquiry. This smacks to me of the proposal to censure the Internet. It’s exactly the same thing. “The ALP/Greens know what’s best for you to know…”
No, it is not absurd. Morality is very subjective, and I stay away from it in discussions. I wrote objectively. Dictators are not in and of themselves bad.
YES THEY ARE, because they have no authority to make decisions on behalf of other people.
It is the very fact that our heads of government are elected through democratic processes that gives them the right to exercise powers on our behalf within strict limits and for a limited period of time. Dictators are under no such pressures and therefore have no right to make decisions on behalf of others.
I am completely astonished that you are defending dictatorships as an acceptable system of government! You’ve basically tied yourself in a giant knot and now have lost all sense of right and wrong.
Finally, a Seattle FireFighter Eric Lawyer, for truth group for Fire Fighters to stand up and join. No longer silent, while the pieces of their fellow NY Fire Dept. firefighters lay buried in the landfill without dignity or proper burial.
Thanks to the Architects for Truth. The Science is finally proving that 911 was in fact an inside job,
not made up by Conspiracy “nuts”, but here Eric Lawyer states flatly that the Book for Forensic preservation of evidence from a crime scene was blatantly ignored. True. But no one better than a FireFighter familiar with the “book” to say so. Willie Rodriquez was erased from the fraudulent Federally tainted so called 911 investigation, Prof. Jones thermate evidence ignored, Key witnesses were scene being thrown out for trying to testify.
BUSH & Cheney and Rumsfelt got their Rubber stamp Congress to pass a law, that they can NOT be indicted if torture, or anything illegal they did should be later found to be a crime. What greater admission of guilt need we? WE THE PEOPLE, should expect another type 911 event and soon, now that Eric Lawyer and the Architects & engineers for 911 truth have scientifically proved that planes did NOT take down two of the three World Trade Center buildings.
FACT is 47 story 7WTC bldg also came down 6 hours later and NO PLANE hit it at all. But the video of that 3rd bldg which Silverstein ordered “Pulled” by demolition charges was NEVER broadcast on West Coast, and ran only once in N.Y.C. by BBC & NBC which called it about 22 minutes before it actually came down…. supposedly from small fires, which never EVER happened before to a steel frame and concrete building, and in only 6 hours of small fires, later on Sept. 11, 2001. No ONE on West Coast Saw that, because CNN & FOX & the rest CENSORED it.
The Media was in on the demolition job, as proved by BBC Jane S. announcing it “has fallen” when it was clearly still standing behind her. Did her London based que get confused because of the hour switch in Time Americans do every Sept. but they don’t do in London? Ooops? SNAFU. now the coverup. I spoke to an educated medical doctor, today, Mar. 1, 2010, and he STILL had not heard that 3 buildings at WTC came down.
Even tonight, he is probably thinking, he mis-understood, or that I am just “nuts”… I looked at my 6 hours of Video VHS tape last week, and no where on all the channels that ran 9-11 coverage in 2001 … not one on my Central Coast of California showed 7WTC 47 story building coming down. Just the twin towers , over and over and OVER ab nauseum. Shock and AWE. Now it is time to have a REAL Investigation… with subpoena and Contempt Powers. Go See: “Arrest of George W. Bush,soon” and positively pray for justice and TRUTH…. finally.
Jo, according to the Bolta on MTR this morning, bloggers such as yourself could find yourself caught up in the media censorship enquiry. This smacks to me of the proposal to censure the Internet. It’s exactly the same thing. “The ALP/Greens know what’s best for you to know…”
1) I think you meant censor instead of censure
2) The internet is already regulated. All the same defamation laws that apply to print and broadcast media also apply to the internet. It is the responsibility of moderators of sites like this one to ensure that defamatory comments are removed.
[NO! it is the responsibility of the poster to self edit-that means NOT posting defamatory comments. The poster owns his or her posts.] ED
The enquiry into the media is a Greens’ event courtesy of the spite, ego and loathing of Brown. In a perverse way it is grist to the mill for anti-green people [which would include every reasonable minded person] since every manifestation of the real nature of the green psychology will turn more normal people aginst them.
What I find really odd here is that at sites like this, when there people are looking for answers, questions get asked.
In the main, those who have some knowledge about those questions then either reply to the questions, or go looking for the answer, and then reply, and do so in some detail, so readers get as full a picture as they can.
It seems that does not apply to our good friend Doctor Smith.
He won’t answer questions directed at him, but just says that the question is irrelevant, or does not require an answer, because the questioner lost the argument somehow.
When asked to address things that everyone would like to know HIS answer to, he just changes the subject, does not even bother to find any REAL information, and just stays on HIS own message.
THAT is not the debate you so frequently claim to want to engage in Doctor.
Adam Smith,
I have started to feel very sorry for you.
You are trying to argue for something that is all about intellectual/financial mumbo jumbo and ‘sleight of hand’ economics and wondering why there are so many who are laughing at you.
Even though I know you’re likely to highlight some of these comments out of context and then give me a lecture on ‘engagement’, I am going to state the problem very simply.
The carbon tax….onto an ETS scheme is based on a false assumption and is intending to force a market on a valueless product.
So just so you can highlight what you won’t like about this….let me help you.
Point one:
The carbon tax….onto an ETS scheme is based on a false assumption
The false assumption is that governments and bureaucracies can control the climate/weather if they could interfere in the fossil fuel market/trade and the production of energy.
That is not just a false assumption BTW, I would call that an extraordinary conceit to believe that a bureaucracy can manage the climate.
And point 2:
is intending to force a market on a valueless product.
In all political speeches at the moment, CO2 is called carbon POLLUTION.
Would you like to buy some pollution folks?
The only way anyone is going to buy pollution is if the the Govt attaches some ‘paper’ value to it via grants and subsides. Despite your assertion otherwise, that will be coming directly and indirectly from the taxpayer and NOT just the ‘big polluters’ as we’re being told endlessly.
And finally, these ‘big polluters’ when you look them up are actually the people who supply power to your home, supply the materials to put a roof over your head and bring food to your table.
A little dose of actual reality would be very welcome from you Adam!
We’re laughing at you because you seem to have come from another planet which believes that reality and common sense has nothing to do with it!!!!!
That’s essentially why you have repeatedly failed to answer the very specific question that everyone has been politley asking you.
How will this fabulous theory of yours actually work in practice?
And don’t forget now….a large % of us agree that Nuclear power is a good idea.
So that answer that you keep giving is entirely irrelevant to the point I am making here and does not answer the actual question.
TonyfromOz, the frustrations are many, but the debate which posters like Dr. Adam Smith stir up can often generate much solid info. Your postings on power and the practicalities of energy policy have been of great value. Just to be reminded of the scale of brown coal in Victoria – not far off 100% of its power – gives one a jolt when viewed along side Green objectives. Your comparisons and numbers on such subjects, and on the subjects of the alternative energies, are well worth filing away. They have, in fact, been filed away.
The ease with which intellectuals still feel they can bring about change with their Big Levers, irrespective of on-the-ground consequences, shows that the lessons of the last century have still not been learned. The fact that this Big Lever collectivism has been spiced and flavoured with notions of classical liberalism to make us all swallow like good children is something we should take as compliment.
By the way, if anyone wants to cut and paste in order to quote something I’ve just said, please be attentive to the words quoted and respond to those words. One should not use others’ comments as mere decor for one’s own opinionating.
Not sound ethnocentric, but here in the US our leader (The One) promised transparency, accountability, etc. you know, all the small stuff. And, AND upon winning the Socialist Democrat nomination for president he declared:
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
So obviously, “Global Warming” “Climate Change” is no more…all is good. Cancel the carbon tax scheme, Barry righted the wrong, leveled the playing field, castigated the wicked and bestowed Environmental Justice to the world.
I apologise for my lack of formating skills (even the ‘blue” has stopped working for me).
“Nuclear costs slightly more than the most efficient coal power stations” Agreed
“The carbon price makes fossil fuels far more expensive than nuclear.” Agreed
“Solar and wind will remain very expensive and not viable baseload options.” Agreed – with the rider added: no matter how heavily subsidised!
“Which political party and /or which current politician do you see as having the courage to even try to legislate for the use of nuclear?
Well, short answer none.” Agreed
It is not the cost of nuclear stopping that option for Australia, IMO it’s the disproportionate Green dictatorship of all things environmental which has frightened a noisy irrational minority of a gullible population and consequently has paralysed timid politicians of all persuasions. Much the same applies to coal. Yet we continue and will continue to export our vast natural resources of both for others to use! Now, the Government proposes we should be forced to spend our money in dodgy rort-ridden “carbon credit” markets overseas to allow us to use our own resources!
Bringing forward nuclear is not on the radar of the present Labor/Green Government and never will be in the foreseeable future so IMO, linking it to imposition of the “carbon price” is neither a realistic nor valid argument in this context.
“If Australia doesn’t have a price on carbon, then in a decade or so Australia will be subject to carbon tariffs.”
That may be, but is a matter of opinion dependent upon not only climatic conditions, but on atttudes of the UN and world governments remaining the same.
In my opinion, even without the period of global cooling that most reliable scientific and lay observations indicate is approaching, within a decade people will have suffered so much both physically and financially under the vicissitudes of imposed Green “Renewable Energies” regimes that they will have demanded a return to sanity and reliable energy generation.
“Um, what subsidies? We are adopting a carbon price so that we can end the wasteful round of subsidies.”
What do you call the money being showered on projects involving wind, solar, hot rocks etc.,etc.?
“you’d need a bureaucracy that would make Vladimir Lenin blush.”
Adam. Check the expenditure on the various bureaucracies and associated government-favoured AGW believing organisations furthering “the message”, since the original “Departments of Climate Change” were set up by Federal and State governments, together with the number of new bureaucracies being set up to “administer” (and based on this government’s history, I use that term very loosely) this most complex economic upheaval. I think Vladimir Lenin would have already blushed himself scarlet!
On a personal note, in my relatively long life (in human terms) I have lived through many of these environmental and weather scare campaigns, including the A-bomb and H-bomb testings of the late forties onwards. I can even remember my dear old Dad telling me of the time when “weird weather” was blamed on those “new-fangled horseless carriages”. What I have always found is that as history shows us, Nature just keeps on going doing it’s own thing irrespective of whatever temporary insignificant effect any particular species may have locally. The evidence greets us every day. The Sun warms, the clouds generally cool, the oceans store, shift and release that stored heat as required to keep this planet liveable for all animal and plant species that are current inhabitants. And of course, CO2 can quite confidently be described as an essential and very necessary part of the lifeblood enabling all those inhabitants to survive!
I see NASA is building a rocket to take us to Mars and beyond and the princely sum of US$ 16 billion, remind me again how much are we spending to bury some glass to every home?
I come to blogs like these to learn things.
I’m not ‘full bottle’ on the Science so I learn viewpoints on that here, and at other places.
I do have something to give in reply, some expertise in electrical power generation, and when asked questions, I will reply to the best of what I have available.
I don’t contribute here to see my name on the comments. If I wanted to do that I need go no further than the Large Blog where I am the Editor, and look at any of the now nearing 900 Posts in my name over the last three and a half years.
Here, I also learn from others, and it’s become easy to pick out the people who don’t know anything on the subject where I have that knowledge.
One of those is obviously Doctor Smith.
People will read what he Posts in his comments, and may be swayed to think that he might have a point.
Let’s then look at one of his earlier Comments at 462 where he says:
See, unlike you I don’t believe in a command and control economy of 1,2,3,5,10 year plans. That’s too socialist for my liking.
This shows his absolute ignorance on electrical power generation.
He thinks of it as a ‘Command Economy’ where it is dictated how soon plants he wants closed, Hazelwood’ will be replaced.
As I explained in Comments 482 and 483, it has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘Command Economy’. That’s how long it takes to actually construct new power plants, seven to ten years if everything goes right.
Then he goes on to say in Comment 503:
They will do it by buying the generation capacity off of the owner and then shutting it down.
He waves his piece of paper around thinking that of itself will drive Hazelwood to the wall.
Doctor Smith’s Labor colleagues in Victoria sold off Hazelwood for the sum of $2.35 Billion, achieving this with the certainty of a binding contract to supply electricity until the mid 2030’s to recover that amount.
Just from the sale of electricity alone, 12,500GWH per year, that amount comes to a tick under $10 Billion.
They won’t be asking that much, because as I have already explained, that amount takes numerous things into account, but a figure of at least $2 Billion is not out of the question, as a minimum.
Just waving around a piece of paper and calling Hazelwood operators moneygrubbing vampires sucking up what they don’t deserve may be okay for Doctor Smith, but it seems his piece of paper is the justification he will use to go back on a deal his Labor colleagues themselves struck in all fairness.
Doctor Smith’s colleague Peter Garret may indeed have got it correct when he said … “no matter, when we get in, we’ll just change it all.”
Ping, Doctor Smith. Your piece of paper closes down Hazelwood.
Ping, Doctor Smith. Victoria goes into the dark.
Ping, Doctor Smith. They won’t be getting power from surrounding States. They also are almost tapped out themselves, due solely to your Labor State Colleagues not constructing new plants, selling off existing plants, and then not allowing them to replace those aging plants.
Ping, Doctor Smith. There are no current plans to replace the power Hazelwood provides.
Ping, Doctor Smith. Why should you worry if vast numbers of people go without electrical power. You have your piece of paper.
Doctor Smith, your quoted years are not a ‘Command Economy’. They are the facts on the time it will take for constructing new power plants.
Read the Posts Doctor Smith.
Don’t wave your piece of paper at us and tell us that will provide.
Well, quite simply. If Australia doesn’t have a price on carbon, then in a decade or so Australia will be subject to carbon tariffs which would be a massive shock to the entire economy that we simply wouldn’t be prepared for
Hi Adam.
Who or what will impose tariffs on Oz?
What will these tariffs be?
How much will these tariffs cost?
Under what (global?) law to which Australia may be a signatory to, will these tariffs be imposed?
Considering that our major trading partners are China + Asia, are you suggesting China + Asia will impose tariffs on our exports? China will impose tariffs on the coal and iron ore it imports from us?
To whom will these tariffs be paid to?
You’d be aware that the EU has proposed charging tariffs on international flights. How is that going?
What are the consequences if Oz decides not to pay?
How did you determine that these tariffs will be a massive shock to our economy?
thnx in advance
p.s. last time I posed a polite query to you, your reply was offensive. Lets hope your civility has returned.
Keith H @ 535
Hear hear!
It is such a shame that the Adam Smiths of this world are so intent on repeating mistakes instead of learning from them.
Of course anyone who has been around for a while or who has bothered to study history (as opposed to political history) knows perfectly well that this scam has been tried many times over in many places around the world.
Their excuse this time is that they need to control the weather and protect the environment.
Same book, different page.
We are in the process of watching a senseless, shameful and profligate waste of human ingenuity and even worse, Australia’s rich natural resources.
Keep speaking up everyone, it is essential that sanity prevails.
“……As if his overwhelming Obama Care regulations (including a 3.8% tax on the sale of your home) were not enough it was reported on television this morning that Obama’s Czars are creating 10 (ten) new regulations on business EVER SINGLE DAY. Our country is being destroyed right before your eyes. While his Majesty is constantly on T.V. saying one thing he is busy doing exactly the opposite as ordered by the New World Order/Illuminati/One World Government he works for. With Bush Senior having announced the NWO nearly 20 years ago and various “Proofs” having been reported to you in these updates it is my best guess that OBAMA was APPOINTED PRESIDENT of THE WORLD which would explain his many ‘I am God’ declarations which began with his ‘discovery’ of his likeness (big ears) carved into the interior walls of the pyramids. Remember? How easily the people forget. No wonder the Politicians think they can get away with anything. And everything.
The Swiss, the Euro, Brazil, Japan, The Philippines, the world’s currencies are engaged in a WAR, a race to the bottom, a race to devalue, a race caused by the incompetence and corruption of Western Banks, their Puppet Politicians, and the FED. In a desperate attempt to keep asset prices fraudulently pumped up so as to hide the coming consequences of their policies they are destroying ‘Savers’, specifically the elderly, and wiping out all hope of ‘Capital Formation’ which is the heart and soul of ‘Capitalism’. They are intentionally destroying all that made America great after which they will scream “Capitalism failed us, time to try Communism”. The NWO is being implemented at break neck speed right before your eyes and half our people remain completely blind to it…….”
US Energy Department panel endorses shale fracking, suggests pumping ground with millions of gallons of chemical water will help save the environment.
“(NaturalNews) Hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” for the purpose of extracting natural gas from the earth involves flooding it with millions of gallons of chemical-laden water, a practice that by all estimates is damaging the environment to some extent.
But a US Energy Department (ED) advisory panel, which happens to be padded with members connected to the natural gas industry, insists that fracking is safe, and even contends that it will help to lower the carbon dioxide emissions allegedly responsible for so-called climate change.
A recent report in The Washington Post (WP) explains the ED panel’s notion that, despite continual outcry over fracking operations polluting rivers and groundwater supplies, natural gas fracking can safely continue as long as fracking companies agree to be more open about their actions, and comply with monitoring requirements that track environmental impact and make this information publicly available.
But in an industry that is already knowingly hiding the truth about its polluting activities — and secretly dumping its toxic waste directly into the environment, for instance — it is naive for ED committee members to purport that simply telling drilling companies to be more forthcoming is going to have a substantially beneficial impact.
Fracking, no matter how closely monitored, pollutes the environment in devastating ways.
In order to release oil and gas from shale rock deep underground, giant machines must force large amounts of water, sand, chemicals, and radioactive elements deep into the earth’s upper crust in order to crack the rock that potentially holds this valuable fuel. But in the process, the resultant radioactive chemical cocktail seeps into water tables, wells, rivers, and lakes, as well as the various drinking water supplies to which these sources are fed.
Even if the fracking industry suddenly decides to be more open and honest about the fact that drilling fluids are severely contaminating soil and water, the only thing that will change is that now everyone will be aware of it.
Thanks to an energy bill passed by Congress back in 2005 that exempts the natural gas drilling industry from having to comply with the US Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), fracking operations are free to pollute as much as they please — they just might have to disclose this fact at some point in the future.
The Shale Gas Subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SGS) which put out the recent report endorsing fracking does not even address this SDWA exemption. As a result, its recommendations are meaningless in all practical terms, as they will do absolutely nothing to stop the tide of environmental pollution being spewed by the fracking industry.
Current water purification techniques are unable to capture methane and radon, for instance, both of which come from fracking. Consequently, drinking water supplies throughout Pennsylvania, which is a fracking hot spot due to its location in the Marcellus Shale Formation region, are becoming increasingly toxic with no end in sight.
So as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues its ongoing investigation into the environmental impacts of fracking, the SGS committee comes along and makes a few useless recommendations that it says will address the problems with fracking, but that in reality will do absolutely nothing to solve them.
At least six SGS committee members have ties to the natural gas industry
The mindless recommendations made by SGS in support of the fracking industry make a lot more sense, however, in light of the industries to which many of its members are connected. According to a recent report issued by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), at least six SGS committee members are known to have connections to the oil and gas industries.
Signed by 28 scientists from 22 universities and institutions in 13 states, all of whom object to the SGS panel’s recommendations, the EWG report explains that Chairman John Deutch, Stephen Holditch, Kathleen McGinty, Susan Tierney, Daniel Yergin, and Mark Zoback all have financial ties to the oil and gas industries, a blatant conflict of interest for a committee that is supposed to offer unbiased counsel to the ED.
SGS Chairman John Deutch, for instance, currently serves on the board of the natural gas firm Cheniere Energy. According to the WP, Deutch was paid more than $1.4 million by both Cheniere and Schlumberger, another oil and gas firm, between 2006 and 2009. And Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who was appointed directly by President Obama, chose Deutch for the SGS Chairman position knowing full well his connections to the oil and gas industries.
So just like the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is filled with officials connected to the pharmaceutical industry, and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is filled with officials connected to the biotechnology industry, the Energy Department, is filled with officials connected to the oil and gas industries.
And so it goes in the “land of the free,” where special interests run the government and its powerful regulatory agencies. Driven by greed and an insatiable lust for power, corporate snakes have quietly infiltrated the very agencies that were designed to protect the interests of the people, and have restructured them to serve corporate interests instead.
[NO! it is the responsibility of the poster to self edit-that means NOT posting defamatory comments. The poster owns his or her posts.] ED
This is not an accurate summary of how Australian defamation laws apply to the internet.
The moderator of a website can be sued for defamation simply by leaving defamatory comments on a forum or website that they own (i.e. that they allowed to be published). They do not need to be the author of the comments themselves.
Here is a site that explains how defamation applies to the internet:
Defamation action may be brought, not only against the original publisher (writer/speaker), but also
against anyone who takes part in the publication or re-publication of the material
. Furthermore, re-publication by someone other than the original writer may result in an action against the original writer as well as the re-publisher.
If you don’t believe me, by all means seek legal advice. But another lawyer will tell you exactly what I have said. You can be sued for defamatory comments made by others, because you are publishing them.
Further, I note that China is on record as stating that they will not tolerate any oversight of their economy for emissions from any body.
China is starting up 6 trial ETSs in the middle of next year, which will cover about 200 million people and which has an economic output larger than Australia’s.
The Chinese aren’t idiots, they know that a market mechanism will acheive the least cost abatement.
Taxes on Australian exports, thus inflating the cost of our exports relative to other countries.
How much will these tariffs cost?
They will cost our economy billions of dollars every year.
Under what (global?) law to which Australia may be a signatory to, will these tariffs be imposed?
The World Trade Organisation has already started consideration on carbon tariffs which countries will be able to impose without breaching their WTO trade obligations.
Considering that our major trading partners are China + Asia, are you suggesting China + Asia will impose tariffs on our exports? China will impose tariffs on the coal and iron ore it imports from us?
Yes. Not within the next few years, but perhaps within ten or so. Let’s put this in context. China will start a carbon price in some provinces next year, Japan is set to follow in half a dozen years time. Those are our two biggest export markets.
To whom will these tariffs be paid to?
They will be like all tariffs. A tax on imports.
You’d be aware that the EU has proposed charging tariffs on international flights. How is that going?
Yes, but that is simply part of their ETS.
What are the consequences if Oz decides not to pay?
How can Australians decide not to pay this fee? Do you honestly thing people will go back to sailing to England?
How did you determine that these tariffs will be a massive shock to our economy?
Because they will dramatically increase the cost of our exports so our exports won’t be as competitive as the same products from other countries.
Their excuse this time is that they need to control the weather and protect the environment.
Same book, different page.
We are in the process of watching a senseless, shameful and profligate waste of human ingenuity and even worse, Australia’s rich natural resources.
Even if you don’t think atmospheric carbon pollution is a problem, doesn’t it make sense for Australia to use our fossil fuels as efficiently as possible?
If we are going to burn coal to produce electricity, shouldn’t we get the absolute most energy out of each unit of coal so we don’t use up our coal as quickly?
Isn’t it only fair that the current generation conserve fossil fuels and use them as efficiently as possible so they are available to be used for future generations?
All the other contributors (incuding Gee Aye) have at least included some fact within their replies!
An example is your reply to the question To whom will these tariffs be paid to?
Your reply They will be like all tariffs. A tax on imports
Useless answers Adam!
Getting Chilly – have to go!
Dave… thanks for including me. I am not actually aspiring to meet anyone else’s aspirations for this web log but I am glad to have contributed. You should know that Dr Adam and Dr Gee are from different sides of the political spectrum, just in case I have been ambiguous (to some at least) in the past.
I respect your honesty and that of the esteemed figure from history in the discussion above.
I do wonder though if you included me because you believe there is a global conspiracy to cover up events like 9-11 and you think that people who don’t believe in this conspiracy are somehow aligned with Adam Smith?
I have no interest in the 9-11 conspiracy!
I do not thumbs up or thumbs down!
I have not included a reference to an esteemed figure from history above!
I agree with Adam Smith only on his positive response to Nuclear Energy!
I disagree with Adam Smith on all his other methods of supplying power to Australians!
I do enjoy learning each and every day from reading different opinions!
I am worried why this Tax is imposed to reduce global temperature!
I am worried why they (Combet) call it a
Clean Energy Enconomy instead of a Clean Energy Environment?
This site is one of the most open discussion forums available.
You are normally less influenced by personnel attacks than by scientific arguement!
That was the reason for my statement above.
“This government will be held to the highest standards of transparency.”
“This government will be held more accountable.”
“This government has one purpose – to serve the Australian people.”
“So let’s draw back the curtains and let the Sun shine in.”
She really said that? That is exactly what Obama said (substituting American for Australian) – and of course we know that the opposite is what we got. Are all progressives complete liars?
Adam Smith:
September 15th, 2011 at 9:55 am No, it is not absurd. Morality is very subjective, and I stay away from it in discussions. I wrote objectively. Dictators are not in and of themselves bad.
YES THEY ARE, because they have no authority to make decisions on behalf of other people.
That is a subjective view. You do not KNOW they do not have the authority. The Queen has the authority by virtue of the people believing in her right to be queen. Yet she is a dictator based upon the strictest definition. Again, I am not going to get into a morality discussion. Stick to the facts. You are off on your scarecrow hunt again, and I will not follow.
I agree with Adam Smith only on his positive response to Nuclear Energy!
I disagree with Adam Smith on all his other methods of supplying power to Australians!
Australia is more likely to develop nuclear energy projects with a carbon price than without because a carbon price makes nuclear cheaper than all the other viable baseload alternatives.
If you support nuclear energy you should support the carbon price even if you don’t think it will do anything to reduce CO2 emissions.
Adam Smith:
September 15th, 2011 at 9:55 am
I am completely astonished that you are defending dictatorships as an acceptable system of government! You’ve basically tied yourself in a giant knot and now have lost all sense of right and wrong.
Strawman! Please show me where I am defending (or for that matter attacking) dictatorships. I merely commented on an observation. You merely lied.
thanks Dave… personal attacks are just silly, although there are some characters who I’d like to…
Not sure why referencing esteemed figures is a problem; If you think it is relevant cite them. Live or die by the citation.
I too have no interest in the 9-11 conspiracy per se. I find it interesting how people think and I am still learning about how people relate to the internet. As an adult of long standing, including the years before the internet, I’ve had many conversations – sometimes in pubs and sometimes more publicly, including discussions and disagreements with people with whom I agree or disagree but this has not fully prepared me for the discourse in the online environment. Something like 911 is great because many features of science vs non science debates are clear and obvious. It is very interesting to observe.
This sounds like I think I am better/smarter than them but I to me it is all about being engaged by new things that make me think about human behaviour. I don’t really have any idea if I am right or wrong.
Actually none of the posters here or anywhere know they are right… they just think they do.
This is not an accurate summary of how Australian defamation laws apply to the internet.
Thank god America has freedom of speech! The speaker can be sued, but those reporting what the speaker said (which by the definition of Australian law is anyone reproducing it) cannot be.
That is a subjective view. You do not KNOW they do not have the authority.
They don’t have authority because they weren’t elected using a democratic process.
You’ll never win this argument. I will never, ever agree with you that a dictatorship may in some circumstances be an acceptable form of government. I am astonished that anyone who cares about democracy or liberty could credibly argue otherwise.
The Queen has the authority by virtue of the people believing in her right to be queen.
This is absolutely untrue. The Queen is the Queen because of an ancient belief that she is appointed by divine right.
Well, I and many others disagree with that absurd assertion. Your country was founded on the idea that sovereignty should be invested in a nation’s populace. One of your former presidents summarised this by saying that the government should be of, for, and by the people. Well that is a sentiment that I strongly agree with so I reject out of hand your silly assertions that dictators or even unelected nobles should hold their positions without periodically facing democratic election.
Yet she is a dictator based upon the strictest definition.
Which is why monarchy’s and even constitutional monarchies are an anachronistic and outdated system of government. On this one you should show some patriotism and be proud of the fact you have a far more rational system of government.
Again, I am not going to get into a morality discussion. Stick to the facts. You are off on your scarecrow hunt again, and I will not follow.
Well you’re clearly on the wacky side of the argument because you have found yourself defending the right of dictatorships be they divine or otherwise.
I will never support dictatorships, they are morally wrong because a dictator simply doesn’t have the authority to make decisions on behalf of others because they weren’t elected to do so.
Thank god America has freedom of speech! The speaker can be sued, but those reporting what the speaker said (which by the definition of Australian law is anyone reproducing it) cannot be.
Well, rather than thanking god, thank your congress that the U.S. has a broad protection for freedom of speech in the Constitution because ultimately it is the people that were elected to the congress that put it in the first amendment.
Thank you for agreeing with me that Joanne’s understanding of Australian defamation law is woefully misguided and potentially very dangerous to the existence of this forum.
Adam Smith:
September 15th, 2011 at 10:11 pm
They don’t have authority because they weren’t elected using a democratic process.
You’ll never win this argument. I will never, ever agree with you that a dictatorship may in some circumstances be an acceptable form of government. I am astonished that anyone who cares about democracy or liberty could credibly argue otherwise.
Strawman! I already won it. You are arguing against a straw man that I will not partake in. Again, I am not arguing any type of “moral”. I pointed out that dicators can rule well or ill. you jumped on the moral authority bandwagon. So argue with yourself.
This is absolutely untrue. The Queen is the Queen because of an ancient belief that she is appointed by divine right.
Right, and her army keeps the populace in check. Again, you are barking up the wrong tree. The Emperor of japan is divine. The Royals of England never were.
Well you’re clearly on the wacky side of the argument because you have found yourself defending the right of dictatorships be they divine or otherwise.
Strawman! As I said, I am not defending anyone or anything. I am commenting on facts. You apparently do not know the difference.
But please continue! I would love to see how many scarecrows you can cram into one posting! I think 4 is your highest total so far. I am sure you can beat that!
Adam Smith:
September 15th, 2011 at 10:15 pm
Well, rather than thanking god, thank your congress that the U.S. has a broad protection for freedom of speech in the Constitution because ultimately it is the people that were elected to the congress that put it in the first amendment.
Ignorance alert! Congress has nothing to do with it. It is called the Constitution. Congress did not pass the first amendment. The states did. It was part of the document that was ratified by the 13 colonies before the first congress was in place! It had to be. It was the basis of their election.
Thank you for agreeing with me that Joanne’s understanding of Australian defamation law is woefully misguided and potentially very dangerous to the existence of this forum.
Strawman! I did not agree with you. I merely noted a difference in your interpretation and American law.
I pointed out that dicators can rule well or ill. you jumped on the moral authority bandwagon. So argue with yourself.
Wrong. They have no authority to make any decisions, so saying they can rule well is a contradiction in terms. Again you are ultimately proposing that some dictatorships are good, which is an affront to basic principles of liberty and democracy which says people should have a say in how they are governed.
Right, and her army keeps the populace in check. Again, you are barking up the wrong tree. The Emperor of japan is divine. The Royals of England never were.
You have this terrible habit of just stating things that are flat out untrue. Queen Elizabeth II’s full title is the following:
Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas Queen, Defender of the Faith
I draw your attention in particular to the part “by the grace of god”.
Yes that’s right, the Queen is supposedly appointed by God, and certainly isn’t appointed by the people!
I also draw your attention to the part “defender of the faith”, which relates to the fact the Queen of England is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, who according to the hierarchy of the Church of England, is above even the Archbishop of Canterbury (kind of like the C of E’s version of the Pope), which means the Queen is effectively between god and the good old archbishop.
Now how you go from this state of affairs to saying that the Queen isn’t considered to be divinely appointed, I have absolutely no idea.
[Ignorance alert! Congress has nothing to do with it. It is called the Constitution. Congress did not pass the first amendment. The states did. ]
Oh ffs mate, I can’t believe I need to tell you the history of the bill of rights.
The bill of rights was an act of the U.S. congress passed in 1789. It then came into effect (i.e. became part of the constitution) when it had been ratified by 3/4 of the states, which happened in 1791.
It was part of the document that was ratified by the 13 colonies before the first congress was in place! It had to be. It was the basis of their election.
What on earth are you going on about, the constitution came into effect in 1788. The reason the first amendment is called the first amendment is because it was the first amendment to the constitution that had been ratified the year before!
You’re pretty good at digging holes for yourself.
Strawman! I did not agree with you. I merely noted a difference in your interpretation and American law.
Oh, so you were being irrelevant as American law has nothing to do with Australian defamation law.
I think Dr Adam is disingenuous with his advocacy of nuclear, knowing as he does that his fellow travellers on the AGW bandwagon would never allow it. So, he can appear reasonable by advocating the only viable alternative to the boon of fossils while knowing it will never eventuate while ever the AGW loons hold sway.
In your didactic pronouncements at 543, Dr Adam, about defamation do you mean to say that the primary source of anything defamatory is not responsible for their words while the publisher carries the entire burden of liability?
You need to return to planet reality!
What on earth were you trying to do by asking me rhetorical questions that had absolutely nothing to do with my comment?
🙂 🙂 🙂 :
ROFL
Adam Smith:
September 15th, 2011 at 10:29 pm
Wrong. They have no authority to make any decisions, so saying they can rule well is a contradiction in terms. Again you are ultimately proposing that some dictatorships are good, which is an affront to basic principles of liberty and democracy which says people should have a say in how they are governed.
You are again creating a strawman that I am not arguing. Dictators rule. I have not said whether they rule through any moral right or not. So you again are changing the subject and you can argue all you want with yourself.
You have this terrible habit of just stating things that are flat out untrue. Queen Elizabeth II’s full title is the following:
I made no statement, true or not. I used sarcasm to show you are wrong. “by the grace of god” is not divine. Learn English.
Adam Smith:
September 15th, 2011 at 10:37 pm
[Ignorance alert! Congress has nothing to do with it. It is called the Constitution. Congress did not pass the first amendment. The states did. ]
Oh ffs mate, I can’t believe I need to tell you the history of the bill of rights.
The bill of rights was an act of the U.S. congress passed in 1789. It then came into effect (i.e. became part of the constitution) when it had been ratified by 3/4 of the states, which happened in 1791.
On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States therefore proposed to the state legislatures 12 amendments to the Constitution that met arguments most frequently advanced against it. Articles 3 to 12, ratified December 15, 1791, by three-fourths of the state legislatures, constitute the first 10 amendments of the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights. Article 2 concerning “varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives” was finally ratified on May 7, 1992 as the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. The first amendment, which concerned the number of constituents for each Representative, was never ratified.
Dr. Adim S. (I’m using incomplete names now so that I can’t possibly be sued for defamation) Should better educate himself. The Declaration of Independence says:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Therefore it is perfectly correct to thank God.
Adim S. says, with regard to a government by and for the people, “that is a sentiment that I strongly agree”. That is good because the Declaration of Independence goes on to say:
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
But however unpopular the carbon tax is, I hear Adim S. say a lot about how people should “get over it” “it is going to happen” “move on”*
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are. ~ H.L. Mencken
Good Point Mark D,
We are most certainly being ‘dictated to’ as far as the Carbon Tax (and the implementation of the false economy ETS) is concerned.
Our present Govt and our present Mr Smith seem to have completely blurred the definitions of ‘democracry’ and a ‘dictatorship’.
His ‘get over it it’s going to happen anyway whether you like it or not’ clearly demonstrates that.
He seems to also think that the current Govt has been given a mandate to interfere in places that no Australian Govt has assumed to tread before.
A lot of assumptions are being made here.
I would put that on the ‘dictatorship’ side of this blurred definition.
It would be easy to find out for sure and kill off this whole damaging, obsessive and expensive debate.
Hold an election!
If they are returned then they have been given the mandate to continue with this obsession with the climate/weather and the evil pollutant CO2.
If they’re so sure they’re right….what is their problem?
I think Dr Adam is disingenuous with his advocacy of nuclear, knowing as he does that his fellow travellers on the AGW bandwagon would never allow it.
Excuse me? Support for nuclear power and cutting carbon emissions are not mutually exclusive. A draw your attention, for example, to the very excellent blog Brave New Climate written by Professor Barry Brook: http://bravenewclimate.com/
In your didactic pronouncements at 543, Dr Adam, about defamation do you mean to say that the primary source of anything defamatory is not responsible for their words while the publisher carries the entire burden of liability?
No I did not make this claim at all. I simply pointed out that BOTH the person who writes the comment AND the publisher, in this case the person who runs this website, can BOTH be sued for defamation.
Joanne’s assertion that it is the responsibility of posters to not post defamatory comments is not enough to insulate her and this site from defamation action. She has a responsibility as the publisher of this site to ensure that any potentially defamatory comments are taken down ASAP.
Now you make think that such laws are unfair, but that is the law as it currently stands. Stating in court something like “I shouldn’t be sued because I didn’t write the comment, I simply allowed it to be published” is not a defense against defamation in Australia.
[learn english.]
Dear oh dear Phil, that very quote that you cut and pasted points out how you are wrong. In fact, it is the very first clause:
On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States therefore proposed to the state legislatures 12 amendments to the Constitution…
How could the congress sit if the constitution hadn’t first been adopted in 1788?
How could the congress put forward the bill of rights to amend the constitution if the constitution hadn’t been ratified in 1788?
The bill of rights is called the bill of rights because it was a bill of the U.S. congress that then had to be ratified by 3/4 of the states to become part of the constitution.
I mean that is HOW amendment to the U.S. consitution is acheived. Article V explains the procedure:
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution…
Now there actually is a mechanism for the states to propose constitutional amendments. But that mechanism was not used for the bill of rights which was passed by the congress in 1789, and then came into effect when ratified by 3/4 of the states in 1791.
You can have your own opinion on whether or not this was a good or bad thing. But what you can’t continue to do is say that the U.S. congress didn’t pass the bill of rights, because that is just factually inaccurate!
Dr. Adim S. (I’m using incomplete names now so that I can’t possibly be sued for defamation):
I’m assuming you made this comment as a joke, because animosity does not necessarily mean someone can’t be sued for defamation in Australia.
Therefore it is perfectly correct to thank God.
Well point to me where I have argued otherwise?
But however unpopular the carbon tax is, I hear Adim S. say a lot about how people should “get over it” “it is going to happen” “move on”*
Well they should, because to stop it you needed Tony Abbott to win the last election, but he lost so now you’ll be stuck with an ETS, that was the simple point I was making.
And there is nothing stopping a future government from repealing the ETS. They’d just have to pay out something like $20 billion in order to do so, but no government has that kind of cash laying around because at the end of the day most parties agree on what government spending should be and just argue around the margins.
Our present Govt and our present Mr Smith seem to have completely blurred the definitions of ‘democracry’ and a ‘dictatorship’.
What a sad state of affairs the reactionary right has arrived at when it can’t differentiate between a democratically elected government it doesn’t like and genuine dictatorships throughout history.
What an affront to all those innocent people who died at the hands of fascism and communism during the 20th century.
It is this sort of idiotic hyperbole – of putting on the same plane a government you will vote against at the next election – and governments that simply didn’t allow their populace a free and fair vote that makes many think the reactionary right has gone wacky.
Stick to the issues and get rid of the hyperbole. If you were living in a dictatorship you simply wouldn’t be able to go on an internet forum and express your opinions however well or ill-informed they happen to be.
Dr Adam @575; I am well aware of professor Brook’s stance on the issues of AGW and nuclear; the fact is this government through its carbon tax is promoting wind and solar [w&s] not nuclear; to the tune of $10 billion:
Is this what you support? If not there is no rational justification for a carbon tax because nuclear can compete with coal in any event; however coal is itself capable of producing power while reducing CO2 emissions:
There is nothing wrong in supporting more efficient production of energy but that is light-years away from the AGW based drive to subvert cheap and efficient power. At the end of the day all your arguments are junk because AGW is a failed theory with vast refutation and no verification.
571 Therefore it is perfectly correct to thank God.
Well point to me where I have argued otherwise?
At 561 you say:
Well, rather than thanking god,…..
But just so there are not any future misunderstandings, do you believe in God the Father, maker of Heaven and Earth? The Holy Trinity? Or that our rights are given by God?
PS, I completely understand if this line of questioning causes some discomfort to others here. To be clear, I don’t intend to proselytize at Jo’s site but Adam has been a little hard to pin down on other issues sometimes. So lets try questions on Faith.
1, Force companies to pay for permits to do what they are already doing
2, Slowly strangle these companies by reducing the amount of permits available
3, Hobble the field of emerging competition by banning technologies that require either splitting or joining of atoms and ban the building of dams.
4, Generously fund competition that does not get hobbled (see 3)
5, Silence pesky journo’s that point out the flaws and ask tricky questions by threatening them with an inquiry and a need for a licence to print.
6, Write legislation in such a way that makes it unconstitutional for the next government to dissmantle the legislation unless they pay billions in compensation.
7, Dream of the day when they are showered with rose petals as they stride down the street basking in the glory of the utopian world they have created.
The driving force behind all this is that they know what is best for us, do not question what they do for they know best, they will not explain their actions to us because we are too stupid to understand. This is essentially a description of a dictatorship.
Mark whilst i do not want to skewer A dim S@#$%’s response (naming convention changed to overt future litigation)i think that you will find A dim S%^& will be an avid beleiver in the existance of a diety. This belief is in fact a prerequisite
Oh by the way for those that dont know the UN is about to vote on whether Palistine is to be accepted as the 194th member and therefore be recognised as an independant country. As the US has no right of veto on this vote Israel are in a state of panic.
Countries are being threatened by the US that if they vote “yes” they will lose there weapons humanitarian funding, whilst Isreal are just making threats.
Expect the odd false flag between now and next week and remember to ask yourself *why would Palistine launch bottle rockets into Isreal on the eve of such an historic vote*.
Expect Turkey, Syria and Egypt to continue to reject Israeli influence which is causing this region to be on the brink of a new middle east war as tensions rise leading up to the vote.
If the UN vote in favour of the Palistinians then Israel must cease and desist all arparthied actions (building of walls, check points, bulldozing of Palistinian homes for Jewish settlements etc) immediately if not then Israel could/should/will be charged with crimes against humanity etc so there is a lot hanging on this vote.
The question is will Israel invoked the “Sampson policy”? I hope they dont………….
If Israel is faced with intransigence on the part of the Arab leadership then it is almost certain they will invoke the “Sampson policy”; why wouldn’t they?
Arab politicians and despots love Israel because they can focus attention away from their own poor performance as leaders.
The Arabs have Israel while here in Australia we have grog and rugby league to divert our national attention away from poor and self serving governments.
I feel pretty sure that what was meant was ‘The Samson Option’.
That book refers to the nuclear strategy whereby Israel would launch a massive nuclear retaliatory strike if the state itself was being overrun, just as the Biblical figure Samson is said to have pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who had gathered to see him humiliated.
Google is your friend Tony, a quote from the horses mouth during the Al Aqsa intifada
“We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’ I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”
Martin Van Creveld.
Anyway as i was saying i hope saner minds prevail in Tel Aviv if the UN vote goes against them.
Hmm!
Don’t think of this as an indicator when you think of me from now on. In my mid to late teens I was involved with Youth Groups in the Baptist Church, and oddly, there was quite a lot of intellectual discussion in that one group I was with stemming oddly from Bible Study groups. My time in the Air Force saw me drift away from that group, but during those discussions, context was placed into what was stated in The Bible, referencing it to current times.
I’m reminded from quite a number of those discussions of what is now called The Jezreel Valley in the Lower Galilee Basin in Israel.
The Southern part of this vast land tract was once called the Valley of Meggido, named after the ancient city that once existed in that Valley.
It was the site of many battles throughout the Centuries, and is reputed to be the site of the Ultimate battle, a name derived from that ancient city Meggido.
That battle is euphemistically referred to as ‘Armageddon’.
It gives some added context to ‘The Samson Option’.
Apparently the labor governmet has allowed us to have our say in this,but we only have 6 days to post submissions as follows
Posted on September 16, 2011 09:52
Australians have less than a week to make submissions on Julia Gillard’s carbon tax that she explicitly promised to never introduce.
Yesterday the Labor-Greens dominated inquiry into the 1,100-plus pages of carbon tax legislation resolved to give Australians just six days to make submissions to the inquiry, despite the massive impact this tax will have.
The committee was also advised that there was not enough time to hold hearings in all states. Most Australians will miss out on the chance to be heard, with those outside of the eastern states or in regional Australia likely to have to resort to phone or video conferencing at best.
Despite Julia Gillard making it as hard as possible for Australians to have their say on her carbon tax, I urge Australians to make their views known by lodging a submission, no matter how brief.
Written submissions must be received by next Thursday, 22 September. They can be emailed to [email protected] or posted to the select committee care of Parliament House, Canberra.
Labor is already denying Australians a vote on whether or not to have a carbon tax, but hopefully people will not allow Julia Gillard’s tactics to silence them as well.
Documents from the Australian Electoral Commission state that the disqualification of the Commonwealth of Australia renders a person incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a member of either House. The disqualifications operate from the time the process of election starts, that process includes Nomination of Candidates.
On 1st January 2004, the Government of Western Australia, without referendum process, removed the State of Western Australia from the Crown of the United Kingdom and as such committed treason against the Constitution. After 1st January 2004, all Senators and House of Representatives from Western Australia did conceal this material fact from the people of Western Australia, and the Commonwealth of Australia.
By so doing Senators and House of Representatives from Western Australia already ‘Attainted of Treason’, did sit in the Senate and House of Representatives in the Howard / Costello reign in Constitutional Breach of Section 44 of the Commonwealth Constitution Act.
Dr Adam @575; I am well aware of professor Brook’s stance on the issues of AGW and nuclear; the fact is this government through its carbon tax is promoting wind and solar [w&s] not nuclear; to the tune of $10 billion:
And I think this is wrong; nuclear should be eligible for some of this funding because it is a clean energy source.
But just so there are not any future misunderstandings, do you believe in God the Father, maker of Heaven and Earth? The Holy Trinity? Or that our rights are given by God?
No I don’t think human rights are given by god. The idea that humans are all born with the same moral worth is ultimately something invented by humans.
I can appreciate why the framers of the U.S. constitution worked on the assumption that rights were divinely inherited. But we must remember that the constitution was written long before the Theory of Evolution.
Of course some of the U.S. founding fathers were actually secularists and at the very least agnostics and in some cases quite possibly atheists. The most notable example is Thomas Jefferson.
Mark whilst i do not want to skewer A dim S@#$%’s response (naming convention changed to overt future litigation)i think that you will find A dim S%^& will be an avid beleiver in the existance of a diety. This belief is in fact a prerequisite
Well sorry to disappointed you, but I’m an atheist.
On 1st January 2004, the Government of Western Australia, without referendum process, removed the State of Western Australia from the Crown of the United Kingdom and as such committed treason against the Constitution.
The bill of rights was an act of the U.S. congress passed in 1789
Adam Smith:
September 16th, 2011 at 10:19 am
[learn english.]
Dear oh dear Phil, that very quote that you cut and pasted points out how you are wrong. In fact, it is the very first clause:
On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States therefore proposed to the state legislatures 12 amendments to the Constitution…
Knowing Adam’s limited grasp of the English language, I highlight for others the difference and why my suggestion to “learn English” was written. First off, Congress does not “pass Acts”. that is a royalty (the ones he maintains are immoral) term. Second off, a proposal is a suggestion, not an “act” (and indeed, the actual Bill Of Rights was a condition of the states to ratify the constitution, so it started in the states, not Congress).
The bill of rights is called the bill of rights because it was a bill of the U.S. congress that then had to be ratified by 3/4 of the states to become part of the constitution.
They were called the “Bill of Rights” because they were based upon the English “Bill of Rights” enacted in 1689 and upon the Virginia Bill of Rights, adopted in 1776. It had nothing to do with being a bill in congress since Amendments to the Constitution are not Bills, but amendments. And the term predated the creation of the US (as indicated, most states demanded them before ratifying the Constitution).
You can have your own opinion on whether or not this was a good or bad thing. But what you can’t continue to do is say that the U.S. congress didn’t pass the bill of rights, because that is just factually inaccurate!
I have freely admitted several times before that I am woefully uneducated on Australian laws and their Constitution. Indeed, Joanne’s site has provided me with a lot of education on that subject (except from Adam Smith). However, Adam Smith has yet to admit he is wrong. And he has been wrong in every debate we have had. I just showed him were he was wrong again. But instead of manning up and saying “oops! My mistake”, he doubled down on stupid. That is his choice.
What a sad state of affairs the reactionary right has arrived at when it can’t differentiate between a democratically elected government it doesn’t like and genuine dictatorships throughout history.
I think everyone can differentiate. Your problem is that you cannot discuss rationally. You interject polemics into the discussion when all anyone else is doing is commenting on the similarities and differences of the subject. No one has voiced “support’ for anything on the subject of dictators, merely noting their characteristics.
I found this on the internet and thought it might keep Adam Smith busy for a while….
HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT AUSTRALIA? By Michael Baker
How much do you know about Australia’s constitutional/political system: Past & Present? Try this simple TRUE / FALSE TEST.
1. The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900 is United Kingdom legislation. TRUE / FALSE?
2. Under the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900 sovereignty rests with the Queen and not with the Australian people. TRUE / FALSE?
3. That Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is appointed to Her position as Queen by the U.K. Parliament. TRUE /FALSE?
4. That clause 8 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900 describes the Commonwealth of Australia as a colony. TRUE / FALSE?
5. That under ‘Australia’s’ Constitution all Australian politicians, judges, lawyers and many others must swear allegiance to a Sovereignty that has not existed for more than 86 years. TRUE / FALSE?
6. That the ‘Australian’ Constitution – being a colonial Act of the U.K. Parliament – does not contain any elements of civil rights (such as; the right to private property, freedom of expression and freedom of movement, etc). TRUE / FALSE?
7. That under the ‘Australian’ Constitution the unelected Governor-General is commander in chief of the Australian military forces and that he holds this position because he is the Queen’s representative. TRUE/ FALSE?
8. That Australia is the only O.E.C.D. nation not to have a constitutionally enforceable Bill of Rights. TRUE / FALSE?
9. In the years 1973, 1983, 1985 and 1986 the Federal Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia consistently rejected Bills of Rights for the Australian people and consequently have denied Australian citizens even the fundamental human rights enshrined in the U.N.’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966; although the Australian government was a signatory to that Covenant. TRUE / FALSE?
10. That unenacted British law (common law) continues to be applied in Australian courts even though those to whom it is applied are denied all entitlements under British law (and this situation can apply to tourists to Australia). TRUE / FALSE?
If you answered 100% TRUE to each and every question, not only are you 100% correct, you are also not an Australian politician, judge, lawyer or academic. CONGRATULATIONS!!
(For an in depth analysis of Australian political philosophy and practice refer to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll).
Yes, that’s right – The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900 is legislation of the United Kingdom Parliament at Westminster, being enacted into law on the 9th of July, 1900, to come into effect on the 1st of January, 1901. Which of course, it did!
Under that Act – being an Act of the U.K. Parliament – sovereignty rests with their Queen. The Oath of Allegiance which still must be used by all of Australia’s politicians, judges, public servants and others, is contained in a Schedule to the Act and reads:
“I, A.B. do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Her heirs and successors according to law. SO HELP ME GOD!”
Largely unrecognized by most people, because its not something that grabs the attention, the Monarchs of the United Kingdom have been Statutory Monarchies since the Act of Settlement, 1701 (U.K.). That is, the Kings and Queens of the U.K. have been appointed for more than 300 years by an Act of the Westminster Parliament. The oath of allegiance quoted above makes this crystal clear: “…Her heirs and successors according to law,” and, what’s more, the law that decides Queen Elizabeth’s heirs and successors is not Australian law, its purely U.K. law and always was!
This hardly noticed fact has some interesting consequences. It means that the U.K. Parliament is the supreme authority in the U.K. – with or without a monarch, after all they appoint them! It means that currently a monarch of the U.K. cannot be a Roman Catholic and remain as the monarch.( see the Act of Settlement 1701). Essentially and literally, the U.K. Parliament is the supreme Authority within Australia’s political system and has been since Captain James Cook landed at Botany Bay on the east coast of the Australian continent in 1770. The chain of command runs like this: U.K. Parliament> the Monarch> the Australian Governor-General> the Federal Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia (from which is selected a government).
As an extreme example, but one that proves the point: if the U.K. decided to become a republic where would that leave the so-called independent nation of Australia? The Australian political, judicial and public service systems cannot operate without a Monarch who is appointed by the U.K. Parliament!!
Also and unrecognised by the Australian public at large, ‘their’ constitution works simply because it is no longer adhered to. Take, for example, the powers of the Queen’s representative, the Governor-General. This individual can act under the ‘Australian’ Constitution like a dictator! The fact that since 1901 they have not done so is beside the point. The dismissal of the popularly elected Labor Party federal government in 1975 by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr demonstrated to all who cared to see that in the late twentieth century the non-elected Queen’s man was still a force to be reckoned with in the free democracy of backward looking Australia.
Moreover (and here the situation becomes truly laughable) the ‘Australian” Constitution – being trapped in a time-warp at the end of the 19th century – only recognises the Monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which is a political entity that has not existed since the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922!
So, what are the practical, down-to-earth consequences of all this?
First, that the Australian people have been denied their freedom, independence and sovereignty since at least 1945, when Australia became a member of United Nations. That the Australian people have been denied an effective say as to how they run their country and hence their own lives! Second, that the obligations contained in all of the international treaties to which Australia – through its governments – is a signatory, may be unenforceable. This could have very wide implications. Third, of debatable importance but of definite interest, will be how Australia’s politicians, judges and lawyers try to justify themselves. They can either admit that they knew the truth and therefore that they were parasites of the system, or they can admit their ignorance and thereby the fact that they were negligent by not understanding the very basis of the profession from which they have all happily gained so much. It will be an excruciation choice but one made all the more so for Australia’s highest Judges – the various Chief Justices – by the fact that important documents explaining the situation in detail were delivered to them by courier as long ago as 1999.
But surely Australia’s politicians know that the political system, which gives them so much, is flawed? Unfortunately, the majority do not! A politician needs no formal qualifications to attain high office and history shows that the average Australian politician is below average! Moreover, any new idea, much less any new critical idea based on history, law and exhaustive research, must begin as a minority opinion and there are no vote-winners in minority opinions. Why rock the boat, particularly when you have a first-class cabin (albeit on the Titanic)?
Some may wonder why the media has never ‘picked up’ on the story, but the answers are obvious. In Australia the media is interested in sensationalism and sport. Sensationalism sells and sport is one of Australia’s few fields of successful endeavour. If the international media was at any time interested – and for the most part it was not – their investigative journalism skills vanished after any of their initial suspicions were refuted by the Australian government’s own Department of Foreign Affairs. One telephone call was all it took, for modern investigative journalism always takes the line of least persistence!
In short, the rest of the world was preoccupied. Moreover, the parasitic existence of the United Nations as a self-congratulatory organization for those involved in its self-perpetuating, busy-body activities can be all too clearly seen by anyone who wishes to take even a cursory look! That august body never raised a finger to even try to prevent one of its founding members from continuing to breach its own Charter (in particular Articles 2, 4, 6, 102 and 103, all of which guarantee the right of self-determination!).
The machinations of the United Kingdom’s power-brokers remain largely motivated by a polished reticence to relinquish the trappings of empire. By applying their legislative power to lands no longer under the sovereign authority of the U.K. parliament and in jurisdictions no longer dependencies of the U.K., the very best that can be said is that Queen Elizabeth II has been misled and the laws of Her own kingdom subverted. This is the best that can be said.
The lack of any effective action by ‘those in the know’ to redress the problem – both in the U.K. and Australia – and despite numerous opportunities to do so, is proof of many things, not least being that corruption gives power and absolute corruption gives absolute power. The United Kingdom’s courts failed to do the right thing – with Justice Lightman admitting that the Australian Prime Minister, John Winston Howard flew to London and put pressure on him to decide Mr. Fitzgibbon’s case in the way he did!!
With the problem ready to replicate itself in Canada and New Zealand and the possibility and consequences of such action spreading, perhaps we should all wish the British people the best of their own luck! They may yet need it, because even if the U.K. government has a brilliant ‘Spin-Doctor’ the world can be a very lonely – if more democratic – place.
Ignorance of the law is no defence; all the more so if you were instrumental in putting that law in place!
So why not visit Australia – a land lost in time? Simply ‘put a shrimp on the barbie’ and settle back and watch the nation struggle to reclaim its 19th century colonial past as it lurches into the 21st century backwards.
Never happy with its advance from being a child of Britain to a sovereign adult nation, Australia may yet declare its adolescent longings to the world: almost free, semi-independent, burdened by responsibility, awkwardly immature and not quite certain why it feels so proud of its ‘hand-me-down’ Constitution, borrowed legal system and second-hand politics.
Believe it, or not!
Joosse’s Case
Joosse’s case is important because it was one of the first in a long line of matters where
Australians placed the crucial issues of our history and the foundations of our future before the Australian and eventually, British and European court systems.
All of these courts sold out on every Australian, New Zealander and Canadian.
Joosse’s case – transcript and judgement – lays out those issues.
Refer to: (‘ Joosse High Court of Australia Transcript and Judgement.pdf )
Under that Act – being an Act of the U.K. Parliament – sovereignty rests with their Queen. The Oath of Allegiance which still must be used by all of Australia’s politicians, judges, public servants and others, is contained in a Schedule to the Act and reads:
“I, A.B. do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Her heirs and successors according to law. SO HELP ME GOD!”
I’ll just point out here that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are the first Australian Prime Ministers who DID NOT swear loyalty to the Queen when they took the office office. Here is the words Rudd used:
I, Kevin Michael Rudd, do swear that I will well and truly serve the Commonwealth of Australia, her land and her people in the office of Prime Minister, so help me God.
Well, gee instead of writing childish nonsense is it so much to ask for you to actually engage with my points?
and this:
What on earth were you trying to do by asking me rhetorical questions that had absolutely nothing to do with my comment?
🙂 🙂 🙂
Apart from a different use of sentence structure and vocabulary of course.
You most defintely asked rhetorical questions….there was no need for me to answer them.
That’s why people use the lterary device….the answer is embedded in the question.
Even if you don’t think atmospheric carbon pollution is a problem, doesn’t it make sense for Australia to use our fossil fuels as efficiently as possible?
If we are going to burn coal to produce electricity, shouldn’t we get the absolute most energy out of each unit of coal so we don’t use up our coal as quickly?
Isn’t it only fair that the current generation conserve fossil fuels and use them as efficiently as possible so they are available to be used for future generations?
I laughed because those questions were completely unrelated to the point of my post.
So if your question was: do I believe that the present action in politics can achieve these things?… then …if you actually read my comments……the answer to THAT question is most definitely NO!
I do not believe a policy that assumes a bureaucracy can manage/ mitigate/change the climate/weather through a falsely created market for a valueless product can achieve any of these goals successfully.
In fact I will repeat that I think it is an extraordinary and expensive conceit for a bureaucracy to beleive it can manage/ mitigate/control the climate/weather.
As well as that I can see that the science around AGW is unravelling.
These are 2 different points.
See the problem we’re having here?
And before you get totally didactic and give me yet another lecture and make totally unsupported statements about my character (or lack thereof)…..
Nah! forget it….
I know that’s your MO anyway.
I laughed because those questions were completely unrelated to the point of my post.
So if your question was: do I believe that the present action in politics can achieve these things?… then …if you actually read my comments……the answer to THAT question is most definitely NO!
I do not believe a policy that assumes a bureaucracy can manage/ mitigate/change the climate/weather through a falsely created market for a valueless product can achieve any of these goals successfully.
In fact I will repeat that I think it is an extraordinary and expensive conceit for a bureaucracy to beleive it can manage/ mitigate/control the climate/weather.
As well as that I can see that the science around AGW is unravelling.
These are 2 different points.
See the problem we’re having here?
And before you get totally didactic and give me yet another lecture and make totally unsupported statements about my character (or lack thereof)…..
Nah! forget it….
I know that’s your MO anyway.
None of this answers any of the questions that I asked. You’re simply avoiding the issues.
But Adam?
I didn’t need to answer those questions.
They were rhetorical.
Do you not understand what a rhetorical question is?
Surely not?
You keep asking them.
But Adam?
I didn’t need to answer those questions.
They were rhetorical.
Well they actually weren’t. You could say that we shouldn’t bother about energy efficiency, and that the current generation shouldn’t worry about the state of our natural resources that are left for future generations.
Adam,
But why on earth would I say that when your question had the answer embedded in it?
I certainly don’t believe that we shouldn’t bother about energy efficiency….what would lead you to believe that….nothing I have posted that’s for sure.
Of course they were lovely questions, but they were most certainly rhetorical.
I actually stated my position about my beliefs which pointed out that all of the stated goals in your beautifully constructed rhetorical questions will not be achieved by this insane obsession with the carbon tax on its way to an ETS.
Savvy?
I can repeat it for you if you like, just in case you missed it?
I do not believe a policy that assumes a bureaucracy can manage/ mitigate/change the climate/weather through a falsely created market for a valueless product can achieve any of these goals successfully.
In fact I will repeat that I think it is an extraordinary and expensive conceit for a bureaucracy to beleive it can manage/ mitigate/control the climate/weather.
As well as that I can see that the science around AGW is unravelling.
These are 2 different points.
See the problem we’re having here?
Adam,
Simple answer for you.
The REAL market not the ‘sleight of hand’ economic travesty that you have relentlessly pushed here.
The REAL market would likely be interested in Hydro or Nuclear power & they are both efficient and ‘clean’
This legislation is forcing the market towards wind and solar and intending to use a merry go round of taxpayer money to do it.
They can’t cut it and they are mind blowingly expensive.
And BTW Adam, we already have the technology to burn coal more efficiently.
Didn’t you know that?
The Australian Constitution is an Act of the UK parliament.
The Queen is appointed by the Uk parliament.
Kevin Rudd and the Queen are in error or worse in giving the presumption of their authority to write the document “Letters Patent Relating to the Office of Governor General of the Commonwealth of Australia -21 August 2008” in which among other things the oath of allegiance was changed.
The four page document was signed by the Queen on the top right hand corner of the first page – Why? Kevin Rudd simply signed the fourth page Kevin Rudd – Prime Minister.
The office of Governor-General is covered comprehensively in the appendix’s to the UK Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia and as such alterations to the Act can only be made by the UK parliament.
The REAL market not the ‘sleight of hand’ economic travesty that you have relentlessly pushed here.
This makes no sense. If it is cheaper to waste raw materials and energy, then that is what the market will dictate. If you want to increase efficiency you need an incentive of some sort, which means a cost. That’s just basic economics.
The REAL market would likely be interested in Hydro or Nuclear power & they are both efficient and ‘clean’
A low carbon price makes nuclear relatively cheaper than fossil fuels. Without a carbon price inefficient coal is cheaper than nuclear.
So again you demonstrate that you haven’t really thought through your position.
This legislation is forcing the market towards wind and solar and intending to use a merry go round of taxpayer money to do it.
I agree that nuclear should count as a clean energy source and should be eligible for funding.
They can’t cut it and they are mind blowingly expensive.
And BTW Adam, we already have the technology to burn coal more efficiently.
Didn’t you know that?
We may have the technology, but it isn’t in use in Australia because it is cheaper to burn things inefficiently.
See the contradiction in what you are saying? On the one hand you say just let the market figure it out, but the market won’t prioritise efficiency, it will prioritise the lowest cost, which actually means inefficient generation. It means leaving crappy brown coal power stations open instead of opening new efficient black coal power-stations. It means sticking with fossil fuels instead of going to nuclear which with a low carbon price is cheaper than the most efficient coal power stations.
The Australian Constitution is an Act of the UK parliament.
Why thank you, but I already knew this.
The Queen is appointed by the Uk parliament.
Wrong. The Queen is appointed by divine right. The UK Parliament can simply amend the laws of succession, but they haven’t been changed for I think 200 years.
The office of Governor-General is covered comprehensively in the appendix’s to the UK Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia and as such alterations to the Act can only be made by the UK parliament.
Completely wrong. The UK parliament does not have any power to change any Act of the Australian parliament. The UK Parliament gave up this power when the Statute of Westminister was passed by the UK and Australian parliaments.
Dear Mr W…,
Thank you for your letter of 29 October. Although you
state that you are not a lawyer you are on the right track in
expressing the view that the Constitution cannot be altered
under Section L2B to remove the Crown from the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth was established not by the
Constitution but by the Constitution Act which sets out the
Constitution in Section 9 of that Act. Section 1-28 gives
power to amend the Constitution but not the Constitution Act.
As you have recognised the Constitution Act establishes
Australia as an “indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the
Crown”.
The Constitution Act was an Act of the British
Parliament and for that reason cannot be amended by the
Australian Parliament. The British Parliament has by the
Australia Act 1986 terminated its power to legislate for
Australia. Theoretically no one can repeal the Constitution
Act. In practice, if all the Parliaments concerned (British,
Australian and the States) did legislate to amend the
Australia Act that would be effective although it would amount
1ega1ly to a revolution.
Like many other legal questions this one is not
altogether free from doubt but in my opinion which I have
expressed above is shared by a number of other lawyers. The
opinion has been expressed in public but it has received
littIe media attention.
Yours sincerely,
[Sir Harry Gibbs]
No Adam,
I haven’t demonstrated that I haven’t thought through my position.
You haven’t recognised my argument.
If I believed for one teensy weensy second that this whole process was intended to help us move towards Nuclear and Hydro (and whatever other proven, efficient ,cost effective methods there are), I would be much more able to live with this process.
However, that is not the stated goal at all and unless you can’t read you must know that too!
You are insistently claiming that this will enable the introduction of nuclear energy….READ THE LEGISLATION….it will not.
It is very painfully obvious it will take years for them to have enough sense to get to that sensible place.
The subsides and cuts and paper credits are going to wind and solar and talking about Tim Flannery’s pet, geothermal.
Even helping existing energy companies to move faster towards the more efficient burning of coal would make far more sense….but NOOOOOOO!…..they’re not going to do that either!
You wonder why I am so sure this policy and the absolute blind refusal to pay attention to some common sense is headed for disaster?
Look no further than the MDB. They have already done to the essential service and essential product of water as what they are in the process of doing to the essential service and essential product of energy.
The result? EVERYONE PAYS for no acheivable gain and no net benefit.
NEXT?
Because the ‘powers that be’ have refused to upgrade in concert with the growing population and growing demands…..all because they have a much holier and nobler goal than that…..there will not be enough for everyone to share.
That means that the people who need reasonable access to that esential service cannot produce.
Whether it be manufactured goods, building services or food…if they can’t get the access to the service/product….they can’t do what they would normally do with it.
It’s not rocket science Adam.
The result you claim they’re looking for….is not the one they are claiming they are looking for. Either you’re wrong or they are…which is it?
Have an honest look for heaven’s sake.
And BTW, the other side are no better as far as their failure to invest in infrastructure upgrades goes, but at least they’re now prepared to look at other alternatives. They won’t be stupid enough to enact something that won’t work. Or… if they are… they will pay for it the same as the current government is in the process of doing.
There are many, many traditional Labor voters who are just as disgusted with this insane obsession with the non pollutant CO2. That’s why the current government is in so much trouble.
Haven’t you figured that out yet?
Those so called ‘big polluters’ are the same companies who supply energy to our homes and businesses, the materials that provide the roof over our heads and also supply the food to our tables.
As well as that, they’re the same ones who EMPLOY people.
Think carefully….if you had a choice between keeping your job safe and your family’s jobs safe or getting fired up about taxing ‘big polluters’ over CO2 which you know perfectly well from high school science is not a pollutant…..which way would you be likely to jump?
Especially Adam…if you know those so called ‘big polluters’ are also your employers?
I am astounded that the current Government hasn’t figured out why they are rapidly losing their support base.
Like I said…it’s not rocket science….it’s not even climate science!
It occurs to me that maybe Julia Gillard is hellbent on destroying the ALP.
Hammer – nail – head.
Good on you Fiona. Gillard is a ring-in from the Soviet-era Communist Party in Australia. They always saw their greatest threat to ascendancy as the the Labor party, not the coalition.
JulIAR has no interest in either the environment or CO2. She is on a mission to destroy the Labor Party, and it would appear she is about to succeed.
I just think it’s a pretty weird sentiment, thinking that Gillard is some anti-ALP Communista. Honestly though, I don’t know what her game is. Can’t say I’d have done the same in her position. I think the people want to see more of the ALP left, rather than the poor-mans-liberal-party ALP right faction.
re Scaper @ 5: I hate to say that you are wrong about 203 billion deficit. Not even warm! You should put on the top of that, the deficits for the State governments + the borrowed money by the big city councils, plus over a trillion dollars of private borrowing? You buy from Dick Smith some imported plastic junk, you pay cash; but that money is squandered here. It’s paid by OZ bonds to the Chinese.
If the people know; how much Australia paid interest on the foreign deficit only last year… Plus the trillion tones of minerals and coal gone last year that cannot be sold again. When was in the ground, it was an asset – gone; flushed down the dunny… Is your calculator overheating? Talking only about federal borrowing is: people not to notice how they are topping it up; by mortgaging the individual states. (rabbit out of the hat, trick)
OK,
The clear and present problem facing us at this moment, is the introduction of the Air tax. Once it is in, it is a small step to an ETS, and as New Zealand is learning, almost impossible to unwind.
What can we do, in the next week, and during the time it takes for the legislation to get through Parliament? How are we going to capitalise on the convoy? How are we going to give one or more of the “Independents” cold feet? Who is the wettest of the Labour caucus, what are their vulnerabilities? Who is the best attack dog in the media to unleash on this, and what ammunition would they need?
Short notice, I know, and we should have been thinking about this months ago, but we weren’t, so we just have to be creative now.
What are your ideas, guys?
20
Eco-freaks have a lot to answer for: asbestos and 9-11.
20
Rereke at #1, Totally Agree.
What can we do about this hopeless govt. and the direction they are leading this country?
I believe our best bet, is for the opposition to continue to undermine PM Juliar and the Govt. with the assault on Craig Thompson.
If he breaks, he will resign for sure, and then we have an opening…..
Or we can all go and move to the Czech Republic with their President!! God and Jo Nova help us !!
11
for the headline:
Video:Google backs pig poo carbon offset project
http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=20790&title=VIDEO%3A+Google+backs+pig+poo+carbon+offset+project+
on the propaganda:
9 Sept: Earthtechling: Google Greens The Details On Email, Offsets
by Pete Danko
http://www.earthtechling.com/2011/09/google-greens-the-details-on-email-offsets/
10
Our national credit card debt is now $202.992B.
http://www.aofm.gov.au/default.asp?NavID=22
If you click on the ‘Tenders’ you will see that last week they have issued $2.950B of bonds and notes. You can break these tenders into two parts. Firstly, the short term issues to cover the government’s cash flow deficiency (repaid by PAYG and GST through BAS) issued on the eighth and secondly, the longer term issues that mature from four to twenty years which will be Labor’s legacy to future governments.
I have been watching the tender issues since the debt was only $90B. The government has been spending wildly for no foreseeable benefit.
Now I see that the government is raiding more, yes, more money from the Future Fund, in an attempt to balance the budget.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/labor-plans-future-fund-withdrawal-as-it-takes-aim-at-budget-surplus/story-fn59niix-1226134325846
Last year they raided the Future Fund.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/kevin-rudd-raids-future-funds/story-e6frgczf-1225851598579
“Last night, Mr Costello, who was appointed to the Future Fund board in December by the Rudd government, said Labor’s approach was deeply flawed.
“The HEEF was set up to be a fund in perpetuity to develop world-class Australian universities and the Labor Party has now raided the capital in a short-sighted attempt to spend money today at the expense of tomorrow,” he told The Australian.”
I believe, when this disgusting government is thrown out it will take at least eighteen years to clean up the economic mess that they have created for no net gain in GDP.
10
Just heard on the morning news that the Australian Federal Police are worried about “home grown terror” & broad scale civil unrest.
You have to wonder whether they reckon the economic hardship of unemployment ( Woolongong, Mt Isa etc….) & the future of the mortgages attached to our “Home & Away”real estate market features in their calculations. The Australian Dream is going Green (around the gills). Woo Hoo!
The street riots in London & the unrest in Western Sydney a while back should give them a clue.
This fantastic clean,green,low carbon future will come at a price.
Go Julia!!!!…………just go.
10
What’s going down, down under?….Hey girl, what’s going down, down, down….
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/hey-girl-whats-going-down-down-down/
10
A BRITISH geologist has volunteered to spend 48 hours in an airtight chamber relying on the oxygen produced by plants to survive.
It echoes an experiment first tried by scientist Joseph Priestly in the 1770s, when he showed how a mouse could survive in an airtight chamber full of plants, but not in a box without them.
IT will be filmed for a BBC documentary series on September 16 and 17.
10
Did Gillard have a quiet word to Fairfax, too?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/did_gillard_have_a_quiet_word_to_fairfax_too/
[snip]
THIS IS CENSORSHIP !!!
ELECTION NOW !!!
10
“A BRITISH geologist has volunteered to spend 48 hours in an airtight chamber relying on the oxygen produced by plants to survive.”
Experiments should always have a control. [snip]
10
What a totally novel idea!
Imagine: A scientist who wants to test his idea to “figure out if it was a good idea or a bad idea.” No wonder he’s ignored by the Church of Climatology…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904537404576554750502443800.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
10
Somehow, we need to get the following messages out there because these messages have been lost in the noise:
1. The so called carbon tax is a precurser for a goldman sacs style ets in 2015.
2. Every ets implemntation around the world to date has been a rich sorce of rort and fraud
3. The ETS is a precursor to a global emissions trading scheme. Think Enron
4. These taxes will do nothing to prevent water pollution or anh of the real polluters
5. These taxes have been subsidised to the hilt as a short term measure. Oncethe subsidies are removed -which is the plan- that is when everyone finds out how much this is really going to cost them.
6. Craig Thomson thinks this tax is a greatidea. This should be a warning bell, surely.
10
This sums up the (lack of) integrity of the IPCC/AGW camp.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/09/neglected-truths-of-climate-change
Spread the word and let people know that Gillard’s Gullibles will NOT be forgiven for a very long time (if ever)!
10
Good news?
President Obama reportedly read these words publicly on this 10th anniversary of the frightful events of 11 Sep 2001:
“Be still and know that I am God!
I will be exalted among nations.
I will be exalted on Earth.” – Psalm 46.10
Almost 40 years earlier in Oct 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis [1] convinced less wise leaders in 1971 [2] to save the world from the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation by uniting nations to work together to stop global climate change.
This unscientific charade continued by hiding, avoiding or misrepresenting experimental evidence [3] for decades that
1. Earth’s climate has changed and is changing.
2. The Sun has evolved and is evolving.
3. Life has evolved and is evolving.
4. The Sun is violently unstable.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
1. Khrushchev-Kennedy Letters (Oct 1962) http://www.historyteacher.net/HistoryThroughFilm/FilmReadings/Khrushchev-KennedyLetters-13Days.pdf
2. “Deep historical roots of Climategate” (2011)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/20110722_Climategate_Roots.pdf
3. “The demise of established dogmas on the formation of the Solar System”, Nature 303 (1983) 286
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/swart-1983.pdf
10
Every politician who votes for these pieces of legislation should have their name and electoral office contact details published clearly for the people to let them know their thoughts.
Whenever their name is mentioned in the media, someone should just drop a line to remind people that they voted these heinous pieces of legislation.
This should continue until the legislation is repealed. And probably afterwards as well.
Likewise every politician who votes against this heinous lot of legislation should be praised at every opportunity when their name is mentioned.
10
I haven’t read anything in NZ about this big splash by Gore on Sept 14. Has it been in the news in Australia? I hope not and its turns out to be another poor prediction by Gore.
10
More Lies from Big Chocolate… We all know Climate Change caused the global food shortage!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576529912073080124.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_carousel_1
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Well I guess this Government is about to find out how much patience the Australian public has. I wonder how many protests they will ignore this week.
I also note that articles are popping up that Labor could win an election under Rudd. I wonder… there must be Labor strategists saying: “What if we dump this toxic Rainbow Coalition, dump the taxes, and go it with Rudd?” They might even have a fighting chance againt Abbott under those circumstances. It will be a bit tricky to find a platform of policies they stand for, but seeing as no one believes a word they say that is a moot point.
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Ross @ 15
No, for some strange reason the media are being very coy about it here.
I think maybe even the cultists have gone off the Goracle.
http://climaterealityproject.org/
10
By the way, did I miss something?
What’s with the changed avatars?
I want my vault back.
10
You can upload your own avatar by following the instructions in Jo’s Guide for Commenting
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“Carbon Tax Scam”
“…Not only that, in a complete refutation of the continuing lies of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who constantly states that the deliberately misleadingly named carbon tax will be applied to CO2 emitters, Garnaut literally admitted that the alleged CO2 emitters would not pay a single cent of this tax. He stated the following:
“Australian households will ultimately bear the full cost of the carbon price.”
Ross Garnaut, Labor Government Appointee and Author of the Climate Change Review
So here is the architect of this whole debacle, not even a climate scientist but an economist, admitting that those CO2 emitters listed by the Labor government will not pay the tax, but Australian households will pay it. And who better to know this, than the man who literally is the reason that this idiotic and unjustifiable tax exists.
However, the problem for the Australian public is that the Labor government will continue to push its carbon tax agenda by continuing to trot out these erroneous reports by Garnaut, remembering that at best, they are nothing more than predictions and guesses, fooling some sectors of the voting community into falling for this gigantic carbon tax scam. Many ignorant people in the community will continue to believe that Ross Garnaut is some sort of scientist, not just a bean counter co-opted by the Labor government to drum up their case for this insane cash grab.”
GILLARD ADMITS THAT THE FULL COST OF THE CO2 TAX WILL BE PAID BY END-USERS
http://www.hotheads.com.au/carbon%20tax%20scam.htm
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Here are two questions:
Let’s say I’m burning tyres or chemicals here on my property, or running agricultural chemical waste into Euroka Creek, which flows into the Macleay River…should I be able to buy permits from people who aren’t polluting so I can go on polluting?
If an institution, government or financial body, which accepted that my actions were polluting, offered to be an initiator or intermediary in the sale of those permits which enable me to pollute…are they innocent of polluting?
Have there ever been any other pollutants – any kind, anywhere – treated in this fashion?
By distorting the meanings of words such as “market”, “pollution” and “certainty”, are we asking to be remembered as the Spin Generation?
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BobC @ 20
I HAVE an avatar at gravatar – it’s been the same for over a year now.
This morning it has been changed from my vault door to a funny face.
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mosomo @ 22
Not that I can think of.
The closest thing that comes to mind is the Holy Roman Catholic Church selling indulgences for sin in the Middle Ages.
10
Kevin @ 21
Did you know Ross Garnaut spent a lot of taxpayers money producing a completely worthless report on the wool industry in 1993? God only knows how much taxpayers money he has wasted since.
[snip]
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For a bit of levity . . .
Global warming causing Polaphants . . .
http://www.real-science.com/uncategorized/global-warming-allowing-elephants-linger?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Real-Science%2Ffeed+%28Real+Science%29
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meanwhile GE is set to get plenty from our Govt’s billions for pretending to do something about something:
10 Sept: Forbes: William Pentland: GE Guts Offshore Wind-Power Plans
General Electric, the U.S.-based industrial giant and leading manufacturer of wind-power turbines, is scaling back efforts to expand its presence in the offshore wind power market.
The rationale: there is no meaningful offshore wind market to speak of – at least not yet…
GE is considering laying off about 40 employees in Norway as it scales-back its offshore operations there, according to reports in Recharge. The company has also suspended plans to construct a manufacturing facility in the United Kingdom indefinitely…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/09/10/ge-guts-offshore-wind-power-plans/
hopefully some in canberra will start picketing parliament this week with placards simply saying:
CO2 – NO TAX, NO ETS, NO MANDATE, ELECTION NOW
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Wes in 10,
I heard a joke the other day….”What can a climatologist bring to a astro Physicist meeting?”
The coffee
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It takes a Mad Neocon Canadian give an honest-to-God assessment of what’s become of America in the decade since 911…
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/4473/26
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Some juicy reading !!!
The Michael Smith 2ue emails to Julia Gillard and the Bob Kernohan Statutory Declaration.
http://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2011/09/11/the-michael-smith-2ue-emails-to-julia-gillard-and-the-bob-kernohan-statutory-declaration/
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s criminal history and her hypocrisy with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
http://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2011/08/07/australian-prime-minister-julia-gillard%E2%80%99s-criminal-history-and-her-hypocris-with-wikileaks-and-julian-assange/
Julia Gillard who admitted helping rip off the AWU of over $1million stands by and supports Craig Thomson who is accused of ripping off the Health Services Union. The Australian Labor Party, beautiful one day, perfect the next.
http://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2011/08/28/julia-gillard-who-admitted-helping-rip-off-the-awu-of-over-1million-stands-by-and-supports-craig-thomson-who-is-accused-of-ripping-off-the-health-union-the-australian-labor-party-beautiful-one-day/
Has Julia Gillard blackmailed the Media to cover-up her corrupt past? The Fairfax Media and News Corp scandal.
http://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2011/09/05/has-julia-gillard-blackmailed-the-media-to-cover-up-her-corrupt-past-the-fairfax-media-and-news-corp-scandal/
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Roll over Orwell!
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8297209/mps-get-climate-myth-busters-reminder
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Cut and paste, taken out of context to suit my argument………..
Nevertheless, Stockhausen was wrong. The “greatest work of art” is not the morning of 9/11, with the planes slicing through the building, and the smoke and the screaming and the jumping, and the swift, eerily smooth collapse of the towers.
So if two planes “slicing” through buildings like coke cans making them collapse at free fall speed is not art then the synchronous as yet unexplained collapse at free fall speed by WT7 must be…..yes?
The rest of the post is very apt and the lack of vision shown can be demonstrated here in Oz as well (lets build a whte elephant) but not a dam no, no, no, no, no, no, not a dam.
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CLIMATE INSTITUTE DIRECTORS…….
http://network.conservative.org.au/group/carboncoalition?groupUrl=carboncoalition&id=6306046%3AGroup%3A98&page=6#comments
They are CRIMINALS !
ELECTION NOW !!!!!!!!
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[snip unthreaded does not mean anything goes]
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Damian Allen:
Comments like 34 are helpful how? I assume you do not wish to bring down the calibre of this site. That Garnaut is a bought-and-paid-for shill of Government is quite obvious, but calling for his head is hardly helping the case is it?
(His post is now unapproved.For Jo’s eyes) CTS
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[snip repetition]
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Compared to Stockhausen’s Gesang der Junglinge, the dunny in the South Kempsey Tourist Park is a great work of art.
10
In another disturbing twist, it seems Labor is now willing to bust open the Future Fund which was to remain untouched until 2020 as long as it was below target levels (which it is) just to help them make the aspirational Budget surplus:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/labor-plans-future-fund-withdrawal-as-it-takes-aim-at-budget-surplus/story-fn59niix-1226134325846
It seems Labor is willing to rob the retirement fund of its own employees now…
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Damien@30
I can understand your frustrations but one must be careful of what one writes as legal repercussions can result in the possibility of the owner of this site facing such.
Can a moderator have a look at the post, especially the statement concerning ‘criminal history’? Might be a layman but it does not sit comfortably with my legal understanding.
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At first i thought he was talking about a porno with Vlad impaling his victims (got my websites mixed up). 🙂
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Congratulations to Samantha Stosur winng the US Open Tennis. Great day for Sam and Aussie sport.
10
How easily it happens.
How little some people understand.
This exemplifies the ‘Cascade Failure’ potential of electrical power, and it has lessons for us here in Australia as well.
A small (and in the main, unreported here) glitch caused a blackout in Southern California that affected more than 5 million power consumers, losing their power, and in most cases for up to and more than 2 days.
While working on an electrical circuit, a small area was isolated. As ‘electricity’ (electrical current) travels at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) the current immediately finds an alternate route of least resistance. This overloaded other sections of the grid, and because of this overload, those circuits automatically ‘shut down’ one after the other.
This cascading failure then caused the San Onofre Nuclear power plant (2350MW Nameplate Capacity with 2 reactor/turbine/generators) to shut down.
How?
Part of the triple (and more in some cases) redundancy is that auxilliary power backup systems are in place in case its own power, and power from other areas goes down. The safety systems cause the reactors to be scrammed, (rods being driven back into the pile) something that happens in 0.7 seconds. Once the reactor is shut down, all other safety mechanisms fall into place to provide core pool cooling etc.
However, because the reactors are now shut down, there is no power, hence all that power is taken from the grid, shutting down everything even further in a cascading effect, first one, then the next etc. All of this happens in around one to five seconds ….. all gone.
The remaining power plants cannot handle the overload, and they also then are brought off line.
Now, some areas were back up and running, after a considerable amount of work, in five to 15 hours, but quite a major number of places were without power for that 2 days and even now, some are not up and running, almost 3 days later.
The major problem in all this is that Nuke. While it goes offline, (safely, no problems there) it takes a day and a half to get back up and running delivering power to the grids. Nothing untoward about that, as it’s the same for all large scale plants of this nature.
However, what to look at here is where this actually occurred, California, ‘Green Central’.
That State has assiduously avoided construction of large scale power plants, in the main new coal fired plants, for decades now, and older ones, considering the average age is approaching 50 years, have reached their life expectancy and are closing, with nothing to replace them.
Wind and Solar, especially in ‘Green Central’, are flavour of the month, and have been constructed in that State at a greater rate than for other States.
Because of this, California, with its huge and ever increasing population does not have enough power (read base load here) to cover all its own contingencies, hence power has to be sourced from other surrounding States. Even Hoover Dam Hydro in Nevada sends 60% of its power straight to California.
In doing this, California pays a premium for its electricity, because those other States sell to the highest bidder, and as we all know California has wads of money????? (The State is effectively broke) Californians pay near the highest amount per unit of electricity than all but a few States, and that amount is almost 2.5 cents per KWH higher than the US Average, mainly because of all that renewable power within the State driving up the cost, and also having to purchase power externally.
So California pays almost 14 cents per KWH for its power, and, er, take out your most recent bill here in Oz, where electricity sells retail for around 20 cents per KWH.
Power is so cheap in the US because they have access to huge amounts of power from the Nuclear process, (22% of every watt being consumed) which sells its power to grids at around half that of the next cheapest, coal fired power.
So with this power outage in California, what lessons are there here in Oz that we can learn.
Look no further than Hazelwood.
Shut that down, and take 25% of all Victoria’s power away. Take that power out of the Victorian grid, and there is no power in Victoria.
Not just 25%, all of it, because the other plants just cannot cope with that increased load being placed on it, and power just cannot be imported from other States, because they also have barely enough to go around.
So, two things here.
This is why Hazelwood will not be closed down in the (long) foreseeable future, because that power is critical to actually keeping Victoria ‘running’.
The second is that Hazelwood cannot be closed until there is equivalent power to what it provides already in place and delivering, and tell me, have you heard plans for major scale power replacement in Victoria, and a plant of this nature is almost a decade from thought bubble to power delivery.
So, it’s a wonderful thing (careful Tony, sarc off) to have wind and solar plants mooted to take the place of all this power, but the minute the wind stops blowing and the Sun stops shining, power goes down, and that ‘Cascade effect’ falls into play, and Victoria just, er, shuts down.
This CO2 Tax, and the even more insidious ETS, has as its intent the closing of coal fired power plants, providers of huge amounts of electricity.
As detailed above, those plants will not be shutting down. They will not be cutting back on the amount of power they will be producing. They will not be burning less coal. They will not be emitting less CO2.
All that will be happening is that the Government will be making huge amounts of money from it to bolster their bottom line, or perhaps even to give that money away, so other Countries can, er, lower their emissions.
They will tell you that they are giving some of it back to the people, but when we are taling Billions, what’s a Billion here and there, eh!
Before all you ‘pro Nukes’ rush to reply, saying I’ve made the case for Nuclear power, I’m as big a fan as you are, and, knowing at least something about it, I know that nuclear power in Australia is decades away, and in the interim, Billions of dollars will flow into Government coffers from a ‘captive’ target that can do nothing other than what it already does.
Provide a staple of life that none of us can do without.
This week, Labor politicians are shoring up as a ‘bunch’ to ensure they have the numbers to ram this through.
For one reason only.
Ker ching.
Huge Post here I know, but see how something so tiny can cause so many ever expanding ripples, on every aspect.
Tony.
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Wes @ 29
It’s clear from your post to see that, however unpalatable it may be, Osama and his zealots have “won” the battle they set out to win, bringing down the economic Goliath of the world with a couple of well placed “stones”. Even he could not have guessed that the wildcard in his gambit would have been the economic white anters at Goldman Sachs et al, ironically the very targets of the attack on the twin towers that symbolised the Rockefellers in particular, and the Wall St money men in general. Without their help in eroding their own country’s economic foundation, the hole deck of cards would still be standing and the “American Dream” would march on, not stumbling forth to the precipice over which it is about to fall, if indeed it hasn’t already fallen.
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Bulldust in 37,
And so it begins……………..how long do you think it will take labor to blow that money, and then what we go cap in hand to the IMF?
Jesus F$%^&G wept.
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TFO in 41,
Good post which explains how power systems work well done, on a happier note ze Germans wanted to shut down their aging Nukes and decided to pillage the green fund to build new Coal power plants (there was much gnarling and gnashing of green teeth) however……….ze Gremans did the math and figured out it would cost them 400 billion odd Euro’s just to pay for the derdy polushon permits before they turned a sod of dirt.
Their only option was to stick a few bandaides on their nuke plants, i have recently invested heavily in the European tar and feather manufacturing sector as a retirement fund.
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Winston in 42,
So you agree with the “Spend money on your credit you cant afford or the terurist will have won” mantra?
Dont be silly, the US drove themselves into the problems they have now, the only thing the US manufactures now are shiny new bombs and the only ones they export are the ones they give Israel for free. The re-enactment of the holy crusades coupled with fiscal mismanagement (fraudulent mortgage bundles and government bank bailouts) are the cuase of their problems.
And if you honestly beleive 19 Saudi’s with box cutters brought all this about then you need to do a bit of reading.
Cheers
10
JMD@25:
This was a couple of years after the collapse of the highly dodgy floor price for wool, wasn’t it? The wool industry was in dire straits.
It is all very well to say “worthless report”, but you back this up with zero facts, making it a useless statement. Enlighten us a bit, what recommendations did Ross Make, and were they acted on? If so, is there any evidence that they worked or didn’t work?
10
Only a non skeptic would believe that kerosene [jet fuel] melted the towers steel framework all the way down to the basement while people were standing in the gaping hole left by the plane [see ABC documentary “The Falling Man”.
How come the towers turned to dust?
Has anyone seen a kerosine heater melt?
And then a diesel and paper fire caused WTC7 to collapse just like a planned demolition using explosives. At least that is what it looked like to me.
10
But the men inside the Pentagon also need to know that the bankers want them to lose WWW III. Tell them that the passage of NAFTA in 1994 resulted in sending 50,000 American factories overseas. In 2011 America’s supply lines extend all the way back to China and even then only on credit. It is by design that America must lose a protracted conflict fought without China’s permission.
The bankers want America to lose World War III so the soon to be impoverished citizens cannot demand both the arrest of the bankers and the return of the tens of trillions they stole. They also want to fold a weakened America as a destroyed state into the New World Order with all power securely in the hands of multi-billionaires.
10
Kevin,
6 or so months after the WTC towers went down, I watched a doco hidden away on SBS. It was done from an engineering standpoint, and explained what happened quite effectively.
Where the planes crashed caused an intense fire. In fact the burning fuel found its way down, via gravity, and blew out every window on the ground floor.
At the impact site, it caused an intense fire that melted the surrounding structural steel beams for a number of floors, creating a virtual gap where there was almost nothing.
Above that now hole, was a large number of floors, an absolutely immense weight.
That huge weight then collapsed exactly downwards because now there was nothing to support it.
As that weight moved vertically downwards, it gained momentum, and that, coupled with the immense weight caused the whole structure to collapse as that weight collapsed supporting structural beams that could no longer support the immense weight now collapsing on top of it.
Anything even approaching conspiracy theories that the structure was ‘somehow’ blown in a controlled demolition is not only ridiculous, it is patently laughable in the extreme.
Tony.
10
TonyfromOz,
If I read you right, Australians will be paying much more money for the same or less power. On the other hand, we will continue to burn brown coal in facilities which just get older and crappier.
Meanwhile, 75% of our coal will continue to go offshore to be combusted, and some of that power will be used to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels to be sent back here in order to litter our countryside and NOT replace anything.
I can see where a Ross Garnaut or a Robert Oakeshott might think it’s a good deal. (I can defintely see how a Tony Windsor could turn any land or coal deal into a good deal.) But I’d like to think my species descended from trees and graduated from caves to reason and function a bit better than that.
10
I was surprised that there was barely any mention of the 10th anniversary of September Eleven by the MSN over the weekend and this morning and last week and last weekend and today. 😉
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Over at deltoid in featured ‘steaming toad’ segement, apparently it is my reptilian brain that is rendering me into a life of ‘denial’.
Another book of eco-trash being peddled I’m afraid.
Is there no end to this flanneryish gaia type gibberish ?
10
Hey JB i just gave you a thumbs up.
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Tony,
Thanks for enlightening my wayward thinking.
Next time I need to cut a bit of steel plate or do some welding, I’ll get a kerosine blowtorch.
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Crakar @45
No, I just think that sometimes a straw can break a camel’s back. No doubt the seeds of self-destruction were sowed well before this, but Osama saw a fragility and he exploited it, knowing that the follow on ramifications economically would far exceed the damage done by the act itself. I believe I made it plain later in the comment that living on credit and the false perception of wealth “creation” was exactly what white anted the economy, egged on by Wall St pimps at every turn. I don’t quite see why you think I believed that the US should have spent its way out of trouble by what I said, if anything I suggested the exact opposite.
10
mosomoso,
all of this can be sheeted home directly to complacency.
You would think that with an expanding population, electrical power would need to be expanded in much the same manner.
That program ‘effectively’ stopped in the late 70’s when State Governments, and in nearly every State, stopped the construction of new power plants.
The thinking was that with all those new 70’s plants operating, that would cover things for a while, which in fact was the case at the time.
Population increase is not just an increase to personal electrical power consumption, eg in the residential sector, but across every sector, hence as population increases and moves into ever expanding new suburbs there is a need for power for Commerce, (malls, hospitals, Coles, Woolies etc) Industry for where those people work, electric rail infrastructure, and hundreds of other areas.
So gradually, all that 70’s extra power moves closer toward maximum consumption. Because power is ‘always there’ in our Western World situation, then the thinking is that it always ‘will be there’.
We reach a stage now where all that 70’s extra has been eaten up.
Governments have not bothered to construct new power plants, because after all, all that infrastructure was once in State owned hands.
Then, the big ‘sell off’ started, and here I might suggest it was because those Governments had that ‘tap on the shoulder’ telling them that they were running short, so they needed to construct more of them.
Now, the expense factor came into play.
“Jeez but, that thing is so damned expensive. We need that money for important things mate, not just power, and gee, we’re right now.”
Then, further talking heads in a different faction of the Party in Government mentioned that the whole thing could in fact be used to their advantage. They could sell off the plants, making a shirtload of money (well, not really, as seen in NSW) and then any need for more power could be sheeted home to those
derdy polluders, er,moneygrubbing capitalist bathplugs, er, private operators.Now, when those private operators want to actually do what the Government should have done, construct new large scale plants, eg Mount Piper, and Bayswater, Governments step in and veto it.
Now it’s got to the point where it’s actually too damned late to construct anything to fill the void.
Instead, they seek to pass a Tax to lower emissions, thinking this will solve the problem.
If it wasn’t so serious, you’d have to laugh at these
moronspeople who represent our interests.When the rolling brownouts and blackouts start, those politicians will be lounging around in retirement on the public purse, still thinking they did something worthwhile.
Tony.
10
TFO,
I watched a doco once on SBS as well, not the same one you saw though, this one talked about the fire fighter that made it to the 75th floor and said there is plenty of people trapped (alive but trapped) no raging inferno just a few spot fires 2 hoses would be enough!!!!!
Unfortunately many other fire fighters at the time were running for their lives out of the building because of all the explosions and this lone fire fighter died in the collapse.
The doco i saw even had interviews with firefighters that witnessed the squibs exploding as one put it “pop, pop, pop and then the building came down”. Also in this doco was a transript from a guy who was on the same floor as the one the
coke canjet hit, he said he has a wing in his office but no inferno just a wing where all the fuel once was but no inferno.They also interviewed a guy sitting in the 3rd level basement who got blown off his chair because of an explosion, when he walked out of his office he noted a 50 ton press had been destroyed and moved 40 feet of its foundations, by the time he scrambled the 3 floors of rumble and up to the lobby he could beleive his eyes. The whole lobby was destroyed, not of fire by the inferno but destroyed.
They also talked about the “5 dancing Israelis”, you know the ones that were arrested by the NYC police for dancing and high fiving each other as the towers came down whilst they filmed it all happen. The NYC police found over 10 grand in cash, multiple false passports and they also detected the presence of high explosives in their van. Unfortunately no further evidence could be garnished from them due to the US government stepping in and sending them back to Israel!
I could go on……………
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Oh almost forgot, Kevin in 47 touched on WTC7. I would like to expand on it a little, the first much anticipated NIST report failed to mention WTC7 and its subsequent collapse which in itself is rather enlightening however due to public pressure NIST had a look at it and after years of waiting came back with the astounding comclusion that they do not know why WTC7 collapsed.
Now to understand why WTC7 is the key to understanding this whole issue you need to see the video of it collapsing unlike WTC1 &2 WTC7 is not shrouded in pulverised concrete due to explosions prior to its collapse and what you see is the roof line kink in at the middle and then the whole roof of the building collapses as one which of course can only mean one thing. All 47 major structural beams failed at the exact same time, how is this possible? What could possibly cause every structural beam in that building to fail at exactly the same moment?
It is easy to see why NIST could not find a cause……………
10
Winston in 55,
The point i was making is that whoever was the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks did not force the banks to sell dodgy mortgages as triple AAA rating investments which they on sold to every investor on the planet, the perpetrator of 9/11 did not force the US government to bail out the banks to pay back the money to the investors they ripped off.
The perpetrators of 9/11 are not forcing the US government to assist the banks in foreclosing on homes that have not missed a payment so the banks can get liquidity back onto the spread sheets etc, etc, etc.
10
My assessment of the next 3 years.
Wilkie might pull the plug on the government before the tax comes into effect in 2012 if he doesn’t get his Pokie and Gambling reforms…. Gillard is caught between a rock and a hard place on this issue as the club industry are campaigning hard and will cause massive damage to Labor’s heartland and voters.
If Gillard had any brains, she would abandon this Carbon dioxide tax. It’s going to be a Labor hiding to nothing. The Greens won’t and can’t do anything except hyperventilate if it’s axed…. the Greens wouldn’t want to go to an election because they are going to lose big time….. But of course Gillard won’t use common sense and she’ll attempt to crash through with her CO2 tax. That’s the expression Gillard is using “Crash through”….. and she’ll crash and burn as far as the electorate is concerned. She’ll be thrice fried by her Pokie playing Labor voters and their high electricity bills and lost jobs.
Now whether there is an early election because Wilkie pulls the pin or a normal election two years hence. Tony Abbott and the Coalition will win with an overwhelming majority, The polls show extreme dissatisfaction with Labor that won’t change, he is liable to quickly force the issue by immediately scrapping the now ex Gillard Government’s “Carbon Tax”, which the Green senators will block in the upper house…. they’ll block it twice in the Senate…. That will cause a Double dissolution trigger.
Abbott will dissolve Parliament and go back to the polls. Abbott and the Coalition will win with pretty much an unchanged majority. The political landscape will be in turmoil with Union scandals high on the agenda, international financial problems and rising Domestic and employment promlems…..
Thus, the Green Senate majority will also be wiped from the face of Australian politics, paving the way for wall to wall Coalition State Governments and a Coalition Federal Government that controls both houses. The Labor Opposition will languish as a credible political entity and the Greens will go back to their usual minor party activist weirdo status again…….Very interesting times ahead.
…. and even if the Greens roll over and let Abbott throw out the CO2 Tax…. He will start defunding the Greens and causing them all sorts of grief rolling back ecofascist legislation…. Eventually they will have to reject something onerous to them and trigger a double dissolution…. Or Abbott will strip every cent from the eco funding streams and put it in Abbott’s “Green Army” and roll back any eco regulation that industry needs to rid itself of in order to employ people and get the economy moving again. The Greens will become powerless hysterics on the fringes of politics.
…. as I said. It’s gonna be fun to watch.
10
This is interesting…
The debate gets very cloudy:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_debate_gets_very_cloudy/
10
It’ll all be okay, Tony. I recently filled out this census thingy, and the government has been made aware that the population is now greater than in 1972. (Mind you, it does sometimes feel that Whitlam is still in power.)
10
Tony… indeed the WTC had some unique structural design associated with it being constructed with a tube framework; it made it extremely light (hence the design of its dampening system had to cope with greater potential for sway) but also more fire susceptible (the framework and the central core design contribute). Consequently it had more than the usual amount of fire retardant – asbestos. A building engineer I heard interviewed stated that such buildings are designed with a 2 hours to escape before collapse (presumably after a severe event), as this allows most people to escape.
Kevin, do you actually understand the properties of fire?
10
Interesting concept………….however the designer of the WTC designed it to withstand the impact of a 707 and yet the buildings fell at free fall speed in less than one hour!
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Here is something that might be of interest in the debate, concerning the WTC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cddIgb1nGJ8&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLB3127A47CB2A2223
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Craker… then the design modeling for that impact was not correct. Bloody models.
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TonyfromOz –
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth put out a brilliant 15-minute video for the 10th anniversary. btw their numbers grow all the time. the collapse of WTC7 is still a mystery and has never been satisfactorily explained. tens of millions of americans doubt the official version of 9/11, including many New Yorkers and families of victims, and all they ask for is a credible,independent investigation.
look forward to your response:
15 mins: Youtube: Architects & Engineers – Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 – AE911Truth.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEvA8BCoBw
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Bloody models indeed, what i like most about this line of defence (it was the Kerosene that did it meme) is that if you watch the impact of both planes you see a vast majority of the jet fuel explode out side the building. So the question of how did a 50 ton press in the 3rd level basement get blown clear off its foundations….i know the jet fuel ran down the elevator shafts and exploded, the same jet fuel that caused an inferno 80 floors up that weakened the structural beams that *science* tells us is impossible.
And no, paper and bits of furniture cannot produce heat high enough nor long enough to produce such a temperature on the very same floor that people were standing in, where was the inferno? Answer there was none so if no inferno then what could possibly cause a sudden explosion at the point of impact moments before the building began to collapse at free fall speed or 9.8 meters per second? How could jet fuel take out the entire 80 odd floors below the impact to allow the building to fall the way it did?
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Yes and the planes themselves weren’t real they were photoshopped…
By the same “lab” as did the lunar landings.
FOR REAL
I mean it
PS. For home work, take a nail (steel) and heat it on the gas range till it is approximately 1/2 of it’s melting (welding) temperature. Then quickly try to nail a piece of oak (or whatever hard wood you Aussies have) and tell me what happens…..
PPS I don’t believe you know anything about cutting steel with flame.
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looks like the govt is going to ram it thru…and i don’t share mirabella’s optimism:
12 Sept: Border Mail: Aisha Dow: Carbon tax pitch ‘failing’
THE government is failing to sell its carbon tax to North East voters, Member for Indi Sophie Mirabella says.
In the past month the Liberal MP has collected almost 900 signatures for her anti-tax petition from residents in Wodonga, Wangaratta and Bright…
“People don’t understand why we would be introducing a carbon tax that will make it expensive for people to make things in Australia.
“There are also concerns about the rising costs of living and they don’t believe the compensation is going to be enough.”
Mrs Mirabella said the government was attempting to “ram” the tax through Parliament without rigorous debate, because they knew their policy was unpopular.
She said it was not customary for a bill to be debated on the same day it was introduced to Parliament — but this is exactly what the government hoped to do tomorrow.
She was optimistic a Labor MP would break ranks and cross the floor to vote against the controversial legislation…
http://www.bordermail.com.au/news/local/news/general/carbon-tax-pitch-failing/2288135.aspx
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Mark D,
I would prefer to take a bit of the steel used in the WTC heat it up and nail it into a red gum (really hard wood), which reminds me why would the US government ship off all the evidence from the crime of the century to China before they conducted any testing what so ever?
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Mark D… we are as one for once. Conspiracy theories have a life of there own and life that life for so long they forget where they came from. They also thrive in complex events and in chaos.
Anyway, here is some sanity on the “never fully explained” (conspiracy theories know that nothing is fully explained so this fact proves nothing.
From NIST, a press release http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc-082108.cfm
and a later press release with videos and the official report 2008 http://www.nist.gov/el/wtc7final_112508.cfm
feel free to deny.
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I was a bit flippant in my previous comment so I should explain that I probably don’t see the media as the innocent reporters of events like most people, I see the media as manipulators of peoples thoughts and opinions through endless propaganda spewed 24/7. For them to jump on the 911 band wagon so hard now after a decade, to turn what should have been a dignified remembrance into an avalanche of programmed propaganda sets of all my BS alarms. Are we going to go after the evil Syranians now?
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PS For those who don’t know NIST, it is hard to find a better respected organisation in the world that deals with scientific measurement and standards. NIST standards are pretty much Australian standards for many things – I’m sure some of the geologists and engineers reading would agree.
I guess they are in the pay of the mysterious and dark forces who really pull the strings and photoshop exploding planes.
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check the photo sky uses:
12 Sept: Sky News: Carbon tax to fire up parliament
Leader of the lower house Anthony Albanese last week announced parliament would start early on Tuesday to allow the introduction of the lengthy bills package, ahead of debate on the bills on Wednesday.
The opposition has already made it clear it wants discussion on the draft laws delayed until the bills package has been referred to a committee for proper parliamentary scrutiny.
Mr Albanese said there would be no voting on the legislation until the October sitting of parliament but it was clear there was a majority in the lower house and the Senate to pass the legislation.
The government was not overriding the fact there was a need for proper scrutiny of the legislation, he said…
Treasurer Wayne Swan was spruiking the importance of the introduction of the carbon tax package ahead of the parliamentary week.
‘It’s going to be a big week with the introduction of the Clean Energy Future package into the parliament,’ Mr Swan wrote in his economic note on Sunday.
‘I’m looking forward to the debate and also getting on with introducing this critical economic and environmental reform.
‘The legislative package will give businesses and investors certainty about the carbon price, allowing them to plan new investments, including in the renewable and clean-energy technologies of the future.’…
Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said the opposition would say the carbon tax needed to be ‘debated to death’.
‘It won’t be,’ Senator Brown told reporters in Hobart.
‘There will be a parliamentary committee, it can either be Senate or house or joint house to allow the usual input.
‘As far as the Greens are concerned, we want to see the legislation thoroughly debated, a final opportunity for people looking at that legislation to give input to the parliament … and the legislation then passed into law before parliament ends at the end of November.’
http://www.skynews.com.au/businessnews/article.aspx?id=660483&vId=
this is what worries me:
8 Sept: Herald Sun: Super funds slash greenhouse risks to reduce carbon tax impact
SUPERANNUATION funds are offloading shares in companies that have high greenhouse gas outputs to help reduce the impact of the carbon tax on investment returns.
During the past three years, 14 of Australia’s largest super funds have slashed their carbon exposure by 25 per cent, with more cuts expected as they clean up their investment portfolios…
“Company profits can be dented by the carbon tax,” Trucost chief executive Richard Mattison said.
“Profitability will be adversely affected by the impact of a carbon tax for a select number of companies and having knowledge of that will enable super funds to better manage their portfolios and returns.”…
The survey found the total carbon footprint of the 14 funds surveyed in March 2011 had fallen 25 per cent since the first survey, in 2008.
Minister for Climate Change Greg Combet said at a superannuation conference yesterday that there were parallels between the introduction of a carbon tax and compulsory superannuation 20 years ago.
“I am confident that just as compulsory super has proved to be a vital, positive long-term economic reform, so will our plans to place a price on carbon,” he said.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/super-funds-slash-greenhouse-risks-to-reduce-carbon-tax-impact/story-fn7j19iv-1226131691431
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Mr Brooks @ 46
Do you know anything about the wool industry? Are you any kind of primary producer? Do you even live in a rural area?
Ross Garnaut produces expensive taxpayer funded reports on subjects he knows nothing about, that is his gig.
Up yours & his
JMD
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For Kevin,
here is a gross simplification of ignition of fires. A single match could burn down a forest and substantial infrastructure, buckle metal etc. The match burns dry grass, burning grass ignites further fuel – some with low ignition but high burning temps etc etc etc until a rampant fire ensues. Strong winds (I wonder what affect wind had on the WTC fires?) raise the temperature and spread the fire and more things burn etc etc.
If I tried to start a bushfire by using the match to set a house or powerpole or even a bunch of green leaves on fire, the only at risk of burning would be my fingers.
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Gee Aye@72
I shall lose sleep over that….
Cmon’ Gee if you’re going to hang with me you gotta be more careful; it is THEIR!
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Crakar @59
I couldn’t agree more. If you make yourself vulnerable through stupidity and avarice, don’t be surprised when someone makes you pay for it. As far as conspiracy theory goes… people in the lobby within minutes of impact were on fire as was demonstrated by the real time doco footage on Ch9 last pm by the French guy doing a documentary on NY fire dept, presumably by flaming fuel siphoning down the lift shafts. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Al Quaeda didn’t have others on the ground to weaken the foundations of each structure, as well as to kill those escaping from the initial impact, just like Madrid and the London bombings- it’s their stock in trade to have you running in panic from one disaster into the path of another bomb. No doubt these alleged “co-consirators” were vapourised when the towers came down so no wonder no one could find any evidence of these likely secondary operatives, if indeed they did exist- we will never know I’m sure, but then really how could we?
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the only comment below this disputes Partridge’s figure:
11 Sept: Fairfield Advance: Lisa Herbertson: Another brick in the wall for carbon tax
Austral Bricks managing director Lindsay Partridge said the Brickworks had reduced carbon emissions by 40 per cent in the past decade, but the introduction of the carbon tax would cost his company $12.8 million a year.
“People can’t afford housing now, this is just going to increase the cost of housing further,” Mr Partridge said…
http://fairfield-advance.whereilive.com.au/news/story/another-brick-in-the-wall-for-carbon-tax/
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their! Sorry. Some pretty crap parsing for grammar too. To think I used to do some paid editing. I always blame computers and never myself for such failing.
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GEEAYE in multiple,
Ah yes the conspiracy theorist accusation rears its ugly head the much maligned half brother of the denialist, well its funny you know because i base my decisions about AGw on science and you call me a denier. When i do the same thing about 9/11 i become a conspiracy theorist.
Just another appeal to authority for some i suppose.
77, i know it was for Kevin but WTF are you talking about?
Winston in 79,
You remind me of a poem
They seek him
They seek him there
They seek Al Qaeda everywhere
Hes got em F*&%ed but they dont knowist
They will never catch the shit house terrorist
Note: The arabic translation of AlQeada is “The Toilet”
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Gee Aye @ 63
The Twin Towers, you say, were constructed using a steel tube framework hence it was extremely light.
The exact opposite of your statement is true.
The Core Structures
The Structural System of the Twin Towers
Each tower was supported by a structural core extending from its bedrock foundation to its roof. The cores were rectangular pillars with numerous large columns and girders, measuring 87 feet by 133 feet. The core structures housed the elevators, stairs, and other services. The cores had their own flooring systems, which were structurally independent of the floor diaphragms that spanned the space between the cores and the perimeter walls. The core structures, like the perimeter wall structures, were 100 percent steel-framed.
The exact dimensions, arrangement, and number of the core columns remained somewhat mysterious until the publication of a leaked collection of detailed architectural drawings of the North Tower in 2007. Although the drawings show the dimensions and arrangement of core columns, they do not show other engineering details such as the core floor framing. It is clear from photographs, such as the one on the right, that the core columns were abundantly cross-braced.
LINK
Core Denial
Establishing the true nature of the core structures is of great importance given that the most widely read document on the World Trade Center attack — the 9/11 Commission Report — denies their very existence, claiming the towers’ cores were “hollow steel shaft[s]:”
For the dimensions, see FEMA report, “World Trade Center Building Performance Study,” undated. In addition, the outside of each tower was covered by a frame of 14-inch-wide steel columns; the centers of the steel columns were 40 inches apart. These exterior walls bore most of the weight of the building. The interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped. Ibid. For stairwells and elevators, see Port Authority response to Commission interrogatory, May 2004. 1
The top illustration indicates what may have been typical dimensions and thickness of the smaller core columns, about half-way up the tower. The outermost rows of core columns were apparently considerably larger, measuring 54 inches wide.
LINK
Columns…….
9-11 Research
The Core Structures
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/arch/core.html
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There’s nothing I can say that will stop people considering conspiracy theories, other than having seen a rational explanation, there is no way I can believe those ‘theories’
While the ‘burn’ point in open air of AVTUR (Jet A and Jet 1A) is only around 300C, that started fires that burned at 1000C+, still below the melting point of structural steel, so where I said ‘melted’, that could have been worded a little more clearly.
However, the structure above and the structure below the impact site were left intact, while at and around the many floors of the impact site, that 850KPH impact had destroyed a lot of the main structural formation of the building itself.
The resultant ‘hot fire’ while not melting the remaining structural steel did cause it to become a little more ‘plastic’ than full integrity, so those core columns in that area were slowly being crushed, because of the immense weight above the impact site, a fact alluded to when calls from choppers just prior to the first Tower collapse said that the top of the building seemed to be leaning somewhat, something that they, as pilots couldn’t quite understand.
With the integrity of that impact area now significantly weakened, the enormous weight above the impact point gradually, almost immeasurably, began to drop. The structure that was in existence prior to impact was designed to support static load, but had no resistance to a moving load, the weight of the structure above the impact point. It only had to ‘let go’ in one small area and the whole lot then collapses under the weight, and once started, it is then impossible to stop. In fact that weight only needed to move through 18 inches to release sufficient energy to begin the catastrophic collapse.
So now, as that enormous weight is falling, vertically under its huge weight, the pressure wave under it was forcing everything in that space to be forced out, through the point of least resistance, hence all the windows ‘blew’ out, around three floors below the now collapsing structure, one floor at a time. In amongst the rumble of the now collapsing structure, each floor blowing out prior to the arrival of the huge weight from above would have given the impression of a pop pop pop sound as it descended.
See now how sometimes a rational explanation can used to explain something. Even so, people will still believe whatever they want to, and that’s okay with me. It’s just that I’m not a believer. I prefer to go with that rational explanation, sorry.
Tony.
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Tony,
That top bit with the lean was at an angle of about 23 degrees at last sight, therefore not much weight on the structure underneath.
How is it then that the whole building collapsed into its own footprint?
How come that they are the first steel framed buildings in history to collapse because of fire?
Where there are columns of black smoke it is a cool fire.
If it was as hot as you say how come people were filmed standing in the gaping hole made by the plane?
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Craker24 – I was pointing out to Kevin that a fire is not limited by the initial temperature. A small cool fire can lead to a big hot one.
I never called you a denier of AGW or anything else. Do you think there was a conspiracy to cover up the truth of the WTC collapse?
Kevin, if you think that the NIST report is wrong, say where and how. If you think that your link is the proof of this, say how. To justify your viewpoint you must have also constructed an explanation for why an organisation like NIST has mislead us. Is this true?
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Kevin in 85… stop asking us the questions. Go and read the reports that explain it. If you think those reports are flawed let us all know and we’ll give an opinion. Do you really think that anyone here wants this sort of nonsense arguement?
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Dont waste your time Kevin,
Here is the official story and explanation,
A plane with no more structrual strength than a coke can (minus the engines) ploughed into a building, most of the jet fuel burned outside of the building but the little bit that did not did many things, firstly:
It burned to 300C whilst similtaneously travelling down to the 3rd basement level where it exploded moving and destrying a 50 ton press.
It also completely destroyed all 3 basement levels leaving only rubble behind at the same time it completely destroyed the lobby and blew the doors off every lift rendering them useless.
Whilst this was going on an inferno had begun at the POI (point of impact), science tells us that nothing in the building could possibly melt the steel science also tells us that black smoke means the fire is oxygen starved but never the less it was hot enough to bring down the building.
Firemen stated there was no inferno, people who survived the impact on the floors stated there was no inferno and yet it was hot enough to melt/weaken the steel beams.
Whilst this is going on numerous explosions were ripping the building apart caused by pockets of Kerosene? Firemen described seeing explosions on the outside walls of the building was this caused by Kerosene?
Moments before the collapse there was a massive explosion near the POI, the explosion was so large that it turned untold amounts of concrete to dust, this dust covered the entire top half of the building and then the collapse began. Was this massive explosion also caused by until now unburnt pockets of Kerosene?
It has been calculated that the building fell at free fall speed which means as the top fell it was meet with no resistance, therefore the entire structure of the building had given way from the ground floor to the top floor instantaneously. This was all due to the Kerosene.
There are many photos taken of the rubble as fireman etc scrambled to try and save any poor buggar trapped inside, there are some photos which show the remains of the core strangely they are not simply bent, twisted or snapped as one would expect from a Kerosene induced collapse but are cut at a 45 degree angle?
So there you have it Kevin any questions?
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Geeaye 86′
Yes
87,
Dont know, however it is an open thread.
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Here’s the latest from the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth posted 6 days ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sGmsjq1UvU
I’ve also seen an interview with John Lear (Son of the inventor of the Lear Jet) who has multiple pilot licenses for practically all known aeroplanes. He says if he were placed in the cockpit of a 767 20 miles out from NY he could not accurately fly the plane to hit the WTC at the speed and manoeuvrability these planes fly at.
Molten Steel was present in the basement for days after the collapse of the WTC.
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Tony at 84,
good of you to take the time to put that succinctly and clearly.
Kevin demonstrates a pattern of denial. I mean actual denial. If you look at all his posts (yes all), they show the same thing. Event x or organisation y was not true or is linked to something you never expected and that the commonly held view of event x or organisation y is wrong. It is a consistent posting pattern.
What concerns me for the discussion of AGW is that these types of comments get mixed into the discussion and, frankly, taint anyone who questions the science behind AGW.
Cue Damian Allan with an uppercase rant.
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janama 90 – heresay, no data and appealing to authority but thanks
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Craker at 88 – so you disagree with what Tony wrote (ie a good summary of the official – eek never say official when there is a conspiracy about – explanation)?
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Craker at 89 – Yes it is an open thread but looking more like an open wound.
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Geaye 93,
It may have been a good explanation of the official story but i dont agree with the official story.
Never forget a conspiracy is when two or more people work in unison to change the outcome (general terms) it is only a theory when no evidence exists.
94,
Open wound? not sure i follow, open wound for whom?
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91,
As i said, denier is the half brother of conspiracy theorist.
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TonyfromOz@ 84 and Kevin Moore
You maybe interested to know the temp at flame point in a jet engine is approx 2500 C. In the 450mm odd from there to the first turbine the temp is reduced to under 900 C.So I guess Kero could cut steel.
For Tony I was an engine fitter in the RAAF long time ago.
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Ruddkidding,
You are talking about Kerosene burning under the compressed conditions of a jet turbine, here we are talking about Kero burning in free air.
So the two situations are not a good comparison in this case.
Cheers
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Craker no doubt you know this but your explanation of “theory” as expressed above is at odds with the generally accepted definition.
the·o·ry Noun/ˈTHēərē/ supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, esp. one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained. e.g Darwin’s theory of Evolution by natural selection.”
These suppositions and ideas do not arise from a vacuum or a fancy, they are applied to explain an observation, measured data and other evidence. Theories cannot be constructed without evidence. Darwin’s writing was almost all about evidence to back the theory (consequently not the easiest to read). If you believe in a conspiracy it is not a slight, and it is quite correct, to call it a “conspiracy theory”.
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argument by irrelevance I think. Also appeal to the audience.
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janama@90 Yes, the molten steel has always been a mystery. Some have suggested that it was ‘Thermite’ that was responsible, traces of this was found in the dust.
I would suggest that the molten steel was actually aluminium which constitutes a greater proportion of the airline structure.
Thermite is a combination of aluminium and metal oxide. If Barium is added to the compound (Thermate) it increases the thermal effect.
Barium is also incorporated in every day products like paint, plastics, rubber, paper and glass.
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OK last post as i am bored with your Agw tactics.
“[T]here was just an explosion [in the south tower]. It seemed like on television [when] they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions.”–Firefighter Richard Banaciski
“I saw a flash flash flash [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building?”
–Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory
“[I]t was [like a] professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear ‘Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop’.”
–Paramedic Daniel Rivera
Engineer Mike Pecoraro, who was working in the sixth sub-basement of the north tower, said that after an explosion he and a co-worker went up to the C level, where there was a small machine shop. “There was nothing there but rubble,” said Pecoraro. “We’re talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press–gone!” They then went to the parking garage, but found that it was also gone. Then on the B level, they found that a steel-and-concrete fire door, which weighed about 300 pounds, was wrinkled up “like a piece of aluminum foil.” Having seen similar things after the terrorist attack in 1993, Pecoraro was convinced that a bomb had gone off.
Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we’ve just had another explosion.
Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we’ve had additional explosion.
Dispatcher: Received battalion command. Additional explosion.11
Firefighter Louie Cacchioli, after entering the north tower lobby and seeing elevator doors completely blown out and people being hit with debris, asked himself, “how could this be happening so quickly if a plane hit way above”? After he reached the 24th floor, he and another fireman “heard this huge explosion that sounded like a bomb [and] knocked off the lights and stalled the elevator.” After they pried themselves out of the elevator, “another huge explosion like the first one hits. This one hits about two minutes later . . . [and] I’m thinking, “Oh. My God, these bastards put bombs in here like they did in 1993!”
Sue Keane, an officer in the New Jersey Fire Police Department who was previously a sergeant in the U.S. Army, said in her account of the onset of the collapse of the south tower: “[I]t sounded like bombs going off. That’s when the explosions happened. . . . I knew something was going to happen. . . . It started to get dark, then all of a sudden there was this massive explosion.” Then, discussing her experiences during the collapse of the north tower, she said: “[There was] another explosion. That sent me and the two firefighters down the stairs. . . . I can’t tell you how many times I got banged around. Each one of those explosions picked me up and threw me. . . . There was another explosion, and I got thrown with two firefighters out onto the street.”
Fireman 1: “We made it outside, we made it about a block . . . .”
Fireman 2: “We made it at least two blocks and we started running.” He makes explosive sounds and then uses a chopping hand motion to emphasize his next point: “Floor by floor it started popping out . . . .”
Fireman 1: “It was as if they had detonated–as if they were planning to take down a building, boom boom boom boom boom . . . .”
Fireman 2: “All the way down. I was watching it and running. And then you just saw this cloud of shit chasing you down.
Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory said: “I thought . . . before . . . No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. . . . Lieutenant Evangelista . . . asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I . . . saw a flash flash flash . . . [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That’s what I thought I saw.”
“Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash.” and “Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then a red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg GEEAYE but not to worry the Kerosene made the building fall the way it did, all these people made this stuff up.
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Here is yet ANOTHER example of the politically correct STUPIDITY infecting Australia at the moment !!
Ban Coco Pops monkey and Paddle Pop lion, Cancer Council says………
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/ban-the-cartoon-figures-on-food/story-e6freuy9-1226133850436
These people need to get a life !!
No more donations to the Cancer Council from our household !!
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rukidding at comment 97,
A Sumpy!
(I’ll get to the point, but indulge me for a minute.)
Man, coming from the RAAF, where there are 6 Aircraft Trades, each Trade thinks they are superior, and I can see rukidding nodding his head and smiling.
The only real ‘mixing point’ is out on the flight line, and in the Servicing hangars, and even then, the, er, banter , is ‘mainly’ friendly.
However, whilst at ‘The Depot’ I was assigned to a ‘digital’ post, that of the ‘resident’ electrician in the TF30 Hangar, where they overhauled the F111’s Pratt and Whitney
DeplorableDependable Engines, in this case the TF30 engines, from the full engine back to their component parts and then rebuilding them again. These same TF30 engines and their derivatives are in use on most current airliners and have been for decades, minus AB.That position was supposed to be for 6 months only, but because it was run down when I got there, and I wanted to leave it in a shape that subsequent people could move into more easily and maintain at optimum position, so I specifically asked to be extended in that position, and I was there for 15 Months.
I was, as expected, on first arrival, the new guy, and ‘copped it’ from every front. After around 4 to 5 months, I was finally accepted as an equal. They gained a different perspective of Electricians in general, and vice versa, and in fact, I learned more from them, than they from me, not that I was going to tell them that of course, because after all, impressions had to be ‘maintained’. When I left, they made me an honorary ‘Sumpy’, something I treated with an immense amount of pride, from that point on.
I already knew a fair amount about the engine trade, having already been associated with the Atar 9C from the Mirages, but working around Sumpies for so long gave me a background in aircraft engines that I still think of as priceless, and engines in general.
Now the point I am getting at here is that with a training from an engineering discipline, I have found over the years that when it comes to ‘understanding’ things, those who have a background from an engineering discipline are more inclined to believe what may seem something that cannot readily be understood.
Over those ensuing years since my time in the RAAF, I have found that those who do tend to believe ‘conspiracy’ theories are nearly all of them, people from a non engineering background.
That’s not meant to denigrate them in any way, because I have no worries about what they believe, or their entitlement to that belief. It’s just that they sometimes find an engineering explanation more complex than they can understand, and that engineering explanation is sometimes harder to accept than the conspiracy theory if you can see that.
I have specifically found this when trying to explain the complexities of something that ‘seems’ so simple, electrical power generation.
The problem I also have is that the maths involved takes in numbers so huge as to be almost incomprehensible of itself.
In closing, and back to the 2 planes that did fly into WTC 1 and 2, those 2 aircraft had on board at the time, more than 12,000 Gallons of AVTUR.
12,000 gallons.
The equivalent fuel for 800 standard family cars.
I’m not running down you guys who do believe, but just explaining why I don’t believe conspiracy theories like this.
Lastly, don’t think I’m giving away Military secrets here, as both aircraft have been removed from service, and more’s the pity with respect to the F111, still one of the most capable combat aircraft ever built, and I want to emphasise that, EVER built.
Tony.
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Sorry Crakar24, its too big a conspiracy to be believable.
How many people would have known what was going on? Could they all keep a secret?
And, why? Why would someone plot such an amazing thing against their own people? I mean, I didn’t like George Bush, and he was on his way to being thrown out at the next election- but I have trouble believing that George (or Dick Cheney, because I’m betting George wasn’t in on the conspiracy), could have countenanced such a thing.
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This says it all for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98&feature=player_embedded
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If I were to carry out one of history’s greatest and most elaborate conspiracies on behalf of the Zionists, I would take a little trouble not to have five dancing Israelis on site after the big bust. A bit like a mafioso doing the twist with a Cuban on the grassy knoll.
Thousands of dancing and V-signing Palestinians in East Jerusalem are a better, simpler indicator of who-did-what-why.
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Gillard prepared to quell debate to get carbon tax through
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/gillard-prepared-to-quell-debate-to-get-carbon-tax-through/story-fn59niix-1226131718284
[snip]
ELECTION NOW !!
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JB et al,
I dont ask whether it is beleivanle i only ask how the jet fuel from 80 to 90 plus floors above could destroy a fifty ton press and take out 3 levels of basement.
I only ask what were all the explosions created by that many, many , many people have testified to?
What could possibly cause (if not Jet fuel) the explosions that ringed the building going up and down moments before the big explosion that pulverised the concrete moments before the collapse?
I only ask for answers to the obvious questions, so far noone has attempted to do so.
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When a ship sinks, those in the water will latch onto the first piece of debris that floats by. Anything to help you survive.
This analogy seems to hold true for our ruling parliamentarians and their stance on the proposed carbon tax and illegal immigration.
Is there anyway to get some sanity into Canberra’s decision making?
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According to channel 10, the nsw police force has assembled a task force for investigating corruption in the health services union.
It has come as a result of new information coming to light and an interview with the courageous kathy jackson.
Endgame for this government. I am encouraged to now believe there is a will to root outand investigate corruption claims regardless of the institution involved.
Just try and blame that on the murdoch press!
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craker at 102
No evidence that your examples are representative and therefore may be cherry picked. What is the data regarding testimony?
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Gee Aye @ 74
Funny – I’d have been prepared to say much the same thing about our own CSIRO and BoM only a few years ago, and look how that’s panned out.
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Janama @ 106
I agree, it’s very well put together……
“This says it all for me”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98&feature=player_embedded
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craker at 109
I’ll hang my hat on the official explanation. Can you show me the documentation of these events and the misinterpretation, suppression of or omission of mention of such by officially commissioned reviews? Once you’ve demonstrated that no one has an explanation then I can believe you that one has not been given.
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Janama – excellent link. It says it all to me too. This is just the sort of data and careful analysis I can relate to. All that official evidence is banished from my consciousness.
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MV thanks for your argument by deception. You can do better.
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TonyfromOZ @ 104
Actually, as someone who has worked almost exclusively with mechanical and structural engineers these past fifteen years, I have found, with regards to this particular “conspiracy theory”, that the exact opposite is true.
In fact, it would be fair to say that I don’t know a working engineer who has expressed an opinion on the matter to me, who has not been extremely sceptical of the “official” explanation.
I have an extensive engineering background. I have no problems with the math. I have no idea what the truth is in this matter.
However, I’ve got a pretty reasonably informed opinion that the “official explanation” is a load of crap.
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Crakar and others @ various
Forget it and save your energies for other things. You have no more chance of convincing a committed believer in the failings of the “official” 9-11 explanation, than you do of convincing a committed believer in CAGW.
The reason is simple and the same in both cases.
Both were the subject of a massive, almost global, preparatory subliminal brain washing exercise carried out on September 15, 2000. In the case of 9-11, this was followed up by a similar exercise on September 15, 2001.
In both cases this was initially effective in the minds of about 60 – 80% of susceptible recipients. However over time there has been a lapse rate of about 10 – 30%. This has mostly been with people who were not particularly committed in the first place – example Jo Nova and husband David Evans on CAGW.
If you are lucky enough to meet somebody who has no particular strong view on one or the other of these subjects, helping them to see the obvious shortcomings in the relevant “official” explanation is comparatively easy.
However, where there is commitment, as we see with our trolls on CAGW, and as has been demonstrated above on the subject of 9-11, you CANNOT break the programming. The subject will experience nervous breakdown before programming over-ride is accomplished, a point I regrettably inadvertently proved last year with a CAGW-committed programmee.
And no, I have no idea why some people were susceptible to both programs, some to neither, and some to one or the other but not both.
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Nore on the scoundrel ALP(Australian LIARS party) MP craig thomson.
Police move in on HSU….
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/police_move_in_on_hsu/
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We at Justgrounds have been pursing a mass E-mail campaign on this,e-mailing labor Mp’s with crucial Data that proves the lies about climate change without a doubt. If Jo would like to help us with this,we’d welcome her suport,as every bit helps.
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A strike force, got your popcorn.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-12/nsw-strike-force-to-investigate-hsu/2882098
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Gillard’s latest boat plan will flop, too. UPDATE: 440 dead so far
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/and_gillards_latest_boat_plan_will_flop_too/
Yet ANOTHER DEBACLE by gillard and her sychophantic “government”.
ELECTION NOW !!
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MV… wish I could give more thumbs up for post 121!!!
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Gee Aye @ 119
And where is the deception?
When I was a younger man both the CSIRO and the BoM were considered world-class examples of independent, free-thinking scientific institutions.
Today they are bought and paid-for mouthpieces of government policy.
As an organisation fully funded by the the US Federal government what makes you think NIST would be any different?
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Address by Art Raiche PHD a former Chief Research Scientist at the formerly illustrious CSIRO……….
Transcript http://galileomovement.com.au/blog/
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxCzW6RWoLg
Well worth a read!
He spoke extremely well at the rally against the carbon DIOXIDE (PLANT FOOD) tax in Canberra.
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Gee Aye @ 126
Sarcasm becomes you, Gee.
You should wear it more often.
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“Sock Puppet Government Trolls Attack Alternative Media”
Skeptical Eye.com
http://www.skepticaleye.com/2011/04/sock-puppet-government-trolls-attack.html
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TonyfromOz @ 106
Yes a sumpy that went on to engine,airframe,electrical,instrument and radio licenced 707,747,767 and DC 10.
Finished my time in the RAAF on vampires at 2OCU now I guess that does give my age away a bit. 🙂
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As one who never believed in CAGW, because of its clear resemblance to Puritanism through the ages, I’m prepared to doubt the official explanations for 9/11. However, that’s because every large event is clouded and complicated as it unfolds. Opportunism or accident brings in people and interests that weren’t there at the start; things are covered up because someone is embarrassed or unwittingly embroiled. These things happen even in small domestic matters. In big matters, they occur in a big way.
Did wealthy Jewish capitalists or Bush’s forbears have dealings with Hitler? Possibly. Your local camera shop may have had “dealings” with Hitler. Did the US play footsies with Saddam and with the Taliban in the 80s? Of course! Remember Mullahs and Soviets? In a world of shifting interests, big risks and wild compromises, all these things occur. They must occur. Did the Vatican and the West run rat-lines for Nazis after ’45? With Stalin at the front gate, why wouldn’t they quickly look to reshape alliances and make use of the defeated in a new power balance?
And don’t forget the weirdest conspiracy of last century: Hitler and Stalin invading Poland in the same year and colluding for the first two years of WW2. Was that something Krups thought would be good for business? Was there a Jewish mastermind behind that, and behind the complete reversal of policy that led to Barbarossa and the great land war in the east? No, what was behind that was the temporary triumph of practical interest over deep-seated enmity. The war Hitler really wanted was the war he couldn’t afford: in the end, he bought it anyway.
I believe there are cover-ups and conspiracies. They go on all the time. They are probably going on at every reader’s workplace or local club right now. What I don’t believe in is a neat and united High Council, usually Jewish, of stupendously powerful and cunning people who are always behind everything, with full control. Conspiracies are real, George Soros is real, the world is indeed full of mysteries and cover-ups. But one’s own neighbourhood is full of mysteries and cover-ups.
The official story on 9/11 isn’t true. It’s just a lot closer to the truth than the Secret Templar or Masonic Jew explanations.
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So science and evidence came second?
sigh
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MV at 127
Your deception is to make an unsupported claim (about CSIRO) and then make an argument where it is unclear whether you are making the same claim about NIST or are just saying that NIST MIGHT be like (the unsupported status of) CSIRO.
Please state some evidence that CSIRO is less well thought of now. Is it just your perception, industry, scientists? If you have no data your statement was a deception based on a falsehood.
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Gee Aye: – is that you Luke?
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MV… re 121 (I should have asked this before the last post!)
but why September 15 2000 and 2001. Any significance to those dates?
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Not Luke here… I could dress up as Luke if you want.
wow cool this thread is like Facebook
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Gee Aye, I doubt that my IQ is all that high, and I don’t doubt the very high intelligence of many believers in CAGW. But having intelligence and using it are two different things. Most of the people who were impressed by the Hockey Stick, for example, did have very high intelligence and probably an advanced education.
Yet to give even a moment’s credence to that diagram you had to be:
a) Utterly ignorant of history and all past human experience.
b) Dumber than doggy-do.
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Mean while in NSW the police have task force to investigate the HSU after some further info was forth coming. That a task force was all ready in place a day or so after the police announced they had stopped their investigations is curious. What they may uncover is curioser.
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Gee Aye @ 136
I have no idea why these things seem to work better (or only at all) in the periods March 19-22 and September 15-21, but that seems to be the case. Similar related things only seem to work at latitude 33 degrees (north or south), but again, I have no idea why.
Obviously it would appear to be based on the Lunar Calendar and/or the equinoxes, or some combination of both, but again, I have no idea why.
After twenty years of intense study, these days I merely observe.
I will leave the “why” to smarter folk somewhere down the track.
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mosomoso… a diagram is not data and I looked at the stick on its merits and the merits of how it was produced.
Historical records of climate and CO2 might be relevant but I can’t see how human history and experience comes into it as you can just about find an example of anything in history to support or reject a claim. Was there something in particular you were alluding to?
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good population densities at 33 degrees and heat and cold stress not so bad in March and September at these latitudes. Otherwise keep going with creating and testing theories and get that vault pic back.
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Scaper @ 103
Again on the ball
Thermite : al from the air frame.
Thermite : use to cut heavy steel.
Good one
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Tony has outlined failure mechanism in 9/11 Towers.
Steel not only loses strength at higher temperatures but there is a bigger problem.
It expands and distorts the structure.
The horizontal dimension of the building may have increased by 350 mm at temperature.
With the great mass of building above is there any surprise that it gave way.
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Gee Aye @ 134
Just one example from many:
Australia is considered by many to be the “bushfire capital of the world” and the CSIRO did a great deal of research on the subject. For at least a few decades the CSIRO guidelines on land management to counter the threat of bushfires was considered the gospel on the subject throughout much of the Western world, including the USA and Canada where they have similar threats.
I personally used these guidelines when setting up a 40 acre property in the mid 1980’s.
Then some years ago “greenie” councils started taking over in rural areas, particularly in Victoria. There was a man who built his house in a bushfire-prone area and applied the measures advised by the CSIRO despite the council’s edicts. The council fined him.
The man took it to court and called on the current-day CSIRO to back him. Instead, the CSIRO basically gave evidence that, compared to the local council, they knew nothing. The man was fined $50,000.00 plus legal costs.
A year later a terrible fire swept through the area and a lot of people got killed. The ONLY house left standing was that of the man who had implemented the CSIRO’s guidelines. The case got a lot of mainstream publicity so please don’t insult my intelligence by claiming you have no idea what I’m talking about.
There was a Royal Commission, and this particular incident came up. Given the opportunity to reclaim their status as a truly scientific body, instead the CSIRO gave evidence that their previous work on bushfires, renowned the world over for its accuracy and effectiveness, had been done before the implications of CAGW were fully understood, and so should be discounted by the Royal Commission.
Bought and paid for.
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People believe what they’re invited to believe and any resemblance to the actual truth is purely accidental. Unfortunately the ones who are unable to swallow just about any of the crap they’re being fed only add up to about 12% of the population, oh happy days.
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Paul R @ 146
I’m not being sarcastic.
I’ve devoted 20 years of my life to this and come up with a similar figure of 12 to 15%
Since I thought I was pretty-much entirely alone on this, I’d be extremely interested in how you arrived at the same ball-park figure.
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MV… thanks for an interesting excursion via an example (of what?). Now back to my question.Please state some evidence that CSIRO is less well thought of now. Is it just your perception, industry, scientists?
I should add to the question – is it across the whole of CSIRO… or are there bits that are letting the side down? I should also clarify evidence as being something that we can all understand as quantifiable and not just a single example.
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When arguing against the CO2/warming theory I quote Dr Ottmar Edenhoffer of the UN who has openly admitted that the carbon dioxide tax is about wealth redistribution. One translation from German interview says
“one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental problems any more.”
I find that as people are directed into reading about what is actually happening in the world, all the hoaxes and distractions fall by the way-side.
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It’s just a guess based on the fact that most so called conspiracy theorists do actually end up with a “belief” no matter how ridiculous it sounds, even as bad as the US government one. That brings the number of skeptics down to pretty bad numbers and I have weak moments where I blame everything on a cartel of little unknown bald men who own banks.
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Several commentators have indicated incredulity about the ‘official’ 9.11 explanation;
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/1227842?page=1
http://www.debunking911.com/
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http://www.businessinsider.com/blast-french-nuclear-power-plant-2011-9
oh joy, lets buy some!!
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Gee Aye @ 148
Sorry Gee Aye, I thought I’d given a pretty good example of why the CSIRO is not the respected organisation it used to be, at least in the eyes of rural people.
But I’m prepared to accept that, in the eyes of a suburban-dwelling, coffee-sipping, cafe-latte types, (possibly such as yourself), what I offered is proof of nothing – since it doesn’t affect you personally.
Nonetheless, to a lot of country people (who happen to be taxpayers too), the CSIRO’s performance at the bushfires Royal Commission was a sellout.
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Conspiracy stories are pubs stuff but there are many problems with the official explanation for the 9/11 disaster.
A seismograph outside NY picked up the first Trade Centre aircraft impact but prior to that there was another vibration of great magnitude which fits the time-line of an explosion reported by many people which came from the basement. Perhaps the terrorists used explosives but one wonders why they went to all the bother of hijacking aircraft if they already had the ability to place explosives.
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@90
Do you seriously believe this?
Anyway, I encourage any interested in this to think outside the box.
The aircraft mass became added weight to the particular floor/s that it “landed” on.
The speed of impact has to be considered (recall that a tornado has been known to cause straw to be imbedded in wood)
The structures failed at the point of airplane impact.
Once the upper floors started moving en-mass, they would represent a tremendous kinetic energy release. Numbers so high as to be incomprehensible.
Once the upper levels were falling the entire structure looks (to me) like a massive diesel engine moving down on a huge compression stroke. (novel idea eh?)
Regardless, as the upper levels fell, the forces impacting the remaining structure would have been immense. Add to that the speeds involved and you will begin to see how beams would snap at weaker points rather than bend.
While this is happening, all the interior materials are being ground and pulverized in a matter of milliseconds. Those pulverized components could easily have become explosive.
Just a few non- conspiracy notions.
I agree with MV though. Once you believe this was a conspiracy it is likely you’ll always believe it.
Don’t get me going on the JFKennedy assassination though…..
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MV 121,
Good post i was thinking along the same lines.
Tony and Rukidding,
It just so happens that if look out my window at work i can see a pig, sounds like you two were clock winders in the RAAF, its ok no one is perfect. By the way tony the pig did have at least one flaw, the TFR was not the best caused a few crashes i think.
Mark D,
An aircraft is designed to be structually strong when flying not when it hits a solid object at speed, then it is a very weak structure, the engines of course are completely different.
to the rest of your post, OK thats a wonderful story now apply the same theory to WTC7 and get back to me.
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Jo, you are usually interested in ‘missing hot spot’ news. See Jeff Id’s post
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/corroboration-again/
about a paper by Fu Manabe and Johansen that shows that the models are way off from the observations regarding tropical troposphere trends.
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“Why Indeed Did the Buildings Completely Collapse?”
By Steven E. Jones.
Physicist and Archaeometrist
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200609/WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTradeCenterBuildingsCompletelyCollapse.pdf
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A must see article for a glimpse into Australia’s future if Gillard/Brown and fellow-wreckers get their carbon dioxide tax through!
Google Climate Realists and check the September 10th 2011 article by Christopher Booker in the UK Daily Telegraph:
Wind farms: the monuments to lunacy that will be left to blot the landscape.
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To clarify my 159 post: It’s in the L.H sidebar of Climate Realists under: Headline Stories
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A friend passed this thought-provoker along to me.
Quoted from Ross Greenwood of Money News.
What is a Billion?
How many zeros in a billion???
This is too true to be funny…
The next time you hear a politician use the word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about whether you want the ‘politicians’ spending YOUR tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.
A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.
NOW THIS IS UNDISPUTABLE!!!
NO MATTER WHAT YOUR POLITICAL LEANINGS.
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Ross:
September 12th, 2011 at 8:36 am
I haven’t read anything in NZ about this big splash by Gore on Sept 14. Has it been in the news in Australia? I hope not and its turns out to be another poor prediction by Gore.
When I read your first sentence, I thought you were going to tell us about Big Al’s cannonballing into one of his many heated swimming pools.
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Hey people, I’d love to chat about the WTC/Pentagon/911/JFK/MoonLandings/ConspiracyDuJour, but… aren’t we forgetting THE CARBON TAX?? It’s the biggest conspiracy of TODAY.
You know, the disaster we still might be able to PREVENT??
“Where was the blogger crowd when public mobilisation was needed to prevent the obvious Air Tax Conspiracy?”
“Oh they were too busy arguing about other conspiracies from a decade ago.”
“Uhuh, figures.”
Hey, here’s a conspiracy theory.. no wait… conspiracy hypothesis for you: introducing the carbon tax to Parliament the same week as the 9/11 anniversary is a tactic by THEM to make sure YOU are DISTRACTED from the REAL CONSPIRACY.
yeah, yeah that’s it.
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You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to be a questioner.
Obviously there are parallels between the 9/11 discussion and the CAGW discussion. Basically comes down to the fact that the explanations given for the phenomenon just don’t add up with the data.
By the way, on 9/11 this is nice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98
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The Tamworth Totalitarian – TONY “WINDBAG” WINDSOR…………
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_tamworth_totalitarian/
ELECTION NOW !
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I gather Barneby is considering running for the lower house in Windsor’s seat.
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Julia Gillard called Bob Brown into her office one day and said “Bob, I have a great idea! We are going to go all out to win the country voters”..
“Good idea Leader, how will we go about it”? said Brown.
“Well”, said Gillard, “we get ourselves one of those Driaza Bone coats,
some RM Williams boots, a stick and an Akubra hat. Oh, and a blue cattle dog. Then we’ll really look the part. We’ll go to a typical old outback country pub, we’ll show we really enjoy the bush”.
Days later, all kitted out and with the requisite blue heeler, they set
off from Canberra in a westerly direction. Eventually they arrived at just the place they were looking for and found a typical outback pub.
They walked in with the dog and up to the bar. “G’day mate”, said Gillard to the bartender, “two middies of your best beer”. “Good afternoon Leader”, said the bartender, “two middies of our best coming up”. Gillard and Brown stood leaning on the bar drinking their beer and chatting, nodding now and again to whoever came into the bar for a drink. All of a sudden, the door from the adjacent bar opened and in came a grizzled old stockman, complete with stock whip. He walked up to the cattle dog, lifted its tail with the whip and looked underneath, shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the other bar. Over the course of the next hour or so another four or five stockmen came in and lifted the dog’s tail and went away looking puzzled.Eventually, Gillard and Brown could stand it no longer and called the barman over. “Tell me” said Brown, “why did all those old stockmen come in and look under the dog’s tail like that? Is it an old outback custom?” “Strewth no”, said the barman. “Someone told ’em there was a cattle dog in the bar with two arseholes”…
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Grand conspiracies cannot be maintained as there would be too many loose lipped conspirators.
The contrary 9/11 and CAGW hypotheses fall on the unreliability of the evidence supporting a conspiracy. Also the weight of other reliable evidence is against a conspiracy. With the latter, the imagined conspirators are quite upfront about their political aspirations that use a nascent climate science, still light on for scientific credibility to further ends that are unrelated to the Earth’s climate. No conspiracy there e.g. if in fact Gillard is still a Fabian Socialist at heart that organisation is also quite upfront about the use of alarmist climate science to further its political designs. She is being consistent with those political beliefs, whether or not she even understands the fragility of the science she says she believes in. Same applies to the Greens.
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MV
The CSIRO was a world renowned organisation years ago.
They still do good work BUT.
You must not under any circumstances question MMGW or CAGW or CC or GW or C Tax or ETS — NEVER.
That otherwise intelligent people are forced to publicly acknowledge this crap to keep their jobs and funding is disgusting.
The fact that CAGW must be acknowledged in all work has many debilitating effects on the function of CSIRO in wasted funds and having to carry the monkey on your back while doing other research.
Government wastes huge amounts of cash on Carbon Sequestration ( a total joke).
Just imagine what CSIRO could have done in Solar Research with the $100 plus million wasted on Kev The Sequestrators favorite project.
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Llew at 168,
extremely well put and I agree but it wont convince a conspiracy theorist.
As we’ve seen, according to some, brainwashing of witnesses plus a small and tightly knit group could have accounted for the collapse of the WTC. Therefore they can deny (explain away) that there will be loose tongues. The flying spaghetti monster did it.
For the AGW they can say that just because there is an outward openness as you described, this does not preclude other forces controlling and coordinating the conspiracy.
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From reading this thread, with all the interesting speculation about 9/11 and the World Trade Center, i conclude on the observable evidence that regardless of the current riks profile re: the world economy, its a really good time to buy Alcoa shares.
10
Gee Aye @ 170
As a fully-fledged Pastafarian I take umbrage at you taking His Name in vain.
You also didn’t use capitals for F, S or M.
May He smite you with His Noodly Appendage.
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The FSM is responsible for much good in the world. We even had a visitation in the form of a Christmas decoration which Venganza was kind enough to feature many years ago.
10
Gee Aye @ 173
That’s better.
I’ll cancel the pirate raid.
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Well heres a statement of the bleeding obvious:
Fair work australia did a go slow on the thomson investigation to protect the gillard regime:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/fair-work-refused-to-investigate-hsu-books-20110912-1k63i.html
Maybe that might be bacause fair work australia was populated with unionists?
Regime change now!
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“Carbon Tax going through next week. ALP set to be global patsies”
“You wouldn’t wish a wounded government on any nation.They’re too dangerous.”
Events are showing those statements to be true.
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If NIST was such an august body then why did they forget to mention WTC7 in their one billion page report? Then under intense public scrutiny they agreed to look at it only to come back with a “we cannot explain why WTC7 fell nor can we explain why it fell the way it did”.
People like Gee aye fail to question the basic tenets of things they cant bare the thought of. For example after repeatedly asking how the WTC7 collapsed the way it did you still get no response thats because they have no answer and to admit they have no answer would require them to accept that all that they beleive in may be false.
It is no different when it comes to AGW they cannot for one moment entertain the idea that the world will not end so they simply refuse to accept anything. *the planet is still warming*, *the seas are still rising* is the call.
What you people need to understand is that 911 just like pearl harbor gave the US a pretext to enter a war, i will leave you with one of the greatest moments in the history of the FBI.
Then of course we have the Gulf of Tonkin which was a trumped up piece of crap to justify the Vietnam war, oh and lets also not forget the USS Liberty and the attack on Egypt., the bombing of the King David Hotel, the Rieshtag (spelling) fire….the list goes……this shit has been going on for years, many, many years but no it was the jet fuel i tells ya, i know coz i watched a show about it once………FOR THE LOVE OF GOD…………..
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Well I guess today is the day the gauntlets truly come off:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/national/10245108/plenty-of-time-for-carbon-debate-combet/
Combet is not backward in putting a foot forward by calling Tony a liar before things have even warmed up:
Yes, this is how politicians debate legislation it seems…
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Tony @ 51. As a regular lurker here I highly respect your knowledge about electricity generation and your common sense approach to such problems. However I would be more circumspect regarding ridiculing possible conspiracy theories about the 9/11 World Trade Centre. For your explanation to have credence you need to explain how WTC Building 7, which was not hit by a plane, also collapsed onto its own footprint. As with climate science it is perhaps best to keep an open mind even if perchance it does sometimes make us feel uncomfortable.
10
you made this up. They did the reports sequentially and with available resources. They documented progress the whole time and produced for government but freely available updated reports until the final one. The public was agitated about the time the report took but NIST did not delay it for any of the reasons you state.
Regarding how it collapsed. I supplied you earlier with links to NISTs reports. Their explanation seems reasonable although I never believe that a report can tell a complete story (they just can’t), so if you have specific evidence and data that falsifies the NIST account please present it. Being a sceptic you can do that without having to come up with an unparsimonious explanation that invokes mysterious forces.
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My parents always said believe only half that you see and nothing that you hear, but this takes the cake.
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2011/09/01/fa-launches-%E2%80%98let%E2%80%99s-kick-climate-change-denial-out-of-football%E2%80%99-campaign/
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“Combet is not backward in putting a foot forward by calling Tony a liar before things have even warmed up:”
Well, Abbott is a self confessed liar who has been caught out telling outright porkies on national television (the Pell / Lateline episode). Then there was the classic on 7:30 report about gospel truth being the carefully scripted remarks so only believe me if its written down.
Then there is the whole climate change is crap but we are going to act on it anyway dichotomy. Abbott’s head-space must be a fascinating, if confused and grubby place.
10
Tim Curtin writes about the futility of the ‘carbon’ tax
(a bit of cut and paste)
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Cohenite @151
thanks for the link http://www.debunking911.com/osama.htm which contains this quote purportedly from Bin Laden himself ………….”to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies…………………the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the Mujahideen, bled Russia for ten years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat…………..So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy”.
So, the goals allegedly were to bankrupt the US by making it chase shadows in all the far flung regions of the world, bog down in wars it couldn’t win and exacerbate the economic woes it had inflicted upon itself through fiscal stupidity. The motivation for 9/11 is plain, without having to resort to notions of the USA stabbing itself in the heart to justify waging a religious war or a get square in Iraq for oil, etc.
10
Winston… or even just to demolish two buildings past their use-by date as some claim!
10
mary # 169
Trust and credibility, once lost are not easily regained.
The damage done is underestimated.
10
“There will be no Emissions trading scheme under a Government I lead”
Gosh catamon, I had no idea abbott said such a thing!
10
Gee Aye @ 179
Would you read and explain why the scientific examination which found that the WTC collapses were as a result of controlled demolition is wrong.
“Why Indeed Did the Buildings Completely Collapse?”
By Steven E. Jones.
Physicist and Archaeometrist
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200609/WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTradeCenterBuildingsCompletelyCollapse.pdf
10
Catamon@ 181
It’s interesting that you would resent any politician so openly for such a remark, by pouring scorn on Abbott for what was a rare moment of candour. That being about how media commentators, in the cut and thrust of an interview, can goad and encourage one to say what one doesn’t intend or mean. Such honesty is something we are unaccustomed too, so I can understand your confusion. And as you are clearly a Labor supporter, I’m sure honesty is anathema to everything your party stands for……. Your party motto should be-“whatever you do out there guys, don’t let them catch you being honest!”
The irony is completely lost on you that, when we know most politicians are completely dishonest creatures who lie and spin as a first instinct, yet the one time someone says something honestly and in an unguarded fashion, their integrity is impugned and tarnished as a result- amazing how these things characterise themselves in the prism of the media.
10
GA in 179,
http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/wtc_about.cfm
Not at all the initial report does not mention it as you can see here, they later did a report which once again points the finger of blame at fire. Have you actually seen footage of WTC 7 collapse? Does that look like a fire induced symetrical collapse at 9.8 meters per second?
10
Looking again at WTC7, it is a very well presented case… if you just look at the conspiracy theory case. Like the moon landing fake photos. Like “agw is bunkum”. When all you look at are websites and blogs that argue in favour of conspiracy, well it would be pretty damn hard not to believe.
“Does that look like a fire induced symetrical collapse at 9.8 meters per second?”
I mean 20 minutes on the internet googling “911 truth” and everyone’s an expert on the physics of building collapse, and knows exactly why the meticulously researched official version is a fraud.
10
JKnowles in 154… graphic impact.
10
Mattyb, don’t associate 9.11 conspiracies with AGW scepticism please.
10
Conservatives need to go with the leader who brings out the huffiness and elitism of the Left. Every time. Foot-in-mouth is good. Sporting boofiness is good. Awkwardness around the arts and gender “issues” is good. Not getting the invite to the christening of Cate’s next preciously-named baby…way to go. Feeling like a caveman when handing out literary awards…good one. Some Old-Guy-in-Sky religion, but no Gaia…perfect! A redneck distrust of all things collective, from unions to corporations to the UN…essential! Some hidden smarts and a touch of Jesuitry? Shshhh…
Just thank the Fairfax-perusing classes for their advice to go with Turnbull…
Then go with an Abbott or a Barnaby.
10
Gillard introducing the Clean Energy bills to the parliament as we speak!
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/info/liveminutes/
A great day for our nation.
10
Kevin at 187. No i wont. I’ll move on to more complicated explanations if I reject the simplest.
10
How long exactly did Barnaby last as the shadow finance minister?
00
MattB @ 191- “graphic impact”
Precisely, the symbolism was what Al Qaeda was after- the twin towers the symbol of Big business, Big money and Wall St (the Rockefellers especially- Nelson and David were the nicknames given to each tower).
By extension, I can certainly believe it possible that bombing the base of the towers simultaneously, or nearly, to flying planes into them for visual impact, would give additional destruction and increase the likelihood of bringing the structure down, while the visual impact and audacity of the enterprise would not have been the same without the planes.
The US government would certainly like to hide the fact that such access was gained after previous failed bombing in 1993, which would have suggested a calamitous breach of security and planning that they would not like to admit to. At least, if it was just the planes, the unexpected nature of it could be brushed aside as unforseeable and unavoidable, and more importantly unrepeatable. That would undermine the confidence of the people to know that multiple breaches of security could occur and that therefore everyone was more vulnerable than they could have imagined.
00
Craker 189… says nothing in response to my earlier comment.
00
Now that Barnaby…he really burns ’em up!
00
Comrade Adam,
These bills are so unnecessary. There is such a quick means to reduce your carbon footprint, and it doesn’t cost much either.
All you need to do is move to a country which allready has about the lowest carbin footprint per capita.
I would suggest North Korea would be your style. Their political approach is very much in line with australias current regime too. You might want to head over quickly though, the next election isn’t far off.
00
Gillard and Combet get a massive applause after introducing the Clean Energy bills.
00
Craker OK I can do better than the above comment.
read paragraph 3.1.1 of the FIRST report to congress on the stated goals of the NIST investigation. It states clearly that WTC 7 was on the agenda from the start.
http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/ncst/upload/NCSTAC2003ReporttoCongressFinal.pdf
It is also in the summary at the lead WTC NIST page http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/
00
I’m not a comrade. My correct title is “Dr”.
Completely wrong. There is no cost free way to abate carbon pollution.
Not interested thank you, I’m a patriotic Australian who likes living in Australia.
Where to start on this absurd comment?
For starters this is a complete affront to all the people who have suffered and died under communism.
Secondly, it is an affront to all the people that voted for the current government at the last election. According to you, there opinion doesn’t seem to matter.
Thirdly, you seem to be suggesting there will be repercussions for supporting the current government at the next election. That isn’t particularly democratic.
So in summary, you have no argument so you revert to snide remarks and barely concealed threats.
00
Looks like the Clean Energy Bill could get up, so to speak.
00
It is basically a formality that it will pass the parliament and become law.
Once it becomes law, no government will repeal it because doing so would put something like a $20 billion hole in the budget.
Anyone who supports the coalition thinking they will repeal the ETS is basically asking to be mislead / lied to.
00
COhers in 192… ok you could easily say that with the amount of conspiracy theories out there it is easy to see how people have been sucked in by the AGW scam if you want to see it that way. This issue is that psychologically people love conspiracy and once they head that way they lap things up unquestioningly. You can see that on both sides of the AGW debate where people rant on about things they clearly do not understand and cling to things that are clearly rubbish just because they align with their world view. It is human nature.
00
There is no conspiracy with AGW and I don’t assert there is one; conspiracies are surreptitious processes; the advocacy and support for AGW, from the UN down [and that may be an oxymoron], has been in your face from day one despite the lies and obfuscation to do with the e-mails and hidden data; nothing secretitive about it.
As for Dr Adam, carbon is not a pollutant; humans do pollute but not through CO2; and one of the detrimental side-effects of the AGW ideology is that real pollution issues have been neglected as funds and process have been focused on the AGW lie.
00
There I was waiting for my late night sporting news fix, and up comes an ad for Junior Masterchef.
One of their special guests this series is Prime Minister Gillard.
Gee, I hope that episode is on early, otherwise they’ll need to do a pretty hasty episode alteration.
Wonder what she’s going to cook.
I wonder what wine you’d serve with ‘books’, well done of course.
Nyuk nyuk nyuk!
Tony.
00
Gillard’s full speech introducing the Clean Energy bills to parliament:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/64755307/Carbon-Speech
Political courage at its finest.
00
Hey Adam,
how’s about you explain some of them clean energy options for us eh!
Yeah!
That won’t happen.
Tony.
PS Watch it guys. There’s 16,281 ways to lose any debate/argument with Adam. (nyuk nyuk nyuk!)
00
Ha Ha while you all are making conspiracies about how tall buildings fall, your country is about to fall to a different conspiracy.
I’ll shed a tear for dear Australia. May your carbon be free!
00
Carbon Tax Scam – Here is the audio of swan and gillard LYING to Australians about NOT introducing a carbon DIOXIDE (PLANT FOOD) tax prior to the last federal election to CON people into voting for them under false pretenses!!
http://www.hotheads.com.au/carbon%20tax%20scam.htm
LIARS !!
ELECTION NOW !!
00
GA,
To summarise9/11 (i have bigger fish to fry as it seems the spastic bus has just rolled into town)we know the initial plane impact was not enough to bring down 1 & 2 so we need to invoke the jet fuel theory now if we look beyond the fact that the “inferno” was not hot enough nor was it of the required longevity to do any good but yet somehow blew up a basement etc lets assume these two factors combined did in fact bring down the buildings that still leaves you with 7. Or are you now saying all that fire protection “fell off” aswell and the small fires were misleading and there was in fact an inferno raging there as well. These are the questions that are not yet answered NIST or no NIST, so beleive what you want i do not really care……………..time to go fishing.
00
ONE MINUTE PER MEMBER PER BILL- This is the time JuLIAR has allowed to “debate” the CO2 Tax Bill in parliament. The greatest economic “reform” in Australia’s history and this is the respect jooLIAR gives it. The gloves are off, time to step up the opposition- before its too late!!!
GILLARD AND HER COMMUNIST “government” HAVE TO GO !
ELECTION NOW !!
00
gillard tries to censor the media !!
We don’t scare that easily…..
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/we_dont_scare_that_easily/
ELECTION NOW !!
00
I’ve explained this to you many times; I support the use of nuclear power and I support a price on carbon because that will ultimately result in Australia using nuclear power sooner rather than later.
I know you enjoy lecturing people on anything related to energy policy, but you’re basically way behind the times. The world is transitioning to low carbon, and Australia needs to be part of that else it will lose out.
00
Hey!
What’s up Doc?
Surely that’s not a spelling mistake. (their, not there)
Guess you just lost that debate, eh!
Tony.
00
Ha! Good luck convincing the Prime Minister to call an election, because she is the only one that can request one.
00
Getting ready for the fight against the next PM….
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/getting_ready_for_the_fight_against_the_next_pm/P40/
ELECTION NOW !!
00
Don’t get overexcited now Damian…..
00
Dr Adam Smith @ 206
So you are confirming this is nothing about the climate and reducing emissions , it is all about tax gathering and redistribution.
00
Ah, Adam.
I didn’t ask for you to rabbit on about Nuclear Power which is decades away at the absolute soonest.
I asked you to explain the Clean Energy Options that your precious Socialists have in store for us.
Wind, Solar, Adam, explain them for us
mate, sorry, Doctor.Just answer the question. Don’t change the subject.
Tony.
00
When Adam first appeared here I thought he was just a glued on laborite, the more he post the more i’m convinced he’s a staffer either in Julia’s office or the overblown climate change department.
00
Here it is!
http://www.cenvp.org/pages/bb_CEnvPoftheYear2008.php
Who will be next here, Ove?
00
WOW! Another person that hasn’t bothered to read the policy document.
The money from the sale of permits will be used to fund income tax cuts. The Coalition will say they will end the ETS, but there’s no way they will say they are going to repeal the income tax cuts. So that means they need to find other funding to cover the ‘cost’ (lost revenue) of those income tax cuts.
That means putting the budget back into deficit.
Opposition’s often say they will repeal taxes, levies, royalties, charges et al, but they never actually do it.
Some examples:
Medicare levy, gold royalties, capital gains tax, fringe benefits tax, and the GST.
The ETS will be just the same. The Opposition will say it the sky will fall in, but if they win the next election, there’s no way in hell they will get rid of it, because they need the revenue from the sale of pollution permits to make the budget add up.
00
Tuesday 13th September = 913 or Carbon Tuesday.
A black day for Australia.
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
ELECTION NOW !!!
00
Ah, Tony, all the reason for us to adopt a carbon price so we can start the shift away from coal ASAP.
Your argument is completely silly. Apparently we don’t need a carbon price because that is the best way to support nuclear power!
There you go again. You can’t debate properly so you just throw names at people.
Nuclear. Mate, if you want you can call me mate.
00
Thanks for the laugh.
00
1) George Orwell was a social democrat
2) If the government is being deceitful they have a pretty funny way of going about it. The PM and various ministers have stood up in parliament and described exactly what they want to do and have even put bills to parliament so you’ll be able to read them on the aph.gov.au webpage tomorrow!
00
Meet New Zealand’s ETS: costly, corrupted and useless………
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/meet_new_zealands_ets_costly_corrupted_and_useless/P60/
Alan Jones talks to Rodney Hyde – New Zealand MP on the impact of an ETS:-
http://www.2gb.com/podcasts/alanjones/alanjoneshyde120810.mp3
00
Wind and Solar Adam.
Nuclear power is not even on the far distant horizon of Labor Policy.
Don’t obfuscate.
You’re a Doctor.
You have a brain.
Explain Wind and Solar.
Tony.
00
Nuclear Tony.
00
If I’m wrong did scaper get it right, either way it seems you’r drawing your wage to spread the government agenda.
00
Bob lets hope that means he is worried about his job.
00
@ 177
Let me get this right:
Are you the type that believes no jet crashed at all? Cause some here have said that an “official” trained pilot could never do that….
What group organized the attacks in each plane?
Or are you the type that believes that the US government crashed the jets?
Or you believe that additional explosive charges were planted by somebody?
00
I accept that some people have political views diametrically opposed to my own, yet what I don’t need to do is cast aspersions on them and suggest they have ulterior motives for doing so.
Maybe you should learn to do the same?
00
Ha! Um, no I’m not worried about my job, I don’t work for the government.
Try again mate. Maybe come up with some analysis of a policy rather than just making things so personal.
00
Dr Adam Smith @ 226
You just confirmed my statement. Thank you.
In your reply @ 226 you make no comment about reduction of emissions etc –its all about revenue collection to balance budgets.
00
You obviously KNOW something that the rest of the Australian public don’t Adam.
Perhaps you might explain then just how soon your Nuclear Power Plants will be up and running then.
Not a wish list Adam.
Firm actual plans with a timeline, that you are obviously an insider to.
You are patently clueless on what actually is planned for Clean Energy, Wind and Solar, and even trying to get you to explain them is a wasted effort, because you just don’t know.
You mentioned this about me:
Me behind the times.
You explain Wind and Solar for us then Adam.
Tony.
00
“There will be no Emissions trading scheme under a Government I lead”
Gosh MadJak, I had no idea any politician at the last two election campaigns said such a thing!
“That being about how media commentators, in the cut and thrust of an interview, can goad and encourage one to say what one doesn’t intend or mean.”
Winston thats pretty lame. Abbott has shown, with this and particularly the “shuddering brainlock” incident that he really has no ability to think on his feet when there is the slightest bit of pressure on him. Thats not a good quality for a PM mate.
“And as you are clearly a Labor supporter, I’m sure honesty is anathema to everything your party stands for…”
Personal attack?? you lose turkey. 🙂
Carbon Price bills into parliament today. Yeehah! Let the great unhinging of the Opposition commence. Popcorn!!
00
Craker at 214… thanks again for another fact filled post. I agree time to wind it up and stop winding up each other.
00
Its been awhile Matt, did the spastic bus break down on the way back from Canberra that would make it a “convoy of inconvenience” wouldn’t it.
I was listening to Gillard and her boring, wrist slashing, monotonic speech to parliament re the tax. The thing that stood out to me was that she mentioned the words “carbon pollution” many times but “carbon dioxide” never so it prompted me to ask the spastic bus ticket holders a question.
Is Gillard lying…YES or NO.
Now before you rush and hammer away NO on your keyboard i would caution here, firstly if you say NO then:
1, The 6th element on the periodic table is pollution
2, You are 18% (mass) pollution
3, You exhale pollution and are just one piece of legislation away from being taxed every time you breath.
4, Plants love pollution
4A, Wheat, vegetables and fruit are the staples of a human diet but without pollution they would not exist and neither would you….ergo….you rely on pollution to keep you alive
T
herefore
We dig up pollution from the ground, put it into the atmosphere to help plants to grow and keep us alive and you want to tax this process?
So again is Gillard telling the truth or is she a lying sack of shit?
00
Since apparently anonymity permits doctorates I have two of them:
Dr. of BS-ology and (DBS)
Dr. of hard knocks. (DHK)
You can just call me Johnson
00
“he Opposition will say it the sky will fall in, but if they win the next election, there’s no way in hell they will get rid of it, because they need the revenue from the sale of pollution permits to make the budget add up.”
Sorry Adam, disagree here. Since when has it ever been demonstrated that it is in any way a priority of this Opposition that they need to make the budget add up?? Remember, they have Hockeynomics to fall back on!!
00
As any one with my view is said to be on the take from big oil, Adam, don’t take things so personally.
00
Funny times. I’ve now got to go and check my moso bamboo which is about to start gobbling and sequestering carbon dioxide insanely over the next months.
I didn’t get this moso by simply believing in it, recommending it, or by making other things less valuable. It had to be planted, fostered, protected. It had to be grown. It was a thing to be initiated, a thing to be done.
Dr. Adam Smith, please show us the nukes. The how, the when, the where of nuclear in Australia. Show us the initiation, the action, the doing.
Please. I assure you, you have my interest and attention.
00
Mark D 243,
I have a PHD (piled higher and deeper)
Mark D 236,
Yes there was a plane of course
I dont know thats why i ask questions
As above
Yes or at least until someone can explain why the hundreds of eye witness are wrong.
If you look into this (and i am not saying you have not) this whole thing stinks to high heaven. There is a lot more going on that you are led to beleive.
00
@ 243:
my friend this is why I like you!
The carbon “smack down”
00
I have made no such claim. You should avoid verballing people, it is considered a bad debating move.
00
Fact Over Fiction
Willam Rodriguez, 9/11 Hero and the last man out of the Towers
…….The 9/11 Commission Hearing
At the closed-door 9/11 Commission hearing, Rodriguez testified under oath that explosions were going off in the basement of the North Tower before the first plane impacted the building.
He explained in great detail to the Commissioners the numerous cases of serious injuries he had personally witnessed that were caused by these explosions.
He even provided the panel with a list of firsthand witnesses to the explosions, people who were ready to testify under oath.
One of the individuals Rodriguez recommended the panel summon was his friend and fellow employee, John Mongello.
Mongello was in the lobby of the neighboring South Tower when the first aircraft plowed into the North Tower where Rodriguez was located.
It would be another sixteen minutes before the second aircraft would rip into the one Mongello was in.
Yet, within a minute of the first plane hitting the North Tower, an elevator in the South Tower exploded to smithereens right before his eyes!
Mongello and others were literally blown backwards by the blast, as people—many, horribly burned—began to run willy-nilly shrieking in pain, shock, and sheer terror. Thick, black smoke could be seen billowing out of the now exposed elevator shaft, and the pungent smell of “gunpowder” was very evident.
Again, just as with the North Tower, this explosion occurred inside a building that had not yet been struck by a plane!
How could a plane crashing into the North Tower possibly have caused elevators in the South Tower to explode?
The esteemed 9/11 Commission never bothered to ask.
Worse, and to his utter disbelief, Rodriguez later discovered that his statements were completely omitted from the official record. As a result, not one word of this decorated hero’s startling testimony appeared in the much-ballyhooed 9/11 Commission Report, a document that continues to be touted as “the most detailed, definitive study of the events of 9/11.”
Furthermore, Rodriguez was told, quite emphatically, not to speak about the explosions to others until “further investigations” had been carried out. As the world knows, this has yet to happen.
As a result of much public pressure, the Commission’s investigation records were finally made public—seven years later, in January 2009.
Rodriguez was stunned to find that his testimony was among those marked “restricted,” and thus inaccessible to the public. His crucial evidence remains restricted to this day.
Waking Up
Naturally, Rodriguez was flabbergasted by the Commission’s clearly suspect actions, but anger at the subterfuge was soon eclipsed by his far deeper anxiety.
The bombs.
He was convinced beyond a doubt there were explosives planted within the Towers. The official explanation—jet fuel, which is simply kerosene—made no sense at all.
Besides, he had overheard many exchanges on firemen’s two-way radios that day that confirmed virtually all the jet fuel had burned off, and the few remaining scattered fires looked like they could easily be knocked out.
He was convinced the explosions he had seen, felt, and heard that day were not caused by kerosene.
They were caused by deliberately positioned explosives.
What cemented his belief and reinforced it even further was something he saw on television the next day:
WTC building 7 collapsing into its footprint like a house of cards. In a matter of seconds. [1]
He had walked by that building numerous times. WTC7 was a 47-storey steel-framed skyscraper that was located a few hundred feet away from the Towers, and a plane had not even struck it. But, just like the Twin Towers, it, too, it suddenly collapsed into its own footprint.
The first thought that struck him was, “That building was a fortress. How could it just have fallen like that?”
Having experienced the explosions in the North Tower firsthand, and then having seen footage of Building 7 collapse in freefall, there were no doubts whatsoever left in his mind:
All three buildings were purposely demolished with explosives………
http://www.factoverfiction.com/article/2745
00
I have never accused you of being on the take from big oil.
That’s the difference here. I can accept that some people disagree with me in good faith, but apparently if I present views supporting a government policy, that means I must be working for the government, or for the ALP, or for GetUp et al.
Why can’t we just debate each other’s positions with an understanding that people hold their respective views in good faith?
00
Good point. This is something I haven’t considered.
Hockeynomics can make anything add up to whatever you want it to add to.
00
“Conspiracy theorist” is just another form of name-calling. Stick with discussing the evidence. Usually those who don’t have any evidence are the first to start name-calling.
Some people are unskeptical about claims that fit their world view (pro or anti-government). Some attack every official announcement, while others compulsively defend “authority” and are just as unskeptical.(Perversely, some of this latter group call the anti-government lot “conspiracy theorists” but bizarrely join clubs to call themselves “skeptics”, as if busting astrology, psychics and spoon-bending is the mark of a true “thinker”.)
Sometimes the people yelling “conspiracy theorist” are the same ones postulating mass conspiracies where thousands of online commentators are somehow paid by “Big-Oil”.
Ultimately, calling someone a conspiracy theorist adds nothing. Only the evidence counts, the rest is a waste of time.
00
Dr Adam
Hi, Dr Winston here
That is an extremely illuminating comment there, Doctor. The “affront”, as you put it, was to go to an election on one platform- “no carbon tax” (both Swan and Gillard EXPLICITLY ruled it out and everyone knows it, except you of course)- and then backflip, because of alleged “circumstances” (having eplicitly ruled it out prior to the election, the Greens could NOT have insisted on reneging on a core promise unless Labor intended to use the excuse to bring it in by stealth) and do exactly the opposite, fully aware that if this tax been part of the party’s platform at the election, Labor would have lost by a landslide. The overwhelming majority of the population are clearly and completely opposed to the tax in any way, shape or form. So, yes, “their opinion doesn’t matter”- Labor have lived by that motto and demonstrated this fact completely, which is why forgiveness will not follow for your government, in spite of your delusions to the contrary. You have shown utter contempt for the will of the Australian people, and then have the gall to suggest that others are being undemocratic. Hippocracy 101.
00
Kevin…
I like web site names because they have no grammar or punctuation, so I can make up what I like.
factoverfiction=
Fact over. Fiction.
00
Why is everyone hung up on reducing emissions? The governments own reports tell us that by 2050 we will reduce our emissions by 80% (from 2000) 78% of this 80% will come from buying 650 billion dollars worth of credits.
Therefore the tax ETS is not designed to reduce our emissions but to generate money to buy the permits, i thought this was done and dusted!
00
Evidence is how you apply data Jo. It is the data that counts.
00
Joanne:
I think it is a false dichotomy to describe world views as pro or anti government.
There are some government actions where everyone is anti-government, e.g. I don’t think many people would agree that the police should be able to arrest anyone anywhere at anytime for any reason.
But on other issues most people are pro-government, e.g. most people accept that there should be road rules for example, rather than people just being able to drive however they like.
00
The government’s policy isn’t a carbon tax. It is an Emissions Trading Scheme that starts at a fixed price then moves to a semi-floating (market) price from July 1st, 2015.
If you want to critique the policy in a sophisticated way, you have to first actually understand what the policy is and what it isn’t.
And yet there’s 15 Coalition Senators still in parliament who were elected in 2007 on a policy of supporting an Emissions Trading Scheme.
Why aren’t you condemning them for failing to support the policy that they were elected on? It seems you only consider politicians adopting a policy you disagree with as a lie, if it is a policy you agree with, then you are willing to accept politicians changing their minds. That may make sense to you, but it isn’t consistent, and is arguably hypocritical.
00
Gee, whats under the leaf?
Whisper if you have to…….
00
8 Sept: Prime Minister’s Press Office: Australia committed to tackling climate change across the Pacific
This phase of the International Climate Change Adaptation Initiative is part of Australia’s AUD 599 million global commitment to responding to climate change from 2010-2013. At least 25 per cent of Australia’s fast start package will go to help our Pacific neighbours.
Australia will also commit AUD 3 million to support the Pacific Standards and Labelling (Energy Efficiency) Assistance Program. The Program will work with several Pacific Island countries to align with the energy efficiency standards and labelling program in place in Australia and New Zealand, initially targeting products such as fridges, air conditioners and lighting.
http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/australia-committed-tackling-climate-change-across-pacific
00
Dr Adam Smith @ 250
Just to help you out with reading your own posts here is what you wrote and what I commented on
00
Julia’s pollution tax will reduce the bubbles in beer.If not it will reduce the size of the glass.
00
did you just clock out for a few minutes GA?
Oh i get it, the hundreds of testimonies that show you to be incorrect can be tossed out because:
A, you were not present to witness first hand that they are telling the truth
B, Eyewitness accounts are not evidence
C, Restricted in normal terms means “we dont want people to know about this” but in your world it means “hes a liar”
D, So this quote from the designer is also wrong as it does not fit with what you wish to beleive
“The building was designed to have a fully loaded 707 crash into it, that was the largest plane at the time. I believe that the building could probably sustain multiple impacts of jet liners because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door – this intense grid – and the plane is just a pencil puncturing that screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting.”
Had enough yet?
00
OK if no one else will ask i will,
Adam are you a doctor of proctology?
00
Adam,
you say above:
Er, that’s what we’re attempting to do here.
WE are asking YOU to tell us:
1. For you to explain your (current) Labor Clean Energy options.
2. For you to explain how soon these Nuclear plants you are so confident about will be up and running.
It’s you who are not engaging.
You are abiding by typical left methods.
Never engage debate on anything other than your own terms.
Never engage on something you know nothing about.
Ignore anything put to you.
Find a way to turn the debate into an attack on the other side.
Always stay on message.
At the moment, you only seek for us to debate what you want us to debate.
Adam, abide by your own statement, and just tell us the answers we seek.
Tony.
00
great time for a carbon (dioxide) tax!
12 Sept: Businessweek: Michael Heath: Australia Business Confidence Falls to Lowest Since 2009
A slump in sentiment is weighing on Australian consumers, who are reining in spending as they face the highest borrowing costs in the developed world…
Australia’s retail sales growth may struggle to rebound from a two-decade low as the nation’s stock market slumps and consumer confidence weakens, curtailing household spending, according to a Deloitte Access Economics report…
Clouding Australia’s outlook is concern the world’s largest economy is slowing. Employment in the U.S. unexpectedly stagnated in August as employers became less confident in the strength of the recovery, and the jobless rate held at 9.1 percent, according to a Sept. 2 report…
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-09-12/australia-business-confidence-falls-to-lowest-since-2009.html
no doubt the following scenario is being followed in australia:
12 Sept: Fox News: Regulation Nation: Drowning in Rules, Businesses Brace for Cost and Time for Compliance
Indeed, the 2010 volume of the Federal Register, the “newspaper” of regulatory agencies, stands at an all-time record-high 81,405 pages composed of final rules, proposed rules, meeting notices and regulatory studies.
“There is something like 180 million words of binding federal law and regulation. It would take a lifetime just to read it,” said Philip K Howard, founder of Common Good…
Manufacturing is the industry hit the hardest by regulatory costs, with per-firm costs at $688,944. But all small businesses pay a steep price — $10,585 for every employee…
Among the industries facing massive regulations is farming, whether it be dust-ups over dirt to the fallout from manure.
“It’s a big concern; I’m worried they’re going to regulate us right out of farming,” said Calvin Haile, of Dunnsville, Va., a grain farmer whose five employees have to keep check on the runoff to the Chesapeake Bay. “Since we’re so close to the bay and you know, we just won’t be able to farm profitably and comply with all the regulations, that’s my concern for the future.”…
American appear to be concerned by the impact of regulation on business. A poll conducted by the Tarrance Group for Public Notice, an independent, nonprofit group that provides information on how government policy affects financial well-being, found that 74 percent of those surveyed say that the U.S. is creating too many rules. The poll of likely voters in 10 states taken Sept. 6-8 also found that 47 percent fear the rules will result in job losses while 22 percent think it will increase the price of goods and services. Seventy percent said they believe increasing the number of regulations on American businesses will result in jobs moving overseas. Howard said he believes in legitimate regulatory goals, but the rules need to be practically applied and enforced.
“You can tell a factory owner that it can’t pollute and it needs to meet certain guidelines for pollution, but if you give them a thousand pages of rules that tell them exactly how to catch the pollution. Chances are they’ll waste huge amounts of money catching the pollution in the wrong place and it probably won’t be effective,” he said.http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/12/regulation-nation-drowning-in-rules-businesses-brace-for-cost-and-time-for/#ixzz1Xm8sjN4p
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Hmmm… Adam Smith:
1) Believes in working towards a zero carbon footprint economy
2) Believes in the Nuclear option
3) Believes in one world government
4) Believes in a command economy being effective
5) Rejoices at the introduction of a new Tax
6) Doesn’t care what the australian people think unless they agree with him.
I can only conclude one thing, could it be that Adam Smith is, in fact, Kim Jong Il II?
Maybe he allready is in North Korea?
00
Catamon@241,
Maybe you would like to provide the exact quote of Juliar Gillards?
I zone out whenever liars start talking.
00
Adam:
some of your first post from today
My first two replies.
You reply
Your earlier post all hold our PM and Climate minister up for adulation, I may be wrong about you being on the government payroll, but you have to accept your agenda here today was to get exactly the type of reply I gave.
Or explain what were your motives for the top three posts.
00
the media is not mentioning the carbon (dioxide) tax in any of the stories about plummeting business confidence in australia, especially amongst retailers.
the MSM totally ignores the fact we are already paying dearly for the AGW nonsense, for example via massive increases in water and electricity bills since the construction of already-mothballed desal plants etc and electricity companies have pretended to invest in renewables.
but ABC manages the most dishonest headline, which makes no mention of the fact the article is referring only to WA, which is faring better because of the mining boom:
13 Sept: ABC: Retail sector predicted to grow strongly this year
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-13/strong-retail-sector-in-wa/2882748
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“Maybe you would like to provide the exact quote of Juliar Gillards?”
Brush up the spelling MadJak, its Julia.
And you would like me to provide a quote of something that she didn’t say?? Earth calling MadJak…….
00
Dr. Crakar24 (PHD)
My apologies for previous lack of decorum.
For the record I don’t accept the “official” recount of what caused the building failures. That said, I’m as sure as I can be (non government security clearance) that it was a group of Muslim Jihadists that in fact were at the controls of both aircraft. What happened after the aircraft hit the buildings is a matter of physics and there is little experience in the physics of skyscrapers falling from high altitudes.
What I do say is that from my perspective (holding two doctorates) is that they fell without a deep conspiracy.
00
well from the evidence presented by the avatar there are two possibilities.
1. It is just whiteness.
2. It is leaf forever.
00
And as for Juliar gillard being corageous to introduce the tax on carbon based life forms, these are not words I would choose, something more along the lines of
Suicidal Jihad
based apon a misinformed and misinterpreted cult belief system that believes that all pollution is ok, but c02 is so bad they must martyr our economic system to combat the trace gas.
But thats ok by mattb and adam smith – they might get their very own fukishimas to plah with.
00
Craker… no I’m done with WTC. Claim victory (victory by endurance) if you like but I feel that the debate is going in circles and that I’m not seeing new evidence, or anything that directly falsifies the NIST reports.
00
Gee @ 275
Ok that is what you say out loud.
What do you whisper?
00
Ok Catamon,
Just so you’re under no more illusions than normal, here is the quote. I’ll make it bold and clear so you don’t forget:
“There will be no Carbon Tax Under the Governmeng I Lead”
And so Catamon, hat is she doing now? Oh thats right, she’s uhmm introducing a carnon tax isn’t she.
00
A joke for our american friends’
Since when did Ron Paul become the 13th floor of a building?
00
Leaf litter,
Not claiming victory just wondering how long you will maintain the appeal to authority
00
Mark D
stop you are creeping me out. I am a person and the leaf is an avatar – a gravitar even. I don’t wear a leaf although there is a fig growing next door should I care to wear one.
00
Every “green” job costs at least one other
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/every_green_job_costs_at_least_one_other/
Beware of Bob Brown’s “green jobs”
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/beware_of_bob_browns_green_jobs/
ELECTION NOW !!!!
00
appeal to data and analysis craker. How is my appeal different from yours?
00
Gee Aye and Adam Smith,
You both fit the bill as described –
Sock Puppet Government Trolls Attack Alternative Media”
Skeptical Eye.com
http://www.skepticaleye.com/2011/04/sock-puppet-government-trolls-attack.html
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“There will be no Carbon Tax Under the Governmeng I Lead”
Excellent find MadJak. What part of the sentence:
They are introducing an ETS.
Do you find it hard to comprehend??
Its an ETS, with an initial, transition period of fixed price permits.
I know the untruth about it being a Carbon tax is fashionable in certain deluded and hysterical circles. But, if you actually look at what they are proposing instead of subscribing to the crap that the current opposition and some of the media are so desperate to have you believe, then its obviously not a “Carbon Tax”.
00
“Gee Aye”, “Catamon”, “Adam Smith”, “John Brookes”, “MattB” etc. all USEFUL IDIOTS as the infamous Communist Starlin referred to these types of individuals.
Vacuous and devoid of any ability to reason and think logically for themselves.
Clearly all are products of the dumbed down Leftist biased “education” system.
Wake up you MORONS and try and think for yourselves instead of being LEMMINGS following the religion of the Gaia God.
Obviously some Homo Sapians such as yourselves have not progressed past the Cave Man Animist beliefs……..
Stupidity Personified…….
Please elucidate on who precisely you think that you are “saving the planet for”. Certainly not for your fellow human beings! Maybe the Aliens???
PSYCHOLOGY OF LEFTISM………..
http://jonjayray.tripod.com/psychlef.html
LEFT WING GENE DISCOVERED! – Scientists Find ‘Liberal Gene’……..
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/weird/Scientists-May-Have-IDd-Liberal-Gene-105917218.html
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“You both fit the bill as described –
Sock Puppet Government Trolls Attack Alternative Media”
More personal attacks? Loser.
00
“Gee Aye”, “Catamon”, “Adam Smith”, “John Brookes”, “MattB” etc. all USEFUL IDIOTS as the infamous Communist Starlin referred to these types of individuals.”
Personal attacks from Damien?? Tin Foil Hat loser. I must buy Alcoa shares……
00
Gee, No bloke would say “creeping me out” so I have my answer..
I’ll stop
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Adam @ 260
Amazing how you can manage to be evasive and insulting all at the same time. There is nothing “sophisticated” in anything even remotely associated with you or your opinions. You merely parrot the party line, evade and obfuscate to your heart’s content, and then bask in the glory of self satisfaction and smug self-aggrandissement. What was said, was said. Plain and simple, no matter how many times you want to rewrite history or pretend that we were ignorant in hearing it. It’s a matter of public record and even her apologists acknowledge that, except you- a majority of ONE, your opinion being the only one that counts obviously.
Btw last time I looked, the coalition wasn’t in government currently, so how can they be breaking any promises about an ETS when they are in opposition and not formulating government policy.
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THIS IS WORTH REPEATING…..
An interview by one of the top IPPC men given to NZZ am Sonntag on November 10 2010.
Ottmar Edenhofer is a German economist who deals with climate change policy…….. He is currently professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University of Berlin, co-chair of Working group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and deputy director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research…… In 2004 he was a lead author for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore.
In the interview Edenhofer freely admitted that the goal of Climate Policy is to transfer wealth from the West to the Third World by imposing economy eviscerating carbon caps on the West.
http://www.libertarianadvocate.blogspot.com/2010/11/ottmar-edenhofer-co-chair-of-uns-ipcc.html
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Damian,
that would be “Stalin” and “Homo sapiens“, although the second error could be explained by your dodgy Caps Lock key.
Also, “Useful Idiots”, is of uncertain origin and was once thought to have originated with Lenin.
Keep up the ill-directed rage dude.
00
AND SO THIS THIS…..
IPCC Official: “Climate Policy Is Redistributing The World’s Wealth”
http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1877-ipcc-official-climate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth.html
THAT SAYS IT ALL!
THE TRUE AGENDA IS REVEALED !!!
ELECTION NOW !!!!!!!
00
I must buy Alcoa shares.
Dumb. With the new “carbon” tax, Aluminum might be a bad call.
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Mark D
you have AN answer or are confused by someone mixing their idiom.
00
Catamon,
As i mentioned earlier, i zone out when liars speak.
You can spin all you like, Juliar got to power with the help of a massive lie.
Any doubts on this that even the most selfish supporters of this government have had has dissolved today.
Any defence of gillard on the carbon tax demonstrates a selfish ignorance which is unworthy of expressing imo.
To actively celebrate its introduction also demonstrates the self serving nature of what is left of the labor movement. It is this pathetic display which will ensure the union heavies stay out of power for a long time to come.
And if the next government comes down hard on workers rights, the workers will have their very own corrupt and nepotistic labor movement to blame for the imbalance of power.
00
these CAGW alarmists see money in everything…
12 Sept: ABC World Today: Report reassesses worth of our oceans
Australia’s marine ecosystems are worth $25 billion. At least that’s the value put on them by the Centre for Policy Development, which has just released a report that looked beyond oil, gas and fishing to assess the worth of Australia’s oceans…
LAURA EADIE: We estimate that the currently economically invisible value of our marine ecosystem services is $25 billion a year. That is for things like carbon storage which we estimated was $15.8 billion a year, for nursery services and disease prevention which we estimated at $6.9 billion a year and for recreation and food for recreational fishers which we estimate at $1.85 billion a year.
SARAH CLARKE: Some might argue how can you put a price on some of these areas that you’ve looked at. How can you do that?
LAURA EADIE: What we’ve done is look at how people interact with nature so we looked at things such as how much time people spend fishing, we looked at natural processes for carbon storage and we estimated what that would be worth once we have a carbon price. In doing this we relied on a lot of international studies that have estimated similar values around the world…
SARAH CLARKE: And what recommendations will you be making to the Federal Government?
LAURA EADIE: We have five simple recommendations for the Federal Government that we think are very important to secure our marine resources.
So first of all, protect the assets that underpin our marine estate by establishing marine protected areas. Rebuild fish stocks, currently 42 per cent of Australia’s Commonwealth stocks are overfished or unknown so they need to be rebuilt.
Ensure all commercial fisheries are sustainably managed, establish accurate data on recreational catch and what fish levels, what fish stocks would be in undisturbed ecosystems and then finally support local communities through marketing and business innovation…
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2011/s3315457.htm
Laura on ABC in July:
July 2011: ABC: Laura Eadie: Why is a carbon tax like the Tour de France?
With support of the Greens and key independents, the legislation will pass through the Senate. Come the next election, a teensy little carbon price won’t seem so painful…
With the help of the Greens, Labor seems to get it now. With the help of Turnbull, there may even be hope for the Liberals. But we’ll need an independent coach to keep us focused and honest about how carbon-fit we really are…
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/07/11/3266223.htm
Laura Eadie is also connected to Climate Friendly as Carbon Strategy Manager. Qantas and News Ltd feature as clients on their home page:
Climate Friendly
Manage and reduce your carbon emissions and help slow global warming by purchasing carbon credits through Climate Friendly…
(from another page) Climate Friendly is pleased to be a Founding Member, and currently, only Australian Member of ICROA. ICROA is a not-for-profit alliance of leading carbon reduction and offset organisations…
(from The Board of Directors)
Joel Fleming
Joel sits on the board as Climate Friendly’s Founding Chairman. He is an experienced environmental scientist, former CSIRO software developer and industry expert in carbon markets and trading…
Michael J. Robison
As Trustee of the Emerald Planet Trust, Michael pioneered the commercialisation of environmental technology and service companies. These activities resulted in investment of over $5M of seed capital and $20M of venture capital directly into emerging companies involved in the environment as well as the mitigation of climate change and the carbon economy. He is a founding Director and shareholder of Climate Friendly.
More recently Michael formed Emerald Planet Limited to continue the work of the Trust in Asia. In Indonesia, Emerald Planet provides specialist consulting and advisory services to private and public sector clients, specialising in land use, renewable energy and carbon-related projects, policy and investments. It is a co-initiator of the development of one of the world’s first REDD projects, is a founding partner in a pioneering Jatropha-based renewable energy business…
Dr. Karol Nolles
Dr Karee Nolles is an Associate Director with Macquarie Global Investments. He joined the Macquarie Capital Utilities and Climate Change team in June 2007…
As well as Climate Friendly, Karel also represents Macquarie on the boards of Envex, NextGen and The Waterexchange…
https://climatefriendly.com/
wonder why ABC never mentioned that Chair of the Centre for Policy Development is a former staff member of the ABC. guess they wouldn’t want the public to know that:
Centre for Policy Development
Board of directors
Share Kate Miller (Chair)
Kate Miller has extensive senior executive experience in media, government and arts organisations. Kate worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a broadcaster and senior manager from 1974 till 2000. After many years as producer and broadcaster for ABC Radio particularly Radio National she became ABC Manager Regionals in Western Australia and then Radio Manager, State Manager and State Director of the ABC in New South Wales…
Tony Douglas
…Prior to EMC, Tony was a broadcast journalist, designing and producing Australia’s first national environment radio program, ‘Watching Brief’, and helping design and manage Radio Australia’s regional environment information project with AusAID (1990-1992)…
Nadine Flood
Nadine Flood is National Secretary of the CPSU. After studying Economics at Macquarie University and being a union delegate in universities and local government, Nadine began as an organiser with the CPSU in 1995, representing members across government agencies and in Telstra. She has also worked with the ACTU and with international unions such as the SIEU in America….
http://cpd.org.au/people/board-of-directors/
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Gee Aye:
No I was only confused by the fig leaf.
Mostly I mix tonic with my idioms.
Sorry I outed you
00
IS JULIA GILLARD A SOCIOPATH?
SOCIOPATH !
You be the judge, read the description below:
http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html
FOR INSTANCE : I was the Shy girl from Unley High
http://youtu.be/fF_j_Ju22Us
Kerry, I am not by nature Shy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF_j_Ju22Us&feature=youtu.be
ELECTION NOW !!!!!!!
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Without exception, the environmental threats from AGW are entirely hypotheticals. They are things which might or could happen at some uncertain time in the future
Well worth a read (http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/09/neglected-truths-of-climate-change) as a reminder of the stupidity of what the Guverment is about to embark on.
ELECTION NOW !!!!
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277,
.
I am quite done too however this bit stops me from letting go “I’m not seeing new evidence, or anything that directly falsifies the NIST reports” i remember reading about NIST speculation about cheap chinese fire retardent falling off and speculation about raging inferno’s but i dont remember NIST speculating explosive devices as evident in eye witness accounts. As i said you rely heavily on an appeal to authority.
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Police move in on HSU
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/police_move_in_on_hsu/
ELECTION NOW !!
00
People just don’t understand the reason those towers came down…it was because of Global Warming. Simple.
00
No scaper not global warming but our lack of action on global warming, if we had of acted then flying would only be permissable for the elite in private jets, therefore no planes to hijack……………..
00
Friends of Science – COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=3
00
Crakar, you’re right. Silly me!
00
This is Australia’s future (POVETY !) if gillard is not stopped !
Gillard’s California dreaming
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/gillards_california_dreaming/
Gillard looks to China and bankrupt California for inspiration
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/gillard_looks_to_china_and_bankrupt_california_for_inspiration/
ELECTION NOW !!!
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Catamon @286
Oh damn it’s only an ETS ?
Thank god I tought it was going to be a Carbon Tax!
I feel a whole lot better knowing it isn’t going to cost any of us anymore. Thankyou for the news I can go on with my wearisome life now and not worry.
I can actaully see the logic in the exercise. Introduce an ETS to abate a non problem and give the money to someone overseas so we can generate power and they can have guns. I feel a whole lot better now !!!
Say YES to an election now !!
00
Damian, I sent you an email and it bounced, can you email me? joanne At joannenova.com.au
Adam Smith: lol.
A false dictomy? Indeed, and you illustrate your point with two inane issues that are not remotely being debated. You could pretty much nullify all discussion about anything with that kind of reasoning.
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J.H. @ 62
Nicely thought up mate and a very good post. It sounds totally plausible looking at our current scenario.
Well done…I hope it happens like that !
Say YES to an election now !!
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Jo @ 310
Adam Smith believes arguing right from wrong is a false dichotomy, so what does that say about him?
Kindest regards to you Jo,
Winston
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Catamon @ 286
I know the untruth about it being a Carbon tax is fashionable in certain deluded and hysterical circles. But, if you actually look at what they are proposing instead of subscribing to the crap that the current opposition and some of the media are so desperate to have you believe, then its obviously not a “Carbon Tax”.
Google Julia Gillard and Carbon Tax
Last week, Ms Gillard announced a carbon tax would begin in July 2012.
The Prime Minister explained that a fixed-price period, for an interim three to five years, would effectively operate as a carbon tax.
“A carbon tax is where you fix price,” Ms Gillard said.
00
Nothing gladdens my heart more than to see people like Doctor Smith come to blogs like this.
It gives us insight into the thinking of people, who for the sake of gloating over what will be one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in our history, it in effect graphically shows us that there are people who just could not care less about their fellow Australians.
Their reliance upon legislation to push a party political line, and their complete and utter lack of knowledge about any aspect of electrical power generation shows that when it does come to their fellow Australians, they are fully prepared to send us back into the dark ages (emphasis on dark) safe in the knowledge that they got their legislation through.
Harsh I know, but closer to the mark than you might think.
Tony.
00
Well actually no I don’t believe in this. I believe that Australia’s electricity generation and transportation sectors shouldn’t produce CO2.
I believe Australia should generate electricity from nuclear power.
Wrong!
Wrong!
Can’t you see how this contradicts your previous point? If I believed in a command economy, why would I be supporting a market price for carbon pollution?
Wrong!
Wrong + name calling, so you lose this debate.
STick to the issues mate.
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TonyfromOz #314
I just hope Smithy’s job is among the first to go.
Oh, wait. He’s probably on the dole already.
00
Tony from Oz-
Thanks for putting the meat on the bone , I have learnt a lot of interesting facts from your comments.
Thanks. I have copied that one about the cascade effect to our Galileo Movement discussion on justgrounds.
Let me know if you don’t approve and I will take it off.
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I wasn’t trying to nullify discussion at all. I was simply pointing out that simply presenting two categories “pro government” and “anti government” simply doesn’t enable a serious discussion of what governments do and what governments should and shouldn’t do.
The fact no one has argued that we shouldn’t have road rules demonstrates that to some extent we are all pro-government and in other respects we are all anti-government.
Given that is the case, the terms are as useless as “conspiracy theorist”, which was your initial point.
00
Stick to the issues rather than just attacking the person.
(Maybe stick with answering their questions would help you? Fingerpointing at people can hurt you since three of them are pointing back at you) CTS
00
Dr Adam is a supporter of a market price for carbon; what mirth, what folly, what glorious stupidity!
Seriously though, Dr Adam, name one market determined carbon scheme which has ‘worked’, by any definition, in the world.
00
This snide attack on my patriotism may be a ‘clever’ piece of rhetoric, but it doesn’t actually make any sense.
How can you say I don’t care about other Australians when today the Government put a bill to parliament to increase the tax free threshold to almost $21,000 by 2015?
Why the hell should anyone on half of median yearly earnings pay any income tax? Yet at the moment you have part time workers working for $17 an hour at Coles and Woolies paying $2000 a year. How is that fair? How does that show care for our fellow Australians who are working on the minimum wage?
What an absurd thing to say? Are you suggesting the Government should institute laws WITHOUT legislation? Who’s the one attacking democracy now?
I know this is a difficult day for you seeing that your whole understanding of energy policy has turned out to be a sham. Feel free to keep lecturing us on whatever it is you think Australia’s energy policy should be, but just keep in mind that it was the Keating Labor government that set up the grid which resulted in significantly cheaper power prices than would’ve otherwise been the case.
00
Of course it doesn’t matter how much abuse you throw at me, the fact is the carbon price will start on July 1st next year, and there isn’t anything you can do to stop it. So just deal with it, get on with your life, write that book that you’ve been thinking about for the last decade. Make love to your husband / wife / partner. Go on a holiday. Do whatever it takes you to realise that you’re powerless to stop this from becoming law.
00
This is simply absurd. You’ve completely missed my point.
My point is simple. Even people who believe in the minimalist state believe that governments should do SOME things, even if that simply means running a judicial system.
Therefore everyone is pro-government on some issues.
00
00
Kim Jong Ill II a.k.a. Adam smith
Surely you jest comrade. You believe transportation and electricity generation shouldn’t produce any co2.
You’re kidding right? I guess you would prefer to have a good old yellowcake by product to deal with. The germans and the japanese are right behind you. Oh, wait, no they aren’t are they?
You cannot be against a command economy whilst supporting an ets. The ETS is a command economy construct. The ets cannot be a free market with government intervention. If you can’t see this you fail economics 101 bud.
And no you don’tcare what the australian people think provided it supports your misguided green dreams. Otherwise you would not be rejoicing at the introduction of this tax ” on carbon”.
00
Dr Smith,
again, that’s why we love having you here.
What. Wasn’t there a power grid before him.
Every time you open your mouth, it’s just to change feet.
Immediately prior to Keating doing what you say he did, Australians were paying 9/10 cents per KWH for electricity.
Right now we are paying more than double that.
Why?
Because renewable power plants and their Government subsidies at the front end and the delivery of power to the grids has forced the price up.
And now your
Carbon AbatementClean Energy Bill will drive that cost up even further again, by around a further 3 cents per KWH (14%) and further renewable energy plants will drive it up even further again.You must think we’re blind!
Tony.
00
I have a rather firm feeling that the consumption of tar & feather will soon rise, and that’s with You ‘Down Under’ as well as with us here in Sweden… 😉
Brgds from the Bestcoast of Sweden
//TJ
00
It does have to stay in power until then. Pollution permits will be auctioned starting in around March next year. Compensation payments start going out in May and June.
Wilkie has been very conveniently ambiguous on this. Sure he has said he will no longer support the government, but what he hasn’t said is that he will support the Opposition. Even if Wilkie says he is no longer supporting the Government, if he isn’t willing to support a no confidence motion then he is by default still supporting the Government. Wilkie is in a notional Labor seat, if he makes Abbott PM he has absolutely no chance of retaining his seat at the next election.
What on earth are you going on about? How does a QLD state election change the numbers of the House of Representatives?
Err, what? Underhanded? The legislation was introduced to the parliament today the way all legislation is introduced (well actually the Opposition was only given the WorkChoices draft legislation 8 days in advance!).
I know for a fact that any legal action against the ETS won’t have a hope in hell of going anywhere.
00
So in your opinion Lying blantally about “there shall be no carbon tax under the government I lead” and than imposing one anyway after the election is acceptable behavour? And it’s no legal action it’s legal action Against Mrs Gillard for lying to the Australian people,or isn’t being accountable for your actions required anymore?
00
1) The policy isn’t actually a carbon tax, it is a fixed price emissions trading scheme which reverts to a market price from 2015.
2) Gillard didn’t say she wouldn’t price carbon in this parliament. An ETS is a pricing mechanism for pricing carbon
3) Politicians are under no obligation to keep the same policies before and after elections. For example there’s 15 Coalition Senators still in parliament who were elected in 2007 on a policy of supporting an Emissions Trading Scheme. Why shouldn’t they be held to account for now changing their position?
4) Politicians often change their policies after elections. For example Tony Abbott during the 2004 election campaign said that the Medicare safety net thresholds wouldn’t be changed, but then he went and changed them 3 months after the election which increased medical costs for about 40,000 Australians.
Gillard isn’t married. Her correct title is The Honourable Ms Gillard.
There’s no law that says politicians can’t lie, that is purely a political matter. John Howard lied constantly for 11.5 years when he was PM, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be PM or that someone could take him to court for lying.
00
The interstate power market! So that power from one state could be sold to another.
It’s another market that I believe in that many here don’t seem to support.
00
Thank you very much for continuing to revert to such abusive name calling, it means I have won this debate.
00
shame on you ABC
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/like_an_abc_gathering_they_all_agreed_it_was_a_splendid_idea/
00
This has to be the only tax ever introduced that came with it’s own activist cheer squad. Fascinating.
00
In hwer latest speech she is referring to it as a “carbon tax” not an ETS.
Because said politicians didn’t win a minority government election over a lie. Can you honestly can that labor would be in office if they had honrstly said”there will be a carbon tax”
She’s forfeited all honour with her current antics. How can I honour someone that seems to put her own personal power in office over everything else?
Mrs Gillard is her latst speech referred to it as a “carbon tax”
00
Here is an interesting thread on BishopHill which TonyfromOZ , in particular, will like. Maybe Tony could work on aa app like this for Australia. Also read the comments on the issues facing the UK in the near future as the base supply gets closed down.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/9/13/windy-day-power.html
00
Only a person with the IQ of an AMOEBA would advocate paying a massive new tax on EVERYTHING based on a LIE !
ELECTION NOW !!!!!!!!!
00
There is NOTHING Honourable about gillard.
“she” has zero respect and empathy for Australians.
Honour is a quality which has to be earned.
ELECTION NOW !!
00
Err what? You can’t remember the endless “Unchain My Heart” Joe Cocker TV adverts that the Government used ($200 million worth!) to convince us how brilliant the GST was going to be? The GST this year will raise nearly $49 billion, compare that to the ETS which next financial year will raise about $7.4 billion.
If the ETS is a great big new tax on everything. Then the GST is a Great Big New Tax on Everything times 700%.
00
It doesn’t but it does change the senate numbers in the Coalition’s favour. Explain to me what happens if they pass a bill repealing the tax and it gets rejected in the House of Representatives 3 times.
00
Her title is Honourable because she is a cabinet minister.
It’s the same with Abbott, even though Abbott lied repeatedly about the Medicare safety net thresholds.
00
Two times, Michael.
00
Honour is earned,not given as a title. In my view she should be called Ms
Dis-honourable Ms Gillard.
00
I can’t recall her using the term “carbon tax” in her speech today when she introduced the bill to parliament. Here is the text of the speech:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/64755307/Carbon-Speech
And who knows, if Abbott didn’t lie about the Medicare Safety Net in 2004 how do we know Howard would’ve won?
But Gillard clearly said a day before the election that she would seek to price carbon in this parliament. It was reported as such in The Australia:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/julia-gillards-carbon-price-promise/story-fn59niix-1225907522983
Gillard made good on that promise today by introducing bills to parliament to acheive that policy promise.
I again bring you to the case of the 15 coalition senators elected in 2007 on a policy of supporting an ETS. Why won’t you condem them for going back on the policy promise they took to voters in 2007?
I also bring your attention to John Howard who said there would “never, ever” be a GST.
I also bring your attention to Tony Abbott who lied about changing the Medicare safety net.
You don’t have to honour her at all. I just pointed at that her official title is The Honourable Prime Minister.
00
I’m sorry but you are clearly utterly confused about how Australia’s electoral system works. State elections have absolutely nothing to do with the make up of the Australian Senate. The Australian Senate make up is determined by Senate elections.
The Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate until at least July 1st, 2014, and quite possibly until July 1st, 2017.
I would point out one thing though. If Bob Katter’s Queensland Party does well in the QLD state election, then it is quite likely that they will win 1 Senate seat off of the LNP at the following Senate election.
00
Absolutely nothing.
A double dissolution trigger bill must originate in the House of Representatives. The Senate can pass as many bills as it likes and the House can vote them down as many times as it likes but that won’t constitute a D.D. trigger bill.
00
Wow a whole day before the election. Why wasn’t she straight from the start?
Again a day before the election. If she had said this from the beginning..
And she’s done this over the protests of 3 states and against all scentific advice to the contary and is now attempting to rush it through parliament in a month,against the protest of the Australian people. Given the GST was given a much longer period to go through,and this is a greater tax by far,how does rushing the bill through give it a adequate period of debate and review for such a large tax,and how does ignoring all contary advice help?
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Adam at 315
No CO2 at all??? Does that seem anything other than moronic, pie in the sky, bottom of the garden with the pixies logic to you, does it? Wind and solar only provide their optimum capacity for 15-30% of the time and not at the times when people need them. Nuclear is years away because we haven’t even had the debate yet, let alone commenced planning or construction on any facilities for it. We won’t build more dams and geothermal on the most geologically stable continent in the world is totally impractical. It’s not just a case of believing you want something- it has to be practical (it isn’t), feasible (it isn’t), affordable (it isn’t)……so you wonder why people think you don’t have a clue what your talking about. Oh I know….apply a tax and these things will materialise instantly out of fresh air. Seriously, what are you smoking? Not to mention where are we going to get all the rare earth metals for all the wind turbine monstrosities….after all they are called RARE earth metals for a reason.
00
Doctor Smith,
seeing as how you’re back, and you mentioned earlier that you wanted debate, how about doing what you actually asked for.
We’re still waiting for your debating points on Comments 211, 223, 232, 240, 247, and 267.
We also waited at two other threads for the same answers, and all you did was change the subject, and attempt to ‘bury’ the comments, and Doctor Smith, read comment 267 again, very carefully.
Waiting … waiting
Tony.
00
Kim Jong Ill II a.k.a. Adam smith,
So I gather the workers at your mythical nuclear powerplant wouldn’t be allowed to exhale.
I’ll tell you what. You can lead by example. Don’t exhale now until I say you can and I will personally build you your green powerplant for you.
I’ll call it Adam smiths’ memorial fukishima mkII zero C02 producing power plant. We can call the reactors Fukishima 1, Chernobyll 2, long island 3, and muriroa 4.
Under the entry sign we could have the slogan. Nuking crap to avoid making plant food. Don’t exhale you capitalist pig dog! All parts manufactured overseas via the cheapest and most envirinmentally responsible methods.
Just remember, don’t exhale until I Say.
00
Thank you for conceding that Gillard made no promise not to introduce a carbon price after the election.
So you have now shifted your position and admitted that Gillard didn’t lie.
Thank you for being honest.
00
We need to consider the possibility that the CO2 deal is indeed done, though we may not wish to take compassionate advice on what to do with our lives to help us find acceptance. (Please don’t give us leave to make love or take holidays or frolic while our fate is being determined. We know who often come after the smiley-faced mensheviks.)
Here’s a thought. If an Abbott government can’t unpick the CO2 tax/price/ETS from the economic fabric, could it use the revenues to remove the single worst tax ever conceived? Is there a way the monies could be diverted to the states in return for abolishing the ripe, steaming turd that is payroll tax? Also, instead of converting low income earners to voting fodder by selective cuts to income tax, could we manage more general cuts to income tax? (And maybe Tony could accidentally misplace or shrink those deluxe maternity breaks?)
Of course when this “price”, which is, in effect, a transferable pre-paid fine, starts getting traded about, who knows what will happen? Something tells me that carbon credits will make derivatives and junk bonds look like solid gold bullion.
Still, one problem at a time. Baby steps.
00
.
I’ll thank you to not put words in my mouth, I never said that she didn’t lie,the fact that she said “there shall be no carbon tax under any government I lead” is a blatant lie. If she intended to put one in place,why say that?
Given that they hold power by only one seat,that might be enough for a vote of no-confidence in the current government.
00
Well more people voted against the GST at the 1998 election than for it.
But what about WorkChoices? The Howard government never mentioned that during the 2004 election campaign. It then rammed it through parliament in just 1 month, including only giving the opposition and minor parties 8 days to read the ~100 page bill.
The Government released the draft bills for public consultation a month ago, and it has accepted about 18 technical amendments to them. That’s a hell of a lot more than what the Howard government did for WorkChoices (which it never mentioned during the election campaign).
But no, it seems that anti-government outrage only runs one way.
00
Tony from Oz @ 326
In line with Rereke’s thoughts @ 1 “What can we do”, would you have the time to dissect the Hepburn wind farms featured in the Government’s ads in a similar manner to the following: (Christopoher Booker has a similar article on the huge imposts facing Britain in using wind power to comply with EU imposed “renewable targets”> That article can be accessed by Googling Climate Realists – it’s under Headline Stories on the site.) Apologies for the huge C & P but there’s a lot at stake!
Sep 06, 2011 ICECAP http://www.icecap.us/
Our least sustainable energy option By Paul Driessen
“From a land use, economic, environmental or raw materials perspective, wind is unsustainable
President Obama and a chorus of environmentalists, politicians, corporate executives and bureaucrats are perennially bullish on wind power as the bellwether of our “clean energy economy of the future.”
In reality, wind energy may well be the least sustainable and least eco-friendly of all electricity options. Its shortcomings are legion, but the biggest ones can be grouped into eight categories.
Land. As American humorist and philosopher Will Rogers observed, “They ain’t making any more of it.” Wind turbine installations impact vast amounts of land, far more than traditional power plants.
Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear plant generates 3,750 megwatts of electricity from a 4,000-acre site. The 600-MW John Turk ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant in Arkansas covers part of 2,900 acres; two 600-MW coal-fired units in India use just 600 acres. Gas-fired units like Calpine’s 560-MW Fox Energy Center in Wisconsin require several hundred acres. All generate reliable power 90-95% of the year.
By contrast, the 600-MW Fowler Ridge wind installation (355 turbines) spans 50,000 acres of farm country along Indiana’s I-65 corridor. The 782-MW Roscoe project in Texas (627 turbines) sprawls across 100,000 acres. Oregon’s Shepherds Flat project (338 gigantic 2.5 MW turbines) covers nearly 80,000 wildlife and scenic acres along the Columbia River Gorge, for a “rated capacity” of 845 MW.
The Chokecherry-Sierra Madre project will blanket some 320,000 acres of sage grouse habitat and BLM land in Wyoming with 1,000 monstrous 3-MW turbines, to generate zero to 3,000 MW of intermittent power. That’s eight times the size of Washington, DC, to get an average annual output one-fourth of what Palo Verde generates 90% of the time. But C-SM has already received preliminary approval from BLM.
To replace just 20% of the United States’ 995,000 MW of total installed generating capacity, we would need to blanket an area the size of Kansas with wind turbines, and then add nearly a thousand 600-MW gas-fired backup generators…and thousands of miles of new high voltage transmission lines.
Raw materials. Wind turbine installations require vast amounts of steel, copper, rare earth metals, fiberglass, concrete, rebar and other materials for the turbines, towers and bases.
A single 1.7 MW wind turbine, like 315 of the Fowler Ridge units, involves some 365 tons of materials for the turbine assembly and tower, plus nearly 1100 tons of concrete and rebar for the foundation. Bigger units require substantially more materials. Grand total for the entire Fowler wind installation: some 515,000 tons; for Roscoe, 752,000 tons; for Shepherds Flat, 575,000 tons; for Chokecherry, perhaps 2,000,000 tons. Offshore installations need far more raw materials.
To all that must be added millions of tons of steel, copper, concrete and rebar for thousands of miles of transmission lines – and still more for mostly gas-fired generators to back up every megawatt of wind power and generate electricity the 17 hours of each average day that the wind doesn’t blow.
Money. Taxpayers and consumers must provide perpetual subsidies to prop up wind projects, which cannot survive without steady infusions of cash via feed-in tariffs, tax breaks and direct payments.
Transmission lines cost $1.0 million to $2.5 million per mile. Landowners get $2,000+ a year per turbine, plus royalties on all energy produced from the turbine, plus payments for every foot of access road and transmission lines. However, taxpayers pay more, while the landowners’ neighbors suffer property devaluation, scenic disruption, noise, health problems and interference with crop spraying, but no monetary compensation. Direct federal wind energy subsidies to help cover this totaled $5 billion in FY 2010; state support added billions more; still more billions were added to consumers? electric bills.
The Other People’s Money well is running dry. The “manmade catastrophic climate change” thesis behind the wind energy campaign is in shambles. Voters and consumers are understandably fed up.
Energy. Mining, quarrying, drilling, milling, refining, smelting and manufacturing operations make the production of metals, concrete, fiberglass and resins, turbines, and heavy equipment to do all of the above very energy-intensive. Ditto for transporting and installing turbines, towers, backups and transmission lines. That takes real energy: abundant, reliable, affordable – not what comes from wind turbines.
In fact, it probably requires more energy to manufacture, haul and install these monstrous Cuisinarts of the air and their transmission systems than they will generate in their lifetimes. However, no cradle-to-grave analysis has ever been conducted, for the energy inputs or pollution outputs. We need one now.
Health. Whereas environmentalists garner scary headlines over wildly speculative claims about health dangers from hydraulic fracturing (to extract abundant natural gas for wind turbine backup generators), they ignore and dismiss a growing body of evidence that wind turbines cause significant health problems.
Principal health issues are associated with noise – not just annoying audible noise, but inaudible, low-frequency “infrasound” that causes headache, dizziness, “deep nervous fatigue” and symptoms akin to seasickness. “Wind turbine syndrome” also includes irritability, depression, and concentration and sleep problems. Others include “shadow flicker” or “strobe effect” from whirling blades, which can trigger seizures in epileptics, “vibroacoustic” effects on the heart and lungs, and non-lethal harm to animals. Serious lung, heart, cancer and other problems have been documented from rare earth mining, smelting and manufacturing in China, under its less rigorous health, workplace and environmental regulations.
To date, however, very few health assessments have been required or conducted prior to permit approval, even for major wind turbine installations. Perhaps the trial lawyers’ guild could redress that oversight.
Environment. Raptors, bats and other beautiful flying creatures continue to be sliced and diced by wind turbines. Thankfully, the Bureau of Land Management has included an “avian radar system” to track the slaughter within its 500-square-mile Chokecherry region – and banned mining among the turbines.
Wind turbines are supposed to reduce pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. But because backup generators must repeatedly surge to full power and back to standby, as wind speed rises and falls, they operate inefficiently, use more fuel and emit more – much like cars forced to stop repeatedly on freeways.
Jobs. The myth of “green jobs” is hitting the brick wall of reality. While the turbines are installed in the USA and EU, the far more numerous mining and manufacturing jobs are in China, where they are hardly “green.” As Spanish and Scottish analysts have documented, the “green” installer and maintenance jobs cost up to $750,000 apiece – and kill 2.2 to 3.7 traditional jobs for every “eco-friendly” job created.
Electricity costs and reliability. Even huge subsidies cannot cure wind power’s biggest defects: its electricity costs far more than coal, gas or nuclear alternatives – and its intermittent nature wreaks havoc on power grids and consumers. The problem is worst on hot summer afternoons, when demand is highest and breezes are minimal. Unable to compete against cheap Chinese and Indian electricity and labor, energy-intensive industries increasingly face the prospect of sending operations and jobs overseas. Bayer Chemical’s warning that it may have to close its German facilities is just the tip of the iceberg.
When it comes to wind, Nat King Cole might have sung: “Unsustainable that’s what you are, unsustainable though near or far. Unsustainable in every way, and forever more that’s how you’ll stay.” Maybe not forever, but certainly for the foreseeable future, especially compared to increasingly abundant natural gas.
So take a hint from Spoon’s lively tune and “cut out the middleman.” Forge a direct relationship with energy you can afford, energy that works nearly 24/7/365, energy that causes the least ecological damage and is far more sustainable than wind power: the hydrocarbon, hydroelectric and nuclear power that have sustained our society and brought unprecedented health, prosperity and living standards to billions.
Then help the planet’s least fortunate people to do likewise. ”
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death
00
Votes of confidence conducted by the Senate have absolutely no effect on the Government.
Governments are determined by who has the confidence of the House of Representatives. The Senate has nothing to do with it.
And again, there would have to be a Senate election first!
I hope you at least now accept that all your talk about the senate and double dissolution triggers is uninformed nonsense.
00
Tony @ 349
Dr. Smith is a cut and paste merchant – the questions you have put to him are out of his expertise. He’s have to call in aid!
Just a question – until 2015 the price per tonne on CO2 will be paid by 14 (electricity generators) and after 2015 – What is the reduction they have to meet each year after that – it will only be a short time until they have no money, no credit & govt will have to bail them out?
00
Apologies if someone has already published a link to this.
Quadrant have published an e-book titled ‘The Intelligent Voter’s Guide to Global Warming’
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/09/global-warming-ebook
00
Have you people talking about explosions in the WTC heard of strain energy? When brittle materials exceed their strain limit they fail suddenly and catastrophically. This can look and sound like an explosion. How about we apply Occam’s Razor to this and conclude that yes, a bunch of Saudi extremist Muslims carried out the WTC attacks?
Anything else requires so many people to keep quiet it is like trying to fake the Moon landings. As one Apollo guy said, it would be easier and simpler to just go to the Moon.
Frankly the posts on this thread leave me afraid that those of us sceptical of AGW because of our backgrounds in meteorology, earth sciences, engineering etc will be dismissed as a bunch of nutters.
This open thread may not have been a good idea, Jo.
As for John Lear’s alleged statement, I doubt that he made it. There’s a little John Lear autobiography on the net of his aviation career. It’s quite funny and as he said he is lazy and has a bad attitude. Hell. I could fly a jet into a skyscraper given 20 miles to line up Why would I want to?). What the hell do you think any pilot does when he or she lands? I’ve landed everything from gliders to light aircraft (thousands of times) to single engine jets at night from the back seat and I’ve landed the F/A 18 successfully in the RAAF simulator (night on one engine)as well as 4 consecutive successful landings in a Boeing 737 simulator and oh yeah, a space shuttle sim. Impressed the heck out of some 12 year old kid watching “you must be a pilot!” (That science exposition thing in West Perth.)
Get a grip people!
00
Stick to the issues mate. I have repeatedly answered Tony’s questions but he doesn’t accept that I support Australia using nuclear power, so now he is just asking the same questions over and over again.
It is said that he is only good at dealing with his pre-existing ideas of what his political opponents believe, rather than dealing with their actual position.
00
The carbon tax looks like being a replacement for income tax – rather difficult to evade, come to think of it, and I wonder if it is the catch-up for the Technocracy movement that finally now has the technological means to monitor are daily energy usage.
Adam Smith is right, the tax will be in, and as happens in any taxation system, there will be loopholes discovered, and some of us will beat the system. The only way to nip this in the bud is to implement a totalitarian system in which our behavior is totally regulated.
It wasn’t 1984 but 2011 for Australia.
00
You’ve lost me with the Joe Cocker reference. John Howard spending money spruiking a GST which his government took to an election in which they lost seats has nothing to do with a certain keyboard commando getting all excited about the Gillard deception. Unless of course you’re being payed $200 million dollars by the ATO to spruik for Julia. Actually that makes sense and fits with the ALP’s financial acumen.
00
“Adam Smith”,
You must get paid by gillard PER POST!!
00
This makes no sense. This financial year income taxes will account for $150 billion worth of federal government revenue (that’s about 40%), whereas in the first year the ETS permits will raise about $7.4 billion.
The GST will raise $49 billion this year, yet strangely I don’t see anyone in this forum campaigning against the GST even though it is 7 times bigger than the ETS.
Are you planning on opening your own coal power station? Because if not you won’t directly pay the tax.
Your assertion of totalitarian system is just fear-mongering.
00
Bob Malloy: #271
I don’t think you are wrong Bob. In fact, I think you are spot on.
There is a certain “smell” to the PR that leaks from political bubbles. They don’t just stretch the truth, they stretch it with an air of superiority; something they find it impossible to hide.
It is being close to the great and powerful that does it. It is having those in power address you by your first name. It is so satisfying to be part of history in the making; to be at the centre of events.
I am not that au fait with the who’s who of Canberra, so I cannot put names to the writing style. But there was I time when I could do it with the Westminster Press Secretaries (P.Sec’s), and even with one or two in White House, back in the day.
These hacks are not that good. They are annoying certainly (much like the Melbourne summer flys), but good political PR has to stay on message, and be subtle, these “persons” are all over the place, and are more concerned with “winning” the “debate”, than progressing their and our understanding.
Witness the very amateur comment from Adam Smith at #332:
He/she is obviously emotionally involved with their own right hand.
00
Paul R:
September 13th, 2011 at 7:19 pm
This has to be the only tax ever introduced that came with it’s own activist cheer squad. Fascinating.
What would be the hilarious part Paul if wasn’t so serious, is that most of the Get Up luvvies and the starry-eyed “One Million Women” “saving the planet” cheer squads now shouting for outrageously expensive, visually polluting , land-eating, bird-slicing monstrosities of grossly inefficient wind turbines as outlined in my post at 355, would have been out in force a few years ago chanting “save our mountain” when authorities suggested putting a tower up to give decent widespread TV and/or other communications reception!
00
Instead of casting aspersions on why I choose to post here, why not just engage in the debate?
Or is that too hard?
00
If the tax does become law I’d do the following things,as son as I came into power:1. Cut the Co2 tax to 0%.
2: immdiately cancel all Carbon certicate deals made overseas.
3: Cancel all grants and other means made for alternate energy development under said taxc laws.
That’d do a lot for fixing most of it,as labor will be destroyed at the next election,it’s just a matter of time of when said election will be.
00
Sounds like you have a bit of an inferiority complex mate. Why not just debate the issues rather than coming up with what are is ultimately baseless speculation about why I participate here?
00
Both of these things would require passing a bill through parliament which could only happen if Labor supports it.
Good luck with that.
00
Keith H
Thanks for that extract on wind. I’ve recently walked a thousand miles across France and Spain along pilgrim trails. I have learned to hate those turbines most heartily. I have a separate compartment in my heart just for hating the cabling that goes with the turbines. Let’s hope the proponents soon run out of money and spin, as finally happened with Spain. In Australia, many of our high places are still forested, our fire-risk greater and our wild-life more abundant.
On the brighter side, the Golfech nuclear reactors at the confluence of the Tarn and Garonne Rivers are an inspiration. And I love the antique hydro-scheme on the Allier River further back in the Auvergne.
Mind you, I love coal. Chocolate sunshine, as far as I’m concerned.
00
And after the next election,just how many seats will labor have,given the current lack of confidence in them currently? That’s why they are pushing this through,or trying to,as they’ll be destroyed at the next election. I’d be suprised if they had enough seats to opose it.
00
How many seats Labor has in the House won’t be relevant. The Greens will still have the balance of power in the Senate until at least July 1st, 2014, and probably until July 1st, 2017.
That’s the Coalition’s problem. Any attempt to repeal the ETS would require the support of Labor. If Labor and the Greens decide to oppose any such bill, then they can just keep sending the bill of to every Senate committee under the sun, including a few new Senate committees that they can create simply for the purpose of delaying the bill. It would take something like a full year just for the Coalition to get a D.D. trigger on the bill.
This means in practical terms the ETS could only be repealed by early 2015 at the earliest. By then everyone will just have accepted it and will be even enjoying the tax cuts which will be substantial for people on low and low to middle incomes.
If the Coalition is in government, it will have to find something like $8 billion in savings a year just to fund those tax cuts. Where does the money come from?
History shows us that Oppositions often say they will get rid of a tax if elected, but they never do it. The Coalition opposed the fringe benefits tax, the capital gains tax, mining royalties on gold, and the Medicare Levy, but it didn’t get rid of any of them when it won in 1996. Labor campaigned against the GST in 1998, but it didn’t get rid of it when it won in 2007.
If you think the Coalition is going to get rid of the ETS, you are basically just asking to be mislead / lied to.
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Adam @367
You are very selective about what you will and won’t debate. Since nuclear power is years away in this country, what are we practically to do in the meantime as far as power generation to meet domestic requirements?
00
May I remind you that Ms Gilard is ramming the Tax through under one commmitee, If they can do it,there’s no reason the Coalition can’t do the same. Your theory of making up new committee’s specially as delaying tactics are flawed.
00
Doctor Smith,
your mendacity knows no bounds.
Not once have you addressed answers.
Show us your answers.
Tony.
00
The carbon price alone will kill off brown coal and shift investment from coal to gas. That will happen in the medium term, and then from 2020 onwards we should be building nuclear plants.
I certainly would make nuclear eligible for clean energy funding (which is where about 30% of the revenue from permits will go).
00
Um, excuse me? The committee has been given 3 weeks.
What about the Senate committee on WorkChoices that was given ONE DAY!
Completely wrong. Labor and the Greens will have the numbers in the Senate, so they can determine which committees the bills are sent to and how long the committees have to report back to the Senate.
No it actually isn’t. Because Labor and the Greens together will have the numbers to do what they like.
So your theory that my theory is flawed is itself flawed.
00
After the next general election they won’t have the numbers to “do as they like”
So your theory that my theory is flawed is itself flawed.
00
Adam Smith: #369
Not at all. I have nothing to prove, I have had my career, and made my share of mistakes. But I have also contributed to society and peace in the world, and I am content with what I have managed to achieve. There is nothing complex, or inferior, with that.
Because there is no debate going on here. You are merely game-playing. Debate is based on accepting the other persons point of view, and then building on their position, in a rational way, in order to make your own point. You do not debate, mate.
You participate here because you get a vicarious thrill out of scoring points, or perhaps you are being cheered on by your adoring acolytes. But nobody here really cares how many points you have scored. Actually, nobody is taking any notice of the points you are trying to make, because you have managed to sacrifice your own credibility in the way you have conducted yourself on this thread.
Take a look at your comment rate – and consider the old saying, “Empty vessels make the most noise”.
00
Um yes they will, because the Senate change over won’t occur until July 1st, 2014.
Assuming the Coalition is in government, by that stage the bill to reject the ETS would’ve been blocked once, and the coalition would then have to wait 3 months in order to set it up as a D.D. trigger.
00
If you believe this garbage words fail me. The Australians people have proved in the past that they don’t “just accept” garbage like this. Also I Challenge you to prove those taxcuts which will be substantial on paper here where we all can see.
00
What’s 3 months? It still can happen as you’ve said.
Thanks for proving that a DD trigger can happen still.
00
Enough of these Watermelon Puritans, enough of these Green finger-waggers.
If you want to see something gorgeous, here are some postcards of the world’s biggest power plants.
http://www.industcards.com/top-100-pt-1.htm
I’ll have what they’re having.
00
That’s a very funny definition of debate. I see no reason to accept points of view that are logically flawed. I mean I have seen several tonight alone, such as the following assertions made in this thread:
1) The Queensland state election will change the numbers in the Australian Senate
2) A bill originating in the Senate can become a double dissolution trigger (it simply isn’t so, read Section 57 of the constitution:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s57.html
3) A motion of no confidence passed by the Senate can bring down the government
4) The ETS can be stopped without a bill passing parliament
5) The Greens won’t control the balance of power in the Senate straight after the next election.
All of these things are completely wrong, so I am under no obligation to accept them.
00
Rereke,
Did Kim Jong Ill a.k.a. adam smith actually score points on this thread? Where?
(Does the continual namecalling score any points for you?) CTS
I just see party politic hypperbole.
00
Seeing all the garbage you post here is wrong, I’m under no obligation to accept your garbage either. Just why do you bother to post here,apart from scoring points at your own expense,as your seem to “pick and choose” just what posts you answer here?As was said earlier
00
Read section 57 of the constitution:
You can read the full section here:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s57.html
Let me also draw your attention to the very first clause “If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law…”. This is why the earlier assertion that a trigger bill for a D.D. election can originate in the Senate is completely wrong. It MUST pass the House first, and then be rejected by the Senate.
I haven’t claimed otherwise. It just can’t happen in practical terms until late 2014 or early 2015 at the earliest.
00
Adam Smith: #385
Ah, but you did accept my point of view regarding the definition of debate, even though you thought it was, “a very funny definition of debate”. I observe this, because you then went on in a rational way to make your own point, by listing five examples, from other contributors, with which you did not agree.
So perhaps my definition of debate is not “funny” after all, perhaps it is merely unusual, and not what you are used to?
Let me make myself very clear. I am not suggesting in any way, that you should accept what you see as falsehoods. But some people do hold to those points of view, false or otherwise. If you really want to debate, you need to accept that they hold these opinions; that they believe in what they say, and then explain by rational argument why you hold different opinions and beliefs. And if you can demonstrate the superiority of your position with examples, and empirical evidence, then that is all to the good.
00
Madjak: #386
Well there is no shortage of that, is there 🙂
He/she has scored lots of points. As I try to point out, that is the point of his/her involvement.
But he/she is certainly appears to be knowledgeable in constitutional law, so my original assessment to Boy Malloy is still in play.
00
And none of those were as big as the Carbon tax. This is a tax,based on fraudulent or misleading at best information,which has been widely circulated,without any semblance of the truth being allowed to appear.Explain to me,and to everyone else here,in details,what’s “right” about this tax because we can tell you what’s wrong about it. As with everything the day will come when this tax is repealed,and until that day we won’t give up fighting.
00
Adam Smith @ 217
“I support the use of nuclear power and I support a price on carbon because that will ultimately result in Australia using nuclear power sooner rather than later. …………. The world is transitioning to low carbon, and Australia needs to be part of that else it will lose out.”
Adam. Since you say you do, I accept you support Australia using nuclear power (as I do).
Would you kindly expand on your comments above?
How do you see a price on carbon dioxide ultimately resulting in Australia using nuclear power?
Is it because you think the carbon dioxide tax will prove so meaningless climatically and/or environmentally and be so financially costly for the country that the Greens, Labor/Liberal supporters of the tax, activist organisations like Get Up, One Million Women et al will accept the nuclear option?
Which political party and /or which current politician do you see as having the courage to even try to legislate for the use of nuclear?
Some of the world is being stampeded into transitioning to low carbon (unfortunately in my view)but in exactly what way do you see that Australia will lose out if it’s not part of it?
I understand that China, many financiers and others who got in early to take aadvantage of the huge subsidies available, the market opportunies in trading “credits” and all the other scams that are already surfacing will certainly benefit, but Australia?
I’ll be genuinely interested in reading your reasons.
00
Adam Smith , What time do you need to go to work mate,
Seems to me your patients are being neglected ,Off you go and do your best for your patients .
A Doctor that has so much time on his hands to blog all day , Who would have thought!
00
I thought I would browse the thread and see what generated 300+ posts, fearfully I clicked the mouse whilst hoping that it was not another mountain of AS posts, full of regurgitated propaganda.
(sigh) Alas… , we seem to have a lot of “AS whole” (complete) posts.
I think it is time for Jo to take action and rename the site to as’s_julia_fan_club.com (sound it).
00
“May I remind you that Ms Gilard is ramming the Tax through under one commmitee, If they can do it,there’s no reason the Coalition can’t do the same.”
They could do that, if they win the next election AND they gain control of the Senate at that election. Given the makeup of the current Senate, and the fact that the Greens hold BoP at the moment, its unlikely that an incoming Coalition Govt in 2013 would control the Senate that comes in after the 2013 election, which i think first sits in mid 2014 anyway.
By then, Carbon Price and the associated tax changes, pension increases, and compensation for households will have been a functional reality for 2 full years.
00
Doctor Smith,
Define near term.
You say 2020.
You may be a Doctor, but you’re also a fool of the highest order.
Coal fired plants closing in the near term.
Your precious legislation does not have enough money to buy out the legal ‘contracts to supply’ that are current until the mid 30’s.
In the interim, there will be NO electrical power if your dream comes to pass.
And Nuclear plants by 2020.
Hey Doctor, not even you believe that.
Answer the questions.
Tony.
00
Should we be puzzled? Since the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, recently advertised that yet another non-academic (John Connor of the Climate Institute) will be lecturing publicly on the 28th September, 2011, on climate change, there has been absolute silence – nothing, zero, zilch, nada, naf’ all, from the earnest signatories of the petition earlier this year to ban such talks in universities. The Conversation (aka ‘The Monologue’) has offered up nothing…a complete blackout. From usually outspoken climate commentator Dr Lewandowsky…an atypical and utter noiselessness. From The Drum’s gaggle of resident carbonistas…an uncharacteristic quietude. The Australian Youth Climate Coalition?….as mute as a biodynamic turnip. The planned lecture by John Connor, a lawyer and high-profile environmental activist, is a clear breach of the well-known warmist principle that non-academics with partisan viewpoints should be barred from the halls of ivy and restricted to pubs and soapboxes. Perhaps the event has slipped under their radar?
http://www.nd.edu.au/downloads/Policy%20and%20Climate%20Change%20Debate.pdf
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Oksanna: #397
Wonderful!
I take my [metaphorical] hat off to you.
00
Yeah, TonyfromOz, those contracts!
All quite apart from the complete lack of alternative infrastructure.
The infrastructure that is supposed to appear by a “shift”.
A “shift” meant to result osmotically from overtaxing and overpricing existing energy supply.
And then those contracts!
Funny times ahead.
00
wow so many posts in a few hours but did someone really try to engage in apolitical debate thinking that state elections affect the composition of the senate? The Black Rod would be at their throats if they tried to take a seat.
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Michael Petterson @ 347
Don’t bother, Michael. Adam Smith, as usual, is playing footloose and fancy free with the truth.
Yes, Gilllard said this, and yes, she technically SAID it “the day before the election”.
However, she said it in an interview EMBARGOED until midnight Friday night, so it ONLY appeared in the Australian on Saturday morning, with no opportunity for it to be repeated anywhere else prior to people voting.
That means ONLY readers of the Australian were ever aware that she said it PRIOR to casting a vote.
I wonder how many “swinging” Mum and Dad family voters read the National Affairs section of the Australian first thing Saturday morning?
Adam Smith also conveniently left out this line from the interview:
Remember, this was said at a time when Gillard had also “promised” a “Citizen’s Assembly” to “build” “consensus” for a carbon pricing mechanism.
Attempting to have an honest debate with Adam Smith is like attempting to wrestle Jello.
He has utterly no qualms in twisting, spinning and distorting the truth to make black into white if necessary for his purpose.
00
I meant “a political” debate and not apolitical. I can’t see how it could be Freudian either… nothing “apolitical” to be seen here.
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mosomoso @384
That can’t be right mate. None of those power stations are spewing that dirty carbon pollution out of the stacks.
They must be just big postcard props! 🙂
Say YES to an election now !!
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TonyfromOZ @ 349
Standard Adam Smith tactics.
He isn’t here to debate, only to contradict, mislead and confuse.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for anything like a straight answer.
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KeithH @355
Great Post Keith
Wind Turbine science has a lot to be debated.
Blade Design (1)
Generator in the Head of each Turbine (2)
Hydraulics and Turbines (3)
Hydraulics and hydraulic accumulators (4)
00
From Section 57
If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which House will not agree, and if after an interval of three months the House of Representatives, in the same or the next session, again passes the proposed law with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor-General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously. But such dissolution shall not take place within six months before the date of the expiry of the House of Representatives by effluxion of time.
I have pointed this out before but still Smith bangs on about how a hostile Senate can keep shuffling Bills back and forth to committees to indefinitely postpone a Double Dissolution process. He needs to reread where the Constitution specifically states“…rejects or fails to pass”. Smith is good at ignoring things which are at variance to his mindset.
In plain words; Government submits bill to hostile Senate. Senate sits on the bill. After three months, the bill is submitted again. Any attempt by the Senate to delay the bill may be taken by the Prime Minister as failure to pass and he can then ask the Governor General to dissolve parliament providing a normal election is not due within six months. It is easily seen that Smith’s interpretation is just plain stupid. There would never have been a DD election because of a hostile Senate under Smith’s asinine suggestion!
He is so full of himself that he imagines that he has written the Constitution and has sole rights as to its interpretation. He is so dumb that he cannot imagine that the founders (themselves politicians) could not forsee that a hostile Senate might attempt the very process he describes.
Finally, the fool still can’t get it through his (thick) skull that there is no such thing as unrepealable law. A referendum of the Australian people at white heat with anger will very quickly put paid to the traders and their “nice little earner” sans compensation. Given that their reputation is already worse than secondhand car dealers and they serve much less useful purpose, they won’t have much of a bargaining chip.
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Adam Smith @ 364
Interesting comment coming from a person who has made least 30 posts over the last week or two (including some on this thread) insisting IT ISN’T A TAX.
And just what exactly does “directly pay the tax” mean, anyway? If I am a PAYG wage earner I don’t DIRECTLY PAY my income tax either – my employer does.
Nonetheless it ultimately comes out MY pocket.
00
Adam never let’s pragmatism stand in the way of dogma. I’m sure he believes these radical shifts in power provision will occur instantly and seamlessly. Normal service will not even be interrupted while his co-conspirators “kill off” coal as he so flippantly suggests. With the wave of a pen or the touch of a keyboard, these things will just happen. Legions of coal miners will automatically become wind turbine or solar panel installation/maintenance experts in spite of no prior qualifications, after passing the prerequisite 2 week TAFE transition course no doubt, then relocate to the areas where the phantom green jobs are, uprooting family from their communities at lightning speed, etc. Or perhaps those with suitable qualifications will just drop the jobs they are currently doing to join the grand green army on the road to carbonless nirvana. It will all happen with no unforeseen budget overruns, no administrative costs, no massive bureaucracy soaking up large wads of cash and shuffling meaningless reams of paper around between themselves to make themselves look busy and useful. And I’m only scratching the surface of problems even if the “dream” of new green energy economy was anything other than a mirage. Much more likely is that coal related jobs will vanish, as will the areas that depend on them, as well as other energy intensive industries like steel and the like which will just die out, the businesses that serve them will also suffer and wither on the vine. All the green jobs will be in China, not more than a trickle here. And then we will be looking for explanations from the “Adam Smith’s” of the world and they will have slunk back into their anonymity, unrepentant for their part in selling their country down the tubes through having no practical concept of how things work, how people organize their lives and how change, while desirable, needs to be managed in a timely, sensible and well thought out fashion to minimize avoidable pain and suffering.
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Adam Smith @ 367
Followed almost immediately by
Adam Smith @ 370
Interesting two comments Adam Smith.
You made the second only a few days ago, to which I replied with the example of Gough Whitlam and his disbanding of National Service back in 1972, with no legislative backing whatsoever.
In typical fashion, rather than either debate, or admit you were wrong, you simply sidestepped the issue and went off on a tangent – like you ALWAYS do.
Then come back and REPEAT the lie here now, as though you were never challenged the first time you made it.
Which just goes to underline the utter hypocrisy of your first comment highlighted above.
You? “Engage” in debate?
What a joke.
00
MV
Smith and debate!
Mutually exclusive terms to be sure.
00
Adam Smith @ 385
And yet you expect no less from the rest of us.
You have made several posts just tonight (and many more at other times) claiming that nobody will be able to change the ETS legislation because the Greens have the Senate locked up until 2017.
At exactly the same time, interspersed with exactly those same comments, you have claimed that “nuclear” is the way to go, and Australia should (and will) be moving to nuclear to replace that “dirty coal” by 2020.
Now given that the Greens (the SAME ones who control the Senate) are utterly opposed to even MINING Uranium, let alone USING it, how on earth do you explain the very obvious logical flaw in your comments?
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Adam Smith @ 388
Sorry Adam Smith, I STILL can’t see the bit that reads “ONLY IF THE PRIME MINISTER TELLS THE GG TO DO SO” – as you have insisted ad nauseum here over the last few weeks.
00
A simple experiment devised to utilise the ‘greenhouse gas’ properties of carbon dioxide and demonstrate the Greenhouse Effect theory yields a null result.
Hopefully the experiment can be used by mass replication as a tool to liberate young brainwashed minds.
Perhaps it can help restore integrity to science.
The experiment was put up to the journal ‘Nature’ but rejected with a kind reply from the editor who said inter alia, ‘In this case, while your simple experiment appears nicely to demonstrate the Greenhouse Effect theory using simple kitchen ingredients and equipment, we [are] unable to conclude that this manuscript contains the sort of significant conceptual advance in understanding that will be of immediate interest to a broad readership of researchers in the climate community…
Yours sincerely, Rory Howlett Editor Nature Climate Change’
One can take this to mean the experiment demonstrates a principle already well known and understood by ‘researchers in the climate community’.
The principle being that the second law of thermodynamics holds true – no matter what ‘climate scientists’ would have us believe.
The experiment at point is published here http://www.galileomovement.com.au/blog/?p=25/
00
I suspect Dr Adam is either senator Milne or works for her; tonight the feisty ratbag was reported as saying:
“This is a great day,” Senator Milne said.
“You have no idea how excited people, particularly young people, are across the country right now.”
I believe these are the words ‘Dr Adam’ used to describe this day of agnotology.
There is so much Dr Adam has neglected or ignored as TonyOz and others have noticed; for instance the cost of the stinking tax, that is, how much it will extract from the economy is not $7.4 billion but at least double that, per annum; and the economic shrinkage will be $50 billion per annum.
But all that is beside the point; this tax is aimed at cheap energy; nuclear, a diversion by Dr Adam, will not be available for decades due to the cowardice of Australian pollies, and, since wind and solar DO NOT WORK [which makes the $10 billion direct subsidisation of wind and solar another monumental waste of money], and given that coal powered stations will be closed down, it is inevitable that power shortages will occur.
How do you compensate people for no electricity?
00
Richard Pearson @ 413
Thanks for that.
A little dose of sanity every now and then goes a long way these days.
00
Adam Smith,
You’re so bossy!
You spend most of your time here telling everyone how you think they should argue.
It is patently clear that you are a blind supporter of the current govt….we get it OK?
It is also patently clear that you like the nuclear power option….we get it OK?
What you haven’t explained to us…despite many different people asking you very politely…is how you’re going to get nuclear power passed and imbedded in the new legislation?
Most people here think Nuclear power is a sensible option.
We are asking you, mr Bossy Boots Dr Smith, how and when it is going to happen?
Instead of pointing out numerous flaws in our debating capabilies…..ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!
00
Err, WTF? You can see the greenhouse gas properties of CO2 in these YouTube videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYfl45X1wo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge0jhYDcazY
Scientific American debunks the Gallileo movement here:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-carbon-dioxide-is-greenhouse-gas
00
The Governor General can’t dissolve any house of parliament unless asked to do so by the Prime Minister. That’s how our system works, if you think it works otherwise then you are ultimately asserting that Australia is a dictatorship.
00
Excuse me? The GST isn’t bigger than the ETS? You want to make a bet about that. The GST this year will raise a bit over $48 billion, whereas the ETS in its first year will raise around $7.4 billion.
Do you seriously want to argue that 7.4 is bigger than 48?
Where is the outrage about the GST? Why aren’t people planning a convoy of no confidence in the GST? After all, it is 650% bigger than the ETS!
To put this in context, the ETS will be less than the Medicare levy, which throughout the 1980s the Coalition said they would repeal if they won government. But of course they didn’t do that did they, yet that now raises something like $12 billion a year. Yet people in this forum seriously think the Coalition will repeal the ETS!
00
I’ve dealt with this inanity before. That didn’t immediately require legislative backing because the relevant Minister had the power to end National Service as a ministerial regulation. In 1973 the parliament then passed this Act to end the national service, which as you note has retrospective effect:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_act/nsta1973300/index.html
This simply meant that it would require ANOTHER bill to start the scheme up again, rather than just a new minister over turning the previous minister’s administrative decisions.
The current Government has made sure to avoid any such instruments in the Clean Energy bills so the system can only be ended by a new bill repealing the legislation.
Pretty clever hey?
00
In correct. This would not constitute a D.D. trigger because the bill needs to be formally blocked once. I do agree with you that “failure to pass” is ambiguous on the second attempt and has never been defined by the High Court.
But I disagree with you that shuffling it off to Senate committees the first time around would constitute “failure to pass”, and the reason is obvious. The House can’t reintroduce the same bill while it is being considered by the Senate. It has to either be passed by the Senate or formally blocked by being voted down at the third reading.
00
What Doctor Smith very conveniently neglects to tell you is that the intent of the legislation is not actually to close down those coal fired power plants.
When we discussed this legislation here ad infinitum in the days following its release, I explained about how the Government proposes in the legislation itself to keep those plants actually open and doing what they always do, supply their huge levels of power.
This was something even Professor Garnaut himself explained in the round of interviews following the release of the legislation.
Remember how I pointed out security of supply.
Now I can understand why Doctor Smith hasn’t mentioned this, because having no understanding whatsoever about electrical power and how it is generated, this is outside of his understanding, so he just ignores it. I can understand that. If you don’t know, then don’t mention it.
What this means Doctor Smith, as explained by Ross Garnaut is that this legislation sees those coal fired power plants that supply huge levels of power fall into difficulty due to the legislation placing restrictions on their emissions, then the Government will provide loans to those power plants to keep them in operation, hence securing the supply.
Now I can understand why Doctor Smith prefers not to mention this, because, in effect, the Government is paying to keep the plant emitting, hence ensuring one thing only.
Not the reduction of those CO2 emissions, but the continuation of them paying the CO2 tax. Doctor Smith would have you believe the legislation will magically lower those emissions, when all it does is ensure they stay doing what they always have done.
We need to remind Doctor Smith of this, because we have already discussed this when the legislation was first released, but as he’s late here, he thinks he’s the only one who has actually read the legislation.
Doctor Smith, I really can’t see why you bother staying here.
You arrive after the fact, condescendingly accuse us in your smarmy manner as being ignorant dolts who are not as superior as you undoubtedly are, and then, when we stick it to you to answer pertinent questions, you say we have somehow lost the debate.
Well debate us with the answers to the questions we ask Doctor Smith.
Tony.
00
Well the part of the legislation that says the government will pay to shut down 2000 MW of the dirtiest power certainly is designed to close down a brown coal power station or perhaps one large one and one small one. Keep in mind that Hazelwood, Loy Yang and Playford B are three of the LEAST efficient coal power stations in the OECD.
Come on, this is clearly misleading when part of the policy package is to shut down brown coal power source.
This is an extraordinary thing for you to write because it demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the policy. Unlike the Coalition’s scheme which will pay polluters to acheive certain emissions intensity benchmarks, and if they don’t make them after a certain period will then fine them, the government’s scheme simply requires polluters to purchase sufficient permits to cover their pollution liability. Setting aside the specific 2000 MW scheme, for all other coal power-stations whether they stay open or not is left up to each generator to decide based on their existing and future liability. That’s the beauty of the market system, it isn’t an idiotic set of, dare I say it, socialist mandates like the Coalition’s scheme. The price for pollution is put into the market and then polluting businesses figure out the best way to deal with that added cost.
If you don’t support a market mechanism, then by default you are ultimately supporting the Coalition’s scheme which is based on the assumption that politicians and bureaucrats in Canberra can pick and choose carbon abatement projects more efficiently than the price signal that is generated by the purchasing decisions of millions of businesses and consumers. And yet some people in this forum call me a socialist!
Well now your argument has become completely incoherent. On the one hand you are saying that the cost of permits is going to be a burden, but on the other you are saying that it won’t matter and that pollution emissions won’t decrease.
Which one of your positions is the right one?
I guess I atleast should commend you for a level of incoherency that doesn’t match that of Tony Abbott. You know, on the one hand it complains that the price of permits at $23 per tonne is going to wipe entire industrial towns off the map, but on the other hand he goes around everywhere saying that carbon dioxide is weightless, which if true means there won’t be any ‘tax’ to pay.
Because I enjoy debating politics and policy issues. Of course you can’t have any problem with that because you are one of those strong defenders of democracy, and free speech and all of that. There’s no way that you could possibly complain about a fellow Australian visiting this forum to share their views on various issues.
I have not accused anyone of being an ignorant dolt.
I have been called stupid, a ninny, a socialist, a North Korean, Kim Jong Il, and an operative for the ALP, the Greens, and GetUp!
But all I have done is presented my views and on occasions corrected statements that were clearly in error. Some of these include:
1) The claim that a state election held in Queensland will change the make-up of the senate
2) The claim that the state election held in Queensland will result in Labor losing federal government
3) The claim that a double dissolution trigger bill can originate in the Senate
4) The claim that a double dissolution trigger bill can be created even if the Senate doesn’t block the bill once
5) The claim that a double dissolution trigger bill doesn’t require a three month gap between blockings.
6) The claim that the Whitlam government somehow illegally ended National Service
7) The claim that the GST raises more revenue than the ETS will
8) The claim that the ETS can be ended without a bill passing federal parliament
There are others too.
00
What you are describing as a free market mechanism is in fact an unwarrented intrusion of government into people’s lives. There is no natural reason for anyone to trade “carbon credits”, other than that the government is going to force them to. (The government’s bought-and-paid-for “science” of “climate change” is a joke and an excuse for a power grab, not a rational reason.)
Perhaps the government could sell permits for breathing (source of much CO2) and let people buy and sell them on the “free market”. Then you could tout that this creates an “efficient price signal” for the right to breath.
To anyone who is not a statist whacko, this is simple tyranny.
00
Sorry adam, while I agree CO2 is a GHG (the magnitude is the question), SciAm is not a reputable source. It probably was many years ago, but in the past 10 years has become a mouth piece for Gore and Trenberth.
00
Best get yourself over to Wiki and fix it then, because they disagree with you:
00
Just (re)read Ike’s warning about the Military Industrial Complex.
http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html
Interesting, what’s much less known is that he also warned in that same speech about academia being subverted by the government and monied interests and more to the point he also warned of the danger that public policy could be subverted by what he called a scientific/technological elite
Ring any bells?
00
It would be interesting to know what discipline the blinkered “Adam Smith” has a doctorate in. Some aren’t worth the paper they are written on even if purchased from the “best” colleges in the States Neither is a doctorate a guarantee that the owner has a grasp on some aspects of reality.
It should be obvious even to the simple minded that there is something irrational about the imposition of a tax, claimed, by the government, to be aimed primarily at reducing CO2 and on the other hand promoting the sales of Australian mined coal, which is the highest export earner we have, to be combusted in places like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, India and Europe. The latter where Aussie coal is used mostly for steel making, with a smaller portion used as steaming coal.
That is why one wonders if A Smith has a doctorate in one of the social sciences or its cousin, economics, which like alarmist climate science relies heavily on mathematical models that also invariably seem to get it wrong. That sort of penny a dozen doctorate would help explain why he promotes the irrational carbon tax imposed on Australians as a perfectly rational response to perceived anthropogenic global warming when seventy five percent of our mined coal is exported. Presumably to produce about three times the CO2 that the portion we retain for our own use does.
Perhaps Adam Smith labours under the delusion that Aussie coal only produces CO2 when combusted in the homeland.
The bottom line is that Adam Smith does not think rationally on this topic.
00
Adam Smith (@417), replying to the claim that the EXPERIMENT shown at http://galileomovement.com.au/blog/?p=25/ shows that the greenhouse effect has little or no effect:
Smith, that is the biggest pile of weasels I’ve ever seen in one place. To wit:
Both youtube videos simply demonstrate that CO2 has an absorption spectrum in the infrared — like water vapor and most complex (i.e., not diatomic) molecules ). No one denies this, and it has no bearing on whether the atmospheric “greenhouse” mechanism hypothesized to cause heating of the earth is true or false. The videos show real experiments, but the claim that they prove the greenhouse effect is a lie.
AS for the Scientific American “debunking”:
First: They ask Gavin Schmidt, who is a mathematician and computer programmer, not someone with any documented education in physical science who might be able to authoritatively discuss a physical effect.
Second: Gavin doesn’t even try to address the described experiment, but simply takes issue with other statements that are irrelevant to the experimental results.
Not does the Scientific American article not “debunk” the Galileo Movement experiment, they don’t even mention it. WTF indeed.
The only question left is: Is Adam Smith so dense he can’t see this for himself, or dosen’t he care?
00
[snip]
00
Strange forum, Adam Smith (now there is a guy who supported free markets) brings you the facts (GG has restrictions on how he/she can dismiss the elected houses) and people don’t like it.
Getup can get 10’s of thousand out to a pro Carbon Tax, you lot can get a couple of trucks out to a convoy of irrelevance. You really should take the hint, your a small group of angry people; there will be no revolt; I’d be surprised if the Murdock press; with all their opinion published as news; succeeds in stampeding the horses.
00
gillard and “her” communist “government” are finished !!!!!!!!
Censoring the conservatives…..
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_censoring_the_conservatives/
LIARS !
TRAITORS !!
ELECTION NOW !!!!!!!!!!!
00
Well then “fredn”, YOU can pay for our family’s ENORMOUS increase in our cost living because of this TREASONOUS carbon DIOXIDE (PLANT FOOD) tax !!
PLEASE POST YOUR BANK ACCOUNT DETAILS!@
ELECTION NOW !!
YOU MUST BE A CRETIN TO WELCOME A GREAT BIG NEW TAX ON EVERYTHING !!!!!!!
00
More global warming LIES exposed.
Scare claim iced….
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/scare_claim_iced/
ELECTION NOW !!
00
POLL: Should the Department of Climate Change be abolished?
http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/
The obvious answer is YES.
ELECTION NOW !!
00
Yet another example of the COMMUNIST gillard “government” silencing opposition to their TREASONOUS carbon DIOXIDE (PLANT FOOD) tax.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/julia-gillard-introduces-carbon-tax-legislation-into-federal-parliament/story-e6freuy9-1226135934009
ELECTION NOW !
00
This is a great video on Gillard and “history”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mLypjJBvbmI#!
00
Gore isn’t worthy of a comment.
http://www.fxstreet.com/technical/market-view/premarket-analysis/2011/09/13/
Overnight:
• Austrailia: The NAB’s business index of business confidence declined 10. points to -8.0 in August.
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Fiona @ 436
Yep, dead right! Gillard is History!
Say YES to an election now !
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PhilJourdan #426:
Indeed, that is exactly what happened in 1975. GG John Kerr (appointed by Labor) sacked Whitlam because of the existing Senate impasse on the Supply bills. The Senate had kept deferring debate which, of course, constitutes a “…fails to pass”.
The GG acted in the only way he could and left it to the people to resolve which they did in spades. Smith’s previous response to this was to flippantly claim that 1975 is ancient history. What a bogan!
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KeithH at comment 355,
in amongst all the other stuff here I have missed out on getting back to you.
I’ll be running up something on the Hepburn Community Wind Farm.
It may take me a day or so, and I have no way to contact you other than here with this comment.
When it’s done It will be at the site I contribute to.
Tony.
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You’ve done it again Phil! Your lecturing us on how our system of government works. But you don’t understanding that dismissing the government isn’t the same as dissolving parliament.
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I see that Smith confirms his delusions of grandeur. He clearly cannot comprehend three small words “…fails to pass”. Like a typical ALP spin doctor, he puts his own irrelevant spin on the words to suit himself.
Again, there could NEVER be a DD election because of a hostile Senate under Smith’s rationalisation if all the Senate had to do was to keep contentious bills from a vote.
Smith must be a very frustrated individual. To think he can’t berate and browbeat others to his viewpoint must make life intolerable for him. He states he likes debate yet all he does is harangue. It doesn’t matter if one is right all the time (and we never are), if you can’t convince others, you have wasted your time and only succeded in alienating everyone.
Can’t help wondering why he never eimigrated to North Korea. Command economy, half-starved servile people who can’t talk back. Ticks all the boxes for Smith.
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He did no such thing. He sacked Whitlam, which meant he sacked the entire ministry, he then asked Fraser to form government.
Fraser didn’t have the confidence of the House of Representatives, so the only thing Fraser could do is ask the Governor General to call an election. In fact, Fraser was able to request a Double Dissolution election using 22 D.D. trigger bills that had been accumulated when Whitlam was PM.
So again, you can’t get around the fact that the G.G. can’t unilaterally dissolve parliament, s/he can only do so when requested to do so by the PM.
Everything else is simply re-writing history and / or lying.
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Well actually I AGREED that the second time around sending the bill off to committees COULD be a “Failure to pass” (the High Court has never ruled on the precise meaning of that section).
But the bill would have to be formally blocked the first time by being voted down. The Parliament can’t debate the same bill in both houses at the same time.
COMPLETELY WRONG! You are seemingly willfully ignoring my point. The bill MUST be voted down ONCE simply to enable the House of Representatives to reintroduce the bill. The House of Representatives can’t just introduce the bill again while the Senate committees are waiting to report!
Thank you very much for reverting to abuse, it means you obviously can’t handle the quality of my arguments.
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Mark @ 439
Adam Smith lives in a strange little world of his own making, where, unable to answer some point put to him, he simply claims the commenter wrote something completely different, then attacks the strawman he himself has created.
There is a typical example at post # 423:
Adam Smith simply bysteps the fact that in my post which he is referring to, I never made any claim that what Whitlam did was illegal. I simply pointed out that Whitlam disbanded active National Service without (needing to pass) any new legislation.
It was in response to a claim by Smith himself that Abbott could not undo the ETS without passing new legislation, which of course, is poppycock – ANY government can choose simply not enforce existing legislation simply by instructing the relevant Federal departments.
If Adam Smith cannot twist the commentator’s words to create a strawman more to his liking, he simply ignores the post. Case in point, the GG and the “Reserve Powers”.
Time and time again Adam Smith has made the claim the the GG “can’t” do this, that or the other, without the Prime Minister’s say-so, despite this being contrary to what is written as law in the constitution (and as pasted above by another poster above).
Time and again Adam Smith has claimed “convention” as being above the written constitution.
And yet, last week, when Abbott threatened to disallow “pairing” – another “convention” – there was nothing the PM, the Parliament, or even the GG, could do about it, because, after all, it was “just a convention” with no legal backing.
When I challenged Adam Smith to explain how one of his “conventions” could be so easily ignored, NOT by the PM, but just by the Leader of the Opposition, he simply ignored the post.
It wouldn’t be so annoying, except that it is Adam Smith himself who keeps claiming we won’t “debate the issues” with him.
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A great article by Malcolm Farr:
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/this-is-not-a-bloody-carbon-tax/#item6711
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Oh great, so in that case you have explained absolutely nothing of interest.
And you certainly haven’t explained anything that relevant to the Clean Energy bills currently before the Parliament.
Wrong! If you actually believe these coalition lies you’ll end up very disappointed.
The Government has deliberately had the Clean Energy bills drafted so the scheme can not be shut down by administrative decision, it will require the passage of a new bill through parliament.
Completely wrong. You can’t give me ONE example of the G.G. dissolving parliament without being first asked to do so by the Prime Minister.
And the reason for that is obvious. If the G.G. could unilaterally dissolve parliament, Australia would be a dictatorship.
This is completely irrelevant and has nothing to do with how and when parliament is dissolved.
I didn’t ignore the post at all. I explained quite strongly that Abbott’s refusal of a paired vote so that Malcolm Turnbull could attend the funeral of a close family friend demonstrated that Tony Abbott is heartless scum.
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Here’s one of the bills the Coalition says it will vote against:
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbills%2Fr4647_first-reps%2F0001%22;rec=0#272770b84bbc4658a0d5e172c3581766
Yep, it’s the bill to increase the tax free threshold.
So if you want to pay higher income taxes, vote for the Coalition at the next election.
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Adam Smith @ 447
As I said – Ignore the original point, create your own strawman, and then knock it down and claim a victory.
Just what, pray tell, does Abbott’s ethics have to do with the failure of one of your precious “conventions” when one party to them (not even the PM) chooses not to play along?
THAT was the question, NOT whether Abottt is “heartless cum”**.
**PS – Abbott is a POLITICIAN – you think they come with hearts – or brains?
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You’re dealing in irrelevances mate. The Clean Energy bills will pass whether or not Abbott allows paired votes. You’ll just have to get on with your life when that happens.
And of course you still haven’t cited ONE election that has been held after the G.G. unilaterally dissolved parliament.
Abbott is pretty funny though. When two Liberal MPs threatened to cross the floor and vote against their party late last year he forced them to pair their votes!
So it seems his policy on who is deserving of a pair (person who is about to vote against Coalition policy, YES, person who has just had open heart surgery or wants to attend the funeral of a friend, NO) is at the very best hypocritical and inconsistent.
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Slink, slither, slide… anything but admit you get things wrong, Smith.
Laughable. You clearly have no notion of how insufferably arrogant and boorish you seem to others. You don’t win discussions simply by declaing victory as you so tediously do.
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Adam Smith,
You seem to missing a vitally important point about the ‘market’.
In a market that works effectively and profitably for all involved, there simply has to be an ‘end user’ who sees a commercial value in purchasing the product.
If that ingredient is missing….we simply don’t have a market.
Every thing else is just intellectual mumbo jumbo.
Your arguments about ‘market mechanism’ are just simply not about a true market, they are about something else entirely.
No good market needs to be based entirely on tax payer funding. That is just a recipe for economic disaster.
Yes, Govts can and do interfere in the market place all the time.
Sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it is not.
This one that you are espousing is not the same as that either.
It isn’t rocket science….it is actually income redistribution with no productive end game.
The whole scheme will suffer from the dodo bird syndrome….you know….ever decreasing circles until…:)
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Well you implicitly identify the problem with the economy remaining carbon intensive, there is a negative externality which isn’t priced into the transaction.
At the moment a company that runs a coal power station buys coal and burns it to make electricity. It then sells the electricity to distributors and they ultimately sell it to retailers who sell it to homes and businesses.
A simplistic understanding of this transaction is that the electricity generator pays for the coal because it is more valuable than the cost, the distributors pay for the electricity from the generator because it is more valuable, and so on to the consumer.
But there’s a problem here. Currently there is not price put on the pollution put into the air from the generation of that electricity. So in some ways consumers are better off because they pay for electricity, but in another longer term way they are worse off because more carbon has been put into the atmosphere.
So this is ultimately an example of market failure because the external cost of pollution isn’t included in the cost of the transaction. That’s why we need a carbon price, because it puts the cost of pollution back into the transaction cost. It then leaves things to the market. Electricity can still be made from pollution intensive methods, but over time it will be more cost effect to, for example, stop using brown coal, shift to more efficient black coal, from black coal to gas, and (in my opinion hopefully) from gas to nuclear.
So you say the carbon price isn’t a market solution. But what you haven’t considered is that the existing ‘market’ doesn’t actually work efficiently or effectively because there is no price associated with putting carbon pollution in the air. This is an example of market failure which the government is going to correct with a market instrument.
The alternative is the coalition scheme. Take billions and billions and billions of dollars of your income taxes, and hand the cash to polluters and hope that will encourage them to increase the efficiency of their plant. But the problem is, how will the politicians know which companies to hand money over to? If you think politicians are better at markets at allocating resources, by all means support the Coalition policy. But if politicians are so good at figuring out where to hand over money, why stop at pollution abatement? Why not get politicians to tell us directly which brands of cereal to buy, or which toothpaste is best, rather than leaving it up to our purchasing decisions?
The market won’t be based on tax payer funding. The market will price the cost of carbon abatement permits. It is the complete opposite to tax payer funding, that’s the coalition’s tax and spend socialist scheme.
Seriously, congratulations for at least conceding that sometimes government intervention in markets is justified. Sadly I couldn’t get a single person in this forum to make such a concession yesterday.
00
And by the way. You are COMPLETELY WRONG in that the Senate has to vote a bill down first. READ THE BLOODY SECTION you idiot. It states clearly “…fails to pass! EVEN THE FIRST TIME.
If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which House will not agree, and if after an interval of three months…
You are absolutely full of crap and lies Smith as well as being a waste of education. The doctor who can’t read! Oh, I get it. You are going to rewrite the constitution now are you. Talk about 1984 and the Ministry of Truth!
Your statement about the High Court ruling on the matter is also WRONG and irrelevant. Nowhere in S.57 is the High Court mentioned as a remedy. It is the people’s parliament, not a tool of the High Court however much you may choose to dissemble about it.
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HOLY CRAP! What? The High Court, that is the Supreme Federal Court and the constitutional court of Australia doesn’t have a role in interpreting the meaning of the words in the constitution!?
What an astonishingly nonsensical thing to write!
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PaulM @57
Could you please change your screenname to differentiate yourself from me.
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Opps that should be PaulM@157.
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Okay then Doctor Smith,
give us a timeline on when all this move to new power technologies will come into place, and we want serious considerations here.
Keep in mind, any new power plant will take at least ten years from the ‘thought bubble’ stage to actually delivering power, and please we already concede that we agree Nuclear power is an option, but that is at the very least 2o years way, so give us realistic plans on replacing coal fired power, timelines, costs, where the money comes from, and what they will be.
In the interim, the end users, the power consumers will be paying this new impost, because the power plant operators are just the middlemen, because as each permit is purchased, that cost is passed directly down to all consumers.
38% of consumption is in the residential sector, 37% in Commerce and 24% in Industrial.
The government is compensating only the 38% sector, the residential consumers.
Please, Doctor timelines, and realistic proposals.
I know you have no concept, but at least TRY and find out.
Tony.
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Tony in 458,
Where does the other 1% go?
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Dr Adam is probably a committee given the rapidity and glossy vapidity of his provocative replies; he [sic] is also a liar; he extols the virtues of the adjustments to the tax scales as bribes for the introduction of the CO2 tax; this is wrong or at least misleading; it is true that the tax free threashold is lifted from but so to are the marginal rates of tax at the ist and 2nd scales!
The basic, ineluctable flaw in Smith’s position is that CO2 is not a pollutant and that the tax is designed to make the economy LESS efficient; fossil fuels are cheap and abundant; not only do they give Australia a competitive edge, but they could also greatly assist other nations achieve our SOL. In this respect there is NO comparison with the GST, which was and still is an efficient tax which does not impact on economic efficiency.
00
See, unlike you I don’t believe in a command and control economy of 1,2,3,5,10 year plans. That’s too socialist for my liking.
What we need is a price on carbon pollution to drive the use and development of cleaner alternatives to what is currently in use.
For everything you have written you haven’t actually explained why that is a bad idea and why the only alternative, tax and spend socialist nonsense with politicians picking winners, is a more desirable alternative.
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To all,
That distant thudding sound you can hear is Tony banging his head against a wall
00
Well this is wrong and misleading as no one will pay a higher proportion of tax relative to their income under the new tax scales!
The Government is getting rid of the high marginal tax rates people on low incomes pay as the low income tax offset is withdrawn. It is far simpler to just increase the tax free threshold instead of making people rely so heavily on the low income tax offset, which gets withdrawn quickly thus creating perverse effects such as high marginal rates.
See, an objective observer would say that – irrespective of your view on the ETS itself – the associated income tax reform is a GOOD simplification of the tax system that will make it fairer and encourage people on low incomes to work a bit more if they can. Frankly I have no idea how the federal government saying that someone earning almost $21,000 doesn’t need to pay income tax, or even fill in a tax return, is a bad thing.
But no, apparently in this forum everyone must be pure in condemning absolutely everything the current government does while failing to criticise any of the idiotic policies the Opposition has put forward.
00
No, not nonsense. Doesn’t matter how much you dissemble, Smith. This is parliament and the GG and issue stays there. The GG MAY dissolve the parliament and call elections if the parliament becomes unworkable.That is what settles the matter, not a bunch of judges and that is what happened in 1975 even if that is too far back for you to consider relevant.
Still can’t admit you were wrong about a bill not needing to be rejected. Doesn’t matter. Everyone sees you for what you are even if you can’t.
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No, no Dr Adam, no weasling out of this; you said people would be better off under the concurrent adjustments to the tax scales with the introduction of the CO2 tax; as I said the tax free threshold goes from $6001 to $18201 but the first scale marginal rate [above $18201] goes from 15% to 19% and the second scale [above $37001] goes from 30% to 32.5%. So, given that what evidence do you have that people will not pay a “higher proportion of tax relative to their income under the new tax scales”?
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Cohenite @ 465
“Dr”
You are funny!
Don’t you believe?
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Doctor Committee Smith
00
Do the sums! As a proportion of a person’s income, the amount of tax everyone pays will go down.
There was too much reliance on the low income tax offset which meant people on low incomes paying extremely high marginal rates. That is being dramatically reduced and ‘converted’ to just increasing the tax free threshold.
I am sorry if you can’t understand that this is genuine tax reform.
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Stick to the issues rather than just name calling, it strongly suggests you have no confidence in your position.
[this is not name calling. Stick to accurate terms in your debate otherwise it appears that you have no confidence in your position] ED
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This is not tax reform this is just tax adjustment, so what if i pay less tax up 18K, what i save there i lose in the higher brackets……….how is this reform?
I would not mind paying a tax if it went to produce something else, for example lets say all the tax revenue went to building a nuke plant (i would much prefer a thorium plant but no matter)then it would be OK. This is taxation with representation, but this is not the case the revenue from this tax/ets wil go OS never to be seen again which means ot is taxation without representation and very, very undemocratic.
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Loy Yang A have a contract with Alcoa till 2036. That’s while Loy Yang A and B are providing Victoria with one third of its power. Loy Yang B is newer and more efficient than most other coal plants in Oz. (You get that when you modernise stuff.) Good chance that few will be pushing to shut all that down in a hurry.
Aging Hazelwood (25% of Vic’s power) seems to be the prime target for closure by activists for “clean” energy. I’m wondering if TonyfromOz has any idea what immediate effect, if any, closure of Hazelwood would have on a still active Loy Yang. I know you’ve already commented on this, but my curiosity is about Day One. It’s a question about how quickly and directly the demand would be transferred to Loy Yang and Yallourn. That’s all apart from what financial pressure falls on these suppliers. (For the sake of argument, I’m assuming compensation will be adequate – though that may be as wise as a young girl believing her teenage boyfriend when he promises to “get off at Redfern”.)
I may earn myself a few thumbs-down for saying this, but I’m largely in agreement with Dr. Adam Smith on Constitution as well as the conventions which help it along. I haven’t had time to read all, and I do wonder how he finds the time to write all, but a skim would have me more on his side. I’m not disparaging all counter-arguments, but I believe one should hesitate to test an important boundary just because it’s vulnerable. I’m also grateful to Dr. Adam Smith for stating so clearly his dislike of Tony Abbott. That helps me in so many ways.
Since Dr. Adam Smith has been so generous with his time and efforts on this forum, I was wondering if he could chime in with his view on the matters I just posed to Tony. Dr. Adam Smith is an enthusiast for nuclear energy, as so many of us are. He has already explained the broad mechanism by which he believes a shift to nuclear energy will occur. No need to re-state. I wonder if he could describe the practical measures which will be in place on that Day One of Hazelwood’s closure. Or will no practical measures need to be in place on that day? Since I don’t want to make too many claims on his time, I’ll make it clear that I’m not asking any other question except this. If Dr. Adam Smith does not desire the closure of Hazelwood, then, of course, this question need not concern him.
So, guys, Hazelwood closes. Day One. What happens?
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Dear Doctor,
May I call you Doc
When you say: “Stick to the issues rather than just name calling, it strongly suggests you have no confidence in your position.” — you are not addressing the science, a topic that you are totally ignorant on, so I thought I’d just fool around a bit.
Hey man — lighten up!!
This is serious.
Are you confused?
If not keep reading there’s more!
Right now I’m sitting in a chair and my position is fine so I have great confidence in it.
So there.
You might believe that the above is pointless rubbish, but it does have a point
— by comparison with the junk you write this
BRILLIANT!
00
In keeping with the open thread policy, i see the holy crusades are moving on, next stop Syria. As we all know Syria has been fighting an uprising of late so obviously NATO now feel obliged to blew the shit out of the place.
What i find interesting is that the US and Israel have been trying to goad Iran into a fight for quite some time but so far have been unsuccessful, however Syria and Iran have a deal in which if either are attacked the other will support (Like China and Nth Korea) So if a US led NATO attack Syria then they also attack Iran, funny how these things all work out in the end aint it.
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Sorry all – that should have been: “this is”
Just in case Doc got confused,
like Juliah.
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[snip]
00
To all the readers here, I humbly apologise for keeping Doctor Smith doing his ‘political’ thing here. He understands politics really well, but has no understanding whatsoever of electrical power generation.
So, I’m again going to mention something that I have mentioned (many) times previously, and as much as you are all already aware of it, I’ll try this time to word it differently.
Let’s just do the exercise for Bayswater, and this is not singling one plant out in isolation. It is indicative, because of the top 500 so called ‘polluters’, the bulk of the money will be coming from the top 20 or so, and of that top 20, electrical power producers make up 14 of that 20, with the Top 3 being power producers.
So Bayswater.
It burns around 8 million tons of coal each year, and at the average multiplier of 2.86 tons of CO2 for every one ton of coal burned, this means an emission of 23 million tons of CO2 and at the start price of $23 per ton of CO2, the impost for Bayswater is around $530 million.
All the 17,500GWH of power it produces each year go to the grid where it is consumed 38% Residential, 37% Commerce and 24% Industrial, (and crakar24, that last 1% is to the Transport Sector)
So now Bayswater has to purchase Carbon credits for the CO2 it emits.
That total cost ($530 Million) is passed down to consumers, all of them.
The Residential sector component of that is $200 Million.
All of this, is refunded to (most of) the people, plus a little extra as a bribe.
The Government keeps the rest from the Commerce and Industrial sectors, to fund the other
bribespolicies, in effect boosting its bottom line of incomings.Bayswater is just the middleman here, as they pass the lot down to all consumers, who are the ones who pay, Bayswater increases its wholesale cost, and the providers then increase their retail cost, hence it is the people who pay ALL of this money.
Start the ETS.
Permits are purchased from the Govt, keeping in mind they have to return the amount equal to what they emit.
These can be traded at specified auctions throughout the year, but the plant has to return the amount equal to their emissions.
The plant, already burning the absolute minimum coal to produce their power, keeping in mind they need to purchase the steaming coal, has to burn what it already does to produce the power that is required for consumption.
Any less emissions, and keep in mind here it’s not a ton here or a ton there, it’s tens to hundreds of thousands of tons, hence considerably less power is now available for consumption.
So they burn what they always have.
If Bayswater emits any more over their allocation, they then have to purchase the make up credits at the last auction buying price, and keep in mind that credit price everywhere else in the World has ‘tanked’ considerably, so the Govt covers its fundament here by setting a base price, so if the price falls, the plant can only sell at the tanked auction price, but has to buy any over allocation from the Govt at the base price.
Then on top of that, for exceeding their limit, the Govt imposes a fine equal to 1.5 times the cost of the excess permits needed as a make up, base price also applying here. That’s on top again.
Year One ends, The plant’s cap is lowered. They buy the new number of permits etc.
Same make ups, same fines.
Year two etc cap lowered again. Etc etc.
If they abide by the legislation, then they MUST by extrapolation produce less power, and the NSW grid is already at the maximum consumption, because Labor for so many years in that state did not introduce any new power to cover that, and the NSW grid reaches criticality at the end of 2012.
So less power, and we all go without, because as I have also mentioned many times, it’s 7 to 10 years to build new plants, and Coal fired is out of the question, and gas fired still emits CO2.
So Doctor Smith, all of this is in your legislation.
It’s just a shell game for the Govt to raise money to bolster its bottom line, and throwing a piddlingly small amount at renewables, enough for a tiny boutique power plant and thinking this is their ‘Clean Energy Future’.
Tell us now how YOUR market mechanism works.
Tell us also what power your legislation proposes to replace what YOUR mechanism does.
Again people, I apologise for
beating my head against a walllabouring the point, but you won’t get answers from Doctor Smith, and there mmay be people who might be swayed by his political speak, remembering the old adage ….. “Trust me, I’m a Doctor.”Well, Doctor Smith, how about some answers
mate,sorry, almost forgot the required Post Nominal … Doctor.Real answers, not the flummery of politics.
Tony.
00
mosomoso,
The grids total out at around 90% give or take, eg, at maximum consumption it is around 90% of absolute total power generation.
Remove Hazelwood, and, still having the same consumption, you now only have 75% of that consumption being generated.
On a rotational basis, whole sectors of the grid will have to be shut down for hours on end.
Now, keep in mind that Industry and Commerce need to be kept running, because that;s where people work.
So, most of the areas where there is predominantly residential only will be blacked out, centering mainly around daylight hours (working hours)
If that doesn’t cover it, then large areas, probably in large Country areas will be blacked out, because blacking out Melbourne is out of the question.
Now perhaps you see why closing Hazelwood is tantamount to absolute political suicide, and will not happen, in the medium to long term, let alone the short term.
Hazelwood CANNOT be closed down by
a piece of paper, sorry,market mechanism, sorry, legislation, no matter what it says, UNTIL, (repeat that UNTIL) replacement power is on line and delivering power.I’ll bet Doctor Smith is not aware of this, and if he lives in Victoria, I can see his eyes widening right about now.
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Adam Smith @ 450
More aversion of the point under discussion – and you talk of irrelevancies!!
The question was, what happened to your “cast in stone” “conventions” when Abbott refused to play along?
Answer – they went out the window, because unlike the written law (constitution) they have NO legal backing other than what the involved parties choose to give them.
Ditto for what the GG can and cannot do – much as you may hate it.
The fact, for instance, that no GG has ever directly dismissed a Parliament is neither here nor there. The fact remains that under the reserve powers of the constitution the GG CAN under certain specific circumstances.
Section 57 – . . . .the Governor-General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously.
End of story. No mention of permission from ANYBODY – not the PM, not even the monarch.
It’s entirely irrelevant as to whether this has yet happened, or will happen in the future or even (note to msosomo) if it would actually be desirable or not.
IT IS THE LAW AS IT STANDS TODAY.
00
mosomoso,
in addition to Comment 478, this is something that has to be intricately done, and then watched on a minute to minute basis, because if demand rises any further than what they have ‘on tap’, then the cascading effect I mentioned in Comment 43 falls into play.
Exceed the demand, and plants shut down, and that happens automatically.
Any one plant shuts down, and you’re looking at all of them then cascading into shutdown, and then you’ll have a State wide blackout, and with power being brought across borders, you’re then looking at it affecting the grids in NSW and South Australia as well.
Once large scale plants shut down, it may take days of careful planning to get them back up and running delivering power.
As it is, areas of both those States as well will be going through blackouts.
It happened in NSW in the early and mid 70’s, and here I’m talking 4 hours at a time, and in some areas up to 8 hours at a time.
Victorian grid controllers will be watching the demand and isolating vast areas at a time.
See how power that just ‘flows out of the plug’ whenever you ‘flick the switch’ and is always there leads to complacency. People automatically think it will always be there.
Coal fired power means exactly that.
It always will be there.
Take that away, and what I have mentioned here becomes the ‘situation normal’.
Tony.
00
Thank you for those fast and interesting responses, TonyfromOz. It would be very interesting to hear from someone who is keen for the closure of Hazelwood to explain what, specifically, should be in place on Day One after closure. We are all aware by now of the theory that increased emissions-abatement costs will lead to the eventual establishment of alternative facilities. However, it has proven difficult – devilishly difficult! – to get responses as to the timing and feasibility of new installations. Will the alternatives be available on the very day that Hazelwood becomes inoperative? Will these alternatives provide similar amounts of power with similar reliability?
Or is this a mere detail, a blip in that Great Arc of social and environmental renewal?
00
There will be a change over period of time.
Any new plant will be brought onto the grid delivering its power on the same basis that Hazelwood delivers, 24/7/365.
After that is achieved, then, and only then, can Hazelwood be closed.
Most probably, it will be a gas fired solution, probably CCGT. (Combined Cycle Gas Turbine)
Natural Gas runs a turbine which drives a generator. The waste heat from the turbine exhaust is used to boil water to steam to drive a secondary turbine which then drives a smaller turbine.
These plants are way more complex than Coal fired power, hence more expensive.
The advantage is that from the turning of the first sod on the site, they are the fastest to actually deliver their power, in the range of 18/24 months.
However, prior to that turning of the first sod, we need the thought bubble, the comprehensive planning, the discussion, the legislation, the studies, the approvals, the financing, and on and on.
That process prior to the first sod being turned is in the vicinity of 4 to 6 years if all the ducks line up first time round.
Then of course, the construction of the gas pipeline and all that planning, approvals financing etc.
So, all this in place prior to Hazelwood closing.
See now the problem.
It’s not a matter of a photo op holding up the legislation after the Senate has approved it with a backdrop of a poster saying ‘Mission Accomplished’.
That is the first step.
After that comes the thought bubble for the replacement plant, the legal battles to wangle out of a State Government approved contract to supply, and working out a price to pay that out.
That legislation passing the Senate will be years and years and years earlier than Hazelwood closing, no matter what ‘market mechanism’ is in place.
In the interim, the Government bleeds the people dry in the name of making that ‘derdy polluder’ pay, a classic case of misdirection.
Tony.
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Then, as Doctor Smith postulates, that whole process starts again with his Nuclear option.
Because keep in mind, this new CCGT Plant still emits CO2, so his paper mechanism means this plant will also be forced to close.
So now we need that whole process to start all over again, again keeping in mind that before the CCGT plant opens they also will have a contract to supply for up to 40 years to recover the costs etc, so that legal process continues with this plant.
Prior to all of that, we need the nuclear discussion to actually explain it to the public so it is acceptable, then the legislation, then the planning etc for a processing plant, then a reprocessing plant dry disposal option, then plans for a plant financing, approvals legislation etc, and on and on and on.
No worries though.
Doctor Smith’s piece of paper is in fact a magic wand.
No operator, or Government for that fact will even consider a thought bubble for a CCGT if Doctor Smith’s magic wand has that Nuke at the end of it, no matter what time frame.
Tony.
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TonyfromOz; many thanks for your perseverance. The gap between those people who can understand and deal with practical realities and those folk with an ideological bent, based somewhat on dogma, is vast. Unfortunately, it will be those practical people who will have to “pick up the pieces”.
Dr Adam Smith, when you can show that you actually understand the inverse logarithmic relationship between increasing temperature and atmospheric CO2 from all sources (natural and anthropogenic) and that without a positive water vapour feedback, for which there is still no empirical evidence (ie the science is definitely not settled) then you will understand that there is no danger of runaway or catastrophic global warming. In other words your premise for a carbon tax/ets, or whatever you wish to call it, is invalid and your comments regarding such are dogmatic.
If, on the other hand for instance, you were to argue about reducing black carbon or soot, which does have a measurable anthropogenic impact, then you might have a valid argument.
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So now back to post 462 which forced poor old tony to bang his head repeatedly against a wall, according to Dr “the pain the pain” Smith (apologies to Lost in space fans)
In light of Tiny’s recent posts can you please explain/defend the above statement in more detail?
Do you think Tony has now explained why it is a bad idea? If not please explain why you think this.
TIA
Crakar24
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Oh by the way i read somewhere (no link sorry) that they are considering turning off your fridge for a few hours a day to meet peak demands (no more coal/windy mills and glass are crap etc)wow what a good idea that is i never imagined we would finaly be ranked among some of the greatest dictatorships in the world thatnks to the current gov.
Great dictatorships that turn off power to its people are Saudi Arabia, Nth Korea, China, Russia (well communist but still), Iraq (both pre and post invasion),Idi Amin? .We are now truly in great company.
Well done Bob and Julia
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crakar24,
that process is termed euphemistically as ‘Smart Meters, another case of naming something in an acceptable manner instead of what it really means, sort of like calling a CO2 tax a ‘Clean Energy’ Bill.
When this new piece of paper starts closing down power plants with nothing to replace them, then demand will surely outstrip supply, so instead of rolling blackouts for whole areas, those smart meters will enable grid operators to isolate individual users, eg heating in Winter and cooling in Summer.
Electricity rationing if you will.
Tony.
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Throw in Media control, internet filtering, loss of freedom of speech, CCTV on every corner, speed cameras (to curb road toll of course), plain packaging of smokes/coco pops and paddle pop lions etc and we should re name Australia to Auchwitzlia.
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Adam Smith at many posts.
Would you kindly respond to my questions outlined in Post 392.
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Tony from Oz @ 441
Thanks in advance Tony. Sorry to load it onto you but I have neither the technical knowledge nor the IT skills to do it myself. I enjoy all your articles.
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Hey Keith,
no worries.
Haven’t looked at this before but gee, 2 turbines.
That’ll knock a hole in Climate Change.
Tomorrow or Friday.
Tony.
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Not to detract from any of Oz Tony’s excellent posts above, but there’s a few additional factors that need to be considered.
First, one does simply walk into some heavy-engineering equivalent of a Bunnings store and throw a few 500MW+ generators, or even more importantly, the gas or steam turbines that drive them, into a shopping trolley. The lead times on delivery are already measured in years, and manufacturing capacity is not something that can be significantly increased at short notice.
Now consider what is going to happen as the world gets cooler – which it is.
As people start to freeze to death in places like the UK, governments are going to have to start building REAL power stations or face civil riots. As the panic spreads in the NH, lead times on generators and turbines will only get longer. How far down the delivery list do people imagine we will be when reality finally bites here?
Second, as Tony points out, the quickest solution is gas turbines. But on the East Coast do we have the gas to replace Hazelwood and Loy Yang?
If you think that is a stupid question against a background of daily news items about gas discoveries every day of the week, let me tell you a little story.
Back in the the early 2000’s Western Power in WA decided to convert Kwinana power station from coal to gas. A bucketful of millions of dollars was spent on the conversion.
Only when it was finished, and they had actually started to dismantle the coal delivery systems, did they go into the market place to buy the gas.
“Sorry” said the suppliers, “all our gas is contractually obligated. We haven’t got any spare to sell you”.
And this was in WA at a time that state was leading the world in bringing new gas delivery projects online. And in the grander scheme of things, Kwinana is quite a small power station.
There was an attempt last year to introduce legislation requiring gas field developers to set aside a certain amount of their product for Australian consumption. This was voted down by the Bligh government.
So, the question remains – is there gas even available to power replacements for Hazelwwod and Loy Yang? Has anybody even asked?
Finally, all Tony’s excellent comments are predicated on a return to sanity “somewhere down the track”. Unfortunately, Bob Brown’s brownshirts now control the Senate and will likely do so until mid-2017. Sanity is NOT their strongpoint.
These people WANT rationed electricity. They WANT old people (useless eaters) to freeze in their homes. They WANT manufacturing to come to a standstill, with all the attendant unemployment and misery that brings.
These people earnestly believe they are working to build a “better world” (by their definition), and to accomplish that they are happy to fully subscribe to the Stalinist philosophy:
“You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs”.
To them, folks, WE are the eggs.
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I find the viewpoints of those who live outside of the “West” interesting
“It would appear that the United Nations is now but another mask for the world elite, who own it, and who are bent on using it as an instrument to gain control of all independent nations in their quest to establish a world fascist government. The government of the United States in particular is already controlled; their Congress, Senate and President continually bought and directed by the Council on Foreign Relation (CFR). The United Kingdom and France are similarly run by elitists. It is an affront to any critical thinking person to call these countries democracies.
To call these countries democracies is an abject farce in view of the fact that the politicians do not honour their commitments to the people who they are supposed to represent but instead act on instructions from the corporations who contribute to their elections or sponsor their political parties! What these countries have become are corporate fascist dictatorships. Their policies no longer reflect the wishes of the people but the interests of elitist corporations who own them.”
http://www.mathaba.net/?x=628632
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On that note are they actually allowed to close these plants,without the State Government in question’s approval? I believe there’s a law that says that the Federal Government isn’t allowed to tax state-owned assests. Surely that would apply for shutting state-owned assests down?
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Michael Petterson @ 494
I can’t comment specifically without googling, but I’m pretty sure that the stations in question – Hazelwood and Loy Yang – have long been “privatised”.
Which means the federal government can do pretty-much what they like, as long as they are prepared to fork out enough taxpayer’s money in compensation.
I personally believe – PROVIDED the Gillard-Green unholy alliance lasts long enough – that both stations will be closed AND dismantled within two years.
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Pity in that case. I can’t imagine the Victorian government allowing the Federals to meddle with a state owned power station,if they were state owned as they were oposed to the tax as well as the NSW,and WA state governments.
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memoryvault @ 492
)n the same lines, this is an excerpt from Chistopher Booker’s excellent article on the wind turbine madness in the UK that I’ve linked to previously at Climate Realists.
“My main aim had to be to bring home to people just how grotesquely inefficient and costly wind turbines are as a way to make electricity – without even fulfilling their declared purpose of reducing CO2 emissions. Alas, despite all the practical evidence to show why wind power is one of the greatest follies of our age, those who rule our lives, from our own politicians and officials here in Britain to those above them in Brussels, seem quite impervious to the facts.
The Government’s proposed changes to our planning rules (already being implemented, even though the “consultation” has scarcely begun) are drawing fire from all directions. On page 43 of the Government’s document, is a proposal that local planning authorities must “apply a presumption in favour” of “renewable and low-carbon energy sources”.
What this means in plain English is that we can forget any last vestiges of local democracy. Our planning system is to be rigged even more shamelessly than before, to allow pretty well every application to cover our countryside with wind turbines – along with thousands of monster pylons, themselves up to 400 feet high, marching across Scotland, Wales, Suffolk, Somerset and elsewhere to connect them to the grid.
All this is deemed necessary to meet our EU-agreed target to generate nearly a third of our electricity from “renewables” – six times more than we do now – by 2020. This would require building at least 10,000 more turbines, in addition to the 3,500 we already have – which last year supplied only 2.7 per cent of our electricity.
Obviously this is impossible, but our Government will nevertheless do all it can to meet its unreachable target and force through the building of thousands of turbines, capable of producing a derisory amount of electricity at a cost estimated, on its own figures, at £140 billion (equating to £5,600 for every household in the land).
Another of last week’s news items, a prediction by energy consultants Ulyx that a further avalanche of “green” measures will alone raise Britain’s already soaring energy bills in the same nine years by a further 58 per cent.
A significant part of this crippling increase, helping to drive more than half Britain’s households into “fuel poverty”, will be the costs involved in covering thousands of square miles of our countryside and seas with wind turbines. The sole beneficiaries will be the energy companies, which are allowed to charge us double or treble the normal cost of our electricity, through the subsidies hidden in our energy bills; and landowners such as Sir Reginald Sheffield, the Prime Minister’s father-in-law, who on his own admission stands to earn nearly £1,000 a day at the expense of the rest of us, for allowing a wind farm to be built on his Lincolnshire estate.
Even more damaging, however, will be the way this massive investment diverts resources away from the replacement of the coal-fired and nuclear power stations which are due for closure in coming years, threatening to leave a shortfall in our national electricity supply of nearly 40 per cent. If we are to keep our lights on and our economy running, we need – as the CBI warned in a damning report on Friday – urgently to spend some £200 billion on power supply,
But our politicians have been so carried away into their greenie never-never land that they seem to have lost any sight of this disaster bearing down on us. Instead of putting up turbines on the fields of Northants, E.On should be building the grown-up power stations we desperately need. But government energy policy has so skewed the financial incentives of the system that the real money is to made from building useless wind farms.
Sooner or later, this weird policy will be recognised as such a catastrophic blunder that it, and the colossal subsidies that made it possible, will be abandoned. That will leave vast areas of our once green and pleasant land littered with useless piles of steel and concrete, which it will be no one’s responsibility to cart away.
If the Government really wishes to make a useful change to our planning laws, it should insist that every planning permission to build wind turbines should include a requirement that, after their 25-year life, they must be removed at their owners’ expense. Alas, by that time the companies will all have gone bankrupt, and we shall be left with a hideous legacy as a monument to one of the greatest lunacies of our time. ”
Google Abandoned Wind Farms for some examples of some of these “monuments” already abandoned round the world!
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The Gas and Oil Potential and Output from the Northwest shelf of WA has long been Neglected by the Federal Government.
Federal Government(Not the WA Government) Receives all Royalties from offshore Mining Company`s.
Federal Governments lack of Foresight into offshore Resource Security and Management has a lot to answer for !
No Investment in Infrastructure in the Northwest .
No contracts Locking Gas prices cheaper for Australia.
No pipeline Infrastructure from the Northwest to all over Australia .
The number of Decades our Federal Governments have neglected these issues .
Our Sovereign Assets have been sold off very cheaply , To Foreign Country`s .
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[this is not name calling. Stick to accurate terms in your debate otherwise it appears that you have no confidence in your position] ED
Err, how is calling someone “Committee” when their name is “Adam” not name calling?
[Is your name Adam? Sorry, in my copy of “Roget’s lexicon of pejoratives” I don’t find the word “committee”. I could suggest some real pejoratives if you need examples?] ED
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Former Malaysian PM: ’Bush lied about 9/11 terror attacks’
Voltaire Network | 10 September 2011
Mahathir Mohamad says it is not unthinkable for former US President George W. Bush to lie about who was responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks on the American soil. [Editor’s note: Then-Prime Minister Mohamad is shown in the photo (L) with William Rodriguez, 9/11 hero and the “last man out” of the Towers at a private 9/11 presentation.]
In a post published in his personal blog chedet on Friday, former Malaysian prime minister said that the attacks on the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, New York City, and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, could not have been carried out by Muslims. The acts of violence could have rather been the work of other groups.
The Malaysian politician pointed out that “for some Americans, the deaths of nearly 3,000 people was not the scariest thing about 9/11. It was realizing who carried out the attack: yes, the American Government.”
Mohamad said although Arab Muslims are angry enough to sacrifice their lives and become bombers, they are not capable of planning and strategizing attacks similar to the 9/11 ones.
“The planning [for the 9/11 attacks] must have taken a considerable length of time. The candidates had to learn to fly in tiny aircrafts…. Planning to hijack four aircraft simultaneously would require great precision in timing and logistics. One aircraft maybe. But four simultaneously!! I don’t think extremists from Saudi Arabia can carry out this highly sophisticated operation with such success,” former Malaysian prime minister commented.
Turning to the collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers, he said, “They came down nicely upon themselves without toppling against the other buildings close by. It looks more like planned demolition of buildings than collapse consequent upon being hit by aircraft.”
Mohamad stated, “A third building also collapsed in the same fashion; although it was not hit by any aircraft. What is the explanation for this untouched building, which collapsed upon itself and did not damage other buildings nearby?”
He also questioned the total disappearance of the aircraft, which hit the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia. “There was no debris of any kind, no broken parts of the aircraft, no black box, and no human bodies flung into the surroundings. Is it possible for an aircraft to vaporize totally after a crash?” former Malaysian prime minister said.
Mohamad further raised questions over the loss of the fourth aircraft, which was supposed to have crashed in an open field. “Again no sign of any debris. No big crater. Did it vaporize into nothingness? Did the innocent passengers also vaporize?” he stated.
The Malaysian politician noted that the American press was strangely silent about 9/11 attacks.
He also emphasized that Bush is the one that lied about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. “The legacy of the former US president is that two countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) have been devastated, and fratricidal wars have become endemic. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans and a few thousand of young American soldiers have died. Thousands more are wounded, maimed for life, and suffering from mental breakdowns,” Mohamad pointed out.
Former Malaysian prime minister also said that human lives do not seem to mean much to the former US president.
http://www.voltairenet.org/Former-Malaysian-PM-Bush-lied
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Um, that would be the same Mahathir Mohamad who had any potential political opponent locked up so he didn’t have to face them at a democratic election.
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I’m not accusing the Greens of rationality, and I think Julia Gillard can be summed up in three words: Slater and Gordon. But it’s hard to see how any government, state or federal, could cause or allow the closure of both Loy Yang and Hazelwoood.
I’m not claiming any special knowledge here, but Tony’s idea is about the only one that makes sense. We’ll keep on burning brown coal in plants that get older and crappier, while government imposes what is best termed massive pre-paid and transferable fines on those industries. (In addition, there will be straight-out post-paid fines for excess.)
As some kind of gigantic fashion statement, whirlygigs and solar panels will begin uselessly to cover the landscape. Geothermal will do its ultra-expensive boutiquey thing in the middle of nowhere…
And, since nukes are great at everything but existing in Australia, we’ll just go on burning that brown coal.
Eventually, some ALP/GetUp spin-dude will realise that, by calling brown coal by its other name, lignite, there’ll be no more brown coal. All the brown coal gone!
So instead of burning lots of brown coal in old facilities, we’ll burn lots of lignite in very old facilities.
And when the lignite thing starts to wear thin with the urban knit-browed set, an ALP/GetUp spin-dude will realise that lignite is also known as rosebud coal. All the lignite gone!
And we’ll go on burning rosebud coal in facilities that are falling apart.
Rosebud.
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They will do it by buying the generation capacity off of the owner and then shutting it down. Both Labor and Liberal have policies to shut down such capacity. The Government’s policy is to shut down 2000 MW, while the Coalition will either shut down 1 power station or pay to convert it to gas (you know the socialist Direct Action policy).
The Coalition will also pay beyond the market price to ensure that generation costs from that generator don’t rise, which energy sector analysts have estimated will amount to a one off payment of about $500 million.
Yep, that’s right, from your income taxes straight over to the power generator.
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Adam Smith @ numerous posts.
I courteously ask again as in post 489. would you kindly respond to my questions @ post 392
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The Great American Bubble Machine by Matt Taibbi.
BUBBLE #6 – GLOBAL WARMING
Fast-Forward to today. It’s early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs – its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign – sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.
AS ENVISIONED BY GOLDMAN, THE FIGHT TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING WILL BECOME A “CARBON MARKET” WORTH $1 TRILLION A YEAR.
Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm’s co-head of finance) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits – a booming trillion-dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an “environmental plan,” called cap-and-trade.
The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that’s been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won’t even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.
Here’s how it works: If the bill passes; there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy “allocations” or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions. President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billions worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.
The feature of this plan that has special appeal to speculators is that the “cap” on carbon will be continually lowered by the government, which means that carbon credits will become more and more scarce with each passing year. Which means that this is a brand-new commodities market where the main commodity to be traded is guaranteed to rise in price over time. The volume of this new market will be upwards of a trillion dollars annually; for comparison’s sake, the annual combined revenues of an electricity suppliers in the U.S. total $320 billion.
Goldman wants this bill. The plan is (1) to get in on the ground floor of paradigm-shifting legislation, (2) make sure that they’re the profit-making slice of that paradigm and (3) make sure the slice is a big slice. Goldman started pushing hard for cap-and-trade long ago, but things really ramped up last year when the firm spent $3.5 million to lobby climate issues. (One of their lobbyists at the time was none other than Patterson, now Treasury chief of staff.) Back in 2005, when Hank Paulson was chief of Goldman, he personally helped author the bank’s environmental policy, a document that contains some surprising elements for a firm that in all other areas has been consistently opposed to any sort of government regulation. Paulson’s report argued that “voluntary action alone cannot solve the climate-change problem.” A few years later, the bank’s carbon chief, Ken Newcombe, insisted that cap-and-trade alone won’t be enough to fix the climate problem and called for further public investments in research and development. Which is convenient, considering that ‘Goldman made early investments in wind power (it bought a subsidiary called Horizon Wind Energy), renewable diesel (it is an investor in a firm called Changing World Technologies) and solar power (it partnered with BP Solar), exactly the kind of deals that will prosper if the government forces energy producers to use cleaner energy. As Paulson said at the time, “We’re not making those investments to lose money.”
The bank owns a 10 percent stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange, where the carbon credits will be traded. Moreover, Goldman owns a minority stake in Blue Source LLC, a Utah-based firm that sells carbon credits of the type that will be in great demand if the bill passes. Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, who is intimately involved with the planning of cap-and-trade, started up a company called Generation Investment Management with three former bigwigs from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, David Blood, Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris. Their business? Investing in carbon offsets. There’s also a $500 million Green Growth Fund set up by a Goldmanite to invest in green-tech … the list goes on and on. Goldman is ahead of the headlines again, just waiting for someone to make it rain in the right spot. Will this market be bigger than the energy-futures market?
“Oh, it’ll dwarf it,” says a former staffer on the House energy committee. ….
“If it’s going to be a tax, I would prefer that Washington set the tax and collect it,” says Michael Masters, the hedge fund director who spoke out against oil-futures speculation. “But we’re saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That’s the last thing in the world I want. It’s just asinine.”
Cap-and-trade is going to happen. Or, if it doesn’t, something like it will. The moral is the same as for all the other bubbles that Goldman helped create, from 1929 to 2009. In almost every case, the very same bank that behaved recklessly for years, weighing down the system with toxic loans and predatory debt, and accomplishing nothing but massive bonuses for a few bosses, has been rewarded with mountains of virtually free money and government guarantees – while the actual victims in this mess, ordinary taxpayers, are the ones paying for it.
It’s not always easy to accept the reality of what we now routinely allow these people to get away with; there’s a kind of collective denial that kicks in when a country goes through what America has gone through lately, when a people lose as much prestige and status as we have in the past few years. You can’t really register the fact that you’re no longer a citizen of a thriving first-world democracy, that you’re no longer above getting robbed in broad daylight, because like an amputee, you can still sort of feel things that are no longer there.
But this is it. This is the world we live in now. And in this world, some of us have to play by the rules, while others get a note from the principal excusing them from homework till the end of time, plus 10 billion free dollars in a paper bag to buy lunch. It’s a gangster state, running on gangster economics, and even prices can’t be trusted anymore; there are hidden taxes in every buck you pay. And maybe we can’t stop it, but we should at least know where it’s all going.
The bubbles don’t come ’til the end of the program… Turn off the bubbles… Turn off the bubble machine!
http://www.correntwire.com/great_american_bubble_machine_O
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Well, pretty simple really. Nuclear costs slightly more than the most efficient coal power stations, but with even a low carbon price, nuclear becomes cheaper than all existing coal and even gas.
Um, no, nuclear will become attractive when 1) the carbon price makes fossil fuels far more expensive than nuclear and 2) when people realise that solar and wind will remain very expensive and not viable baseload options.
Well, short answer none. Slightly longer answer, Paul Howes.
Well, quite simply. If Australia doesn’t have a price on carbon, then in a decade or so Australia will be subject to carbon tariffs which would be a massive shock to the entire economy that we simply wouldn’t be prepared for.
Um, what subsidies? We are adopting a carbon price so that we can end the wasteful round of subsidies. The Coalition not only wants to keep the subsidy schemes, in order to acheive anything like the abatement they say they want they will have to radically increase the subsidies by something like $11 billion a year, which ultimately comes out of your and my income taxes.
As the member for Fraser Andrew Leigh (who has a Ph.D. in economics) said in parliament today. For the coalition scheme to work you’d need a bureaucracy that would make Vladimir Lenin blush.
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My answers are above.
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#1 – I am not lecturing.
#2 – I pointed out a contradiction between you and Wiki
#3 – I suggested you fix Wiki if you are right.
I am learning about Australian Politics. However, you appear to want to remain fixed in your biases, regardless of what anyone says. So you may want to stop lecturing until you can resolve the differences between what you contend, and what is printed in your own constitution. I merely provided links to where others claim you are wrong.
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You fail to understand that which you read. You have stated numerous times that the GG cannot act without consulting the PM. You have been shown where in the past he did. And where in the Constitution it says he does not need to consult with the PM.
A man would admit he is wrong. An idiot will just double down on stupid.
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Or a monarchy. There was a little thing about 235 years ago where one land renounced the monarchy. For that very reason. King, Queen, Emperor, “Leader for life”, Banana republic Despot, or Number one Citizen. It matters not what you call them, they are dictators. That does not mean they are all bad. just they are accountable to no one else. From the PM on down in Australia, to the President in the US, both are accountable to others (the people). The Queen is not.
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Perhaps I should have been clear that I am not interested in the legal or procedural mechanisms of closing Loy Yang and Hazelwood. My mind was on another matter altogether: the fact that these plants represent maybe 75% of Victoria’s power. And with Yallourn, another brown coal plant, representing another 22% of Victoria’s power, and adding 75 to 22…
How differently our minds move, Dr. Adam Smith!
Nonetheless, it is interesting to read a summary of the policies or declared intentions of the two major parties.
I prefer what is being called the socialist Direct Action policy of the coalition, since it seems merely ruinous, as opposed to calamitous. Mind you, both policies smack of “non-core” promise. Not being given to indignation or idealism, I’ll hope for the least foolish outcome.
However, none of this addresses the question of how closure is to be timed and made feasible should it actually occur. I am starting to suspect that those who favour such closures haven’t a clue as to timing and feasibility.
Perhaps “closure” is one of those seemingly plain words which can be spun many ways. “Lord, make my Latrobe pure…but not yet!”
The nuclear feasibility question has been asked many times but still goes without response. It is now clear that certain proponents of nuclear energy in Australia are in haste to construct many sentences, but no nukes.
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Adam Smith @ 506/507
Thank you for responding Adam. Too tired to respond tonight in detail but there are quite a few points worth discussing further, such as subsidies and bureaucracies. However, as a general comment: With the current governments in power round the world and the absolutely massive amounts of financial investments in “renewables” from financiers of various descriptions, Pension Funds of a vast array of vested interest organisations, such as Churches, Government bodies including the BBC, Unions etc.,etc., I think you are living in your own land of “wishful thinking.”
Oddly perhaps, I share some of that wishful thinking but for far different reasons than you.
BTW. I do not support the policies of either party in regards to the AGW fraud. IMO the Liberals have tied their hands behind their backs by supporting any action at all on what is a non-problem and which will be proved to be so within a few short years.
There will be many days to come when people of the world will rue the fact that based on the flimsiest of ideologically motivated “computer-modelled virtual reality” guesses, so much money was wasted on the idiotic and unachievable quest to either control or contain the Earth’s naturally variable chaotic climate and/or temperature, rather than spending it on preparation for future natural catastrophes that we know from history will occur again and again, no matter what the cause.
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Well you have answered your own question really.
The carbon price comes in and very quickly makes it uneconomic to run brown coal power stations. Thus they scramble to take up the government offer to close down. This then creates pressure on generation where Victoria needs power from other states, but the cost of that power rises quickly along with permit prices.
At the same time various solar and wind projects get off the ground, but the problem comes back to insufficient baseload, which just makes nuclear more and more attractive, and the political downside less and less persuasive.
Ergo, nuclear becomes a reality faster than it would’ve without a carbon price.
The best existing direct action abatement policies cost $45 per tonne, yet the ETS will start at half that price.
So at the very least, the coalition’s policy will cost the economy double whatever the ETS will cost.
The Government’s ETS isn’t not core. if it was they wouldn’t be putting it to parliament. And once it starts up it would cost tens of billions to shut down, because the companies buy permits which become their property and could only be taken off them by first paying out compensation.
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What an absurd thing to write. Of course dictators are bad, because they have no moral authority to make decisions on behalf of anyone else, because they don’t have a valid reason for being in the position they are in.
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Uh, Adam; Perhaps you have forgotten where you are posting. The blatant claim above is precisely what is challenged in this blog. The proponents of the view that “we are worse off because more carbon [dioxide] has been put into the atmosphere”, have totally failed to substantiate that claim with facts, and are thus reduced to pathetic arguments from authority that depend on the claim that government-funded climate scientists are some kind of intellectual and ethical supermen. That claim also founders on the facts.
Thus, there is currently no justification for your assumption that governments should intervene in energy markets for the purpose of minimizing CO2 release.
The fact that this intervention will not result in reduced CO2 emissions (since Australia continues to export most of its coal to China) just illustrates how fraudulent the entire thing is. The most obvious conclusion is that it is just a political power grab.
*******************************
This may not be welcome, but I must warn my Australian friends that the Australian government appears to be moving toward tyranny. It has already taken your guns — an action that our founder, Thomas Jefferson, would have seen as extremely dire — and now it seems to be moving toward total control of the population. Beware.
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To Reed Coray @ 1, PaulM @ 40 and various others.
On the subject of aliens visiting Earth, it seems they already have. Apparently they were here in the 1970’s.
The gist is that representatives of The Culture (an advanced, post-scarcity society) arrive on Earth and try to decide what to to with us. There is a split decision on whether to save/improve us (presumably before introducing us into the galactic community) or just wiping us out to put us out of our misery. In the end they decide…
well if you’re interested. The book is The State Of The Art by Ian M. Banks (ISBN 0-356-19669-0) or wikipedia has a slightly longer synopsis at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_State_of_the_Art
Cheers.
NicG.
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Oh sorry, I didn’t realise that there is a sort of censorship / group think mentality where people simply aren’t allowed to put forward certain propositions.
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I see you conveniently still can’t read.
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No, it is not absurd. Morality is very subjective, and I stay away from it in discussions. I wrote objectively. Dictators are not in and of themselves bad. it is how they rule that determines if they rule well, or badly. You are trying to interject a different subject into the discussion. Morality. I did not speak of it, only said that dictators come in many names.
Stop creating strawmen out of nothing. You are wrong.
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You did not respond to the quote. No one STOPPED you from posting, or thinking what you will. A poster merely pointed out the subject of the blog. Another strawman, and another irrelevant response on your part.
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The subject was closure of Hazelwood and Loy Yang. In talking of “non-core” promises, I was clearly responding to your own earlier comment:
Trust me, we are well aware that an ETS is a core promise of Labor and the Greens…and a core aspiration of too many Libs.
You quite often quote text without responding to the text quoted. This gives the appearance of analysis without the substance. I’m not at all hostile toward you, and I appreciate many of your comments in defense of convention and tradition re the Constitution. But your particular method of quoting comes across as a stunt.
As to your belief that nukes will become more attractive, I don’t doubt it. With pre-paid fines/price/ETS on CO2 burdening and then crippling nearly all of Victoria’s power output, I do not doubt it at all. Burning your granny’s rosary beads will be attractive under those conditions.
As to the feasibility and timing of those nukes…well, I’m starting to sound like a broken record, aren’t I?
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Adam Smith: @517
Censorship? Group think? The only censorship to transpire, is that which one imposes on himself/herself. Case in point:
You choose not to refute BobC claims of @515!
You choose not to refute any of TonyfromOz posts!
You choose not to refute PhilJourdan contentions of Australia’s government interworkings!
Stop censoring yourself Adam Smith! If however, you thirst for true censorship and monolithic group think may I suggest SkepticalScience.
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Quadrant has published their “Intelligent Voter’s Guide to Global Warming”
http://www.quadrant.org.au/Intelligent%20Voters%20Guide.pdf
At first glance it would seem to be no competition to our generous host’s own Skeptic Guide. Here’s why:
* No tables or graphs of relevant data.
* No references to their sources of facts and figures, yep, none at all.
* The lead author bills himself as “a poet”, which in practical terms is unlikely to inspire public trust in this messenger even if every part of his message is true.
These objections are more about style than substance, but they will reduce the document’s ability to convert the great unwashed (for whom arguably this document is not intended).
Once you push past the terse format you will find most of the essential points are covered quite well and in depth, including a bit of history behind the scam. With the new Afterword it’s also up-to-date regarding Svensmark theory. Add this to the barrage of available documents when debating fence-sitters. For the patient reader virtually no stone is left unturned.
Quirky fact: One of the co-authors is the chairman of Citigroup. Would be interesting to see how this can be reconciled with the hypothesis that all the banksters are keen to cash in on carbon trading, wherein Citibank would be a usual suspect.
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Of course, Adam, you can put forward any proposition you like. If, however, you make a blatant assertion (without supporting argument) of something that has been, in excruciating detail shown to be false, then you simply expose yourself as an idiot.
By all means — don’t censor yourself: Keep acting like an idiot.
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Julia Gillard Victory Speech 7th Sep 2010
http://youtube.com/watch?v=88ykZQnJLKO
“This government will be held to the highest standards of transparency.”
“This government will be held more accountable.”
“This government has one purpose – to serve the Australian people.”
“So let’s draw back the curtains and let the Sun shine in.”
O happy days!
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Jo, according to the Bolta on MTR this morning, bloggers such as yourself could find yourself caught up in the media
censorshipenquiry. This smacks to me of the proposal to censure the Internet. It’s exactly the same thing. “The ALP/Greens know what’s best for you to know…”00
YES THEY ARE, because they have no authority to make decisions on behalf of other people.
It is the very fact that our heads of government are elected through democratic processes that gives them the right to exercise powers on our behalf within strict limits and for a limited period of time. Dictators are under no such pressures and therefore have no right to make decisions on behalf of others.
I am completely astonished that you are defending dictatorships as an acceptable system of government! You’ve basically tied yourself in a giant knot and now have lost all sense of right and wrong.
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FireFighters for 911 Truth.org – Finally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxGB2YoGV-I
Finally, a Seattle FireFighter Eric Lawyer, for truth group for Fire Fighters to stand up and join. No longer silent, while the pieces of their fellow NY Fire Dept. firefighters lay buried in the landfill without dignity or proper burial.
Thanks to the Architects for Truth. The Science is finally proving that 911 was in fact an inside job,
not made up by Conspiracy “nuts”, but here Eric Lawyer states flatly that the Book for Forensic preservation of evidence from a crime scene was blatantly ignored. True. But no one better than a FireFighter familiar with the “book” to say so. Willie Rodriquez was erased from the fraudulent Federally tainted so called 911 investigation, Prof. Jones thermate evidence ignored, Key witnesses were scene being thrown out for trying to testify.
BUSH & Cheney and Rumsfelt got their Rubber stamp Congress to pass a law, that they can NOT be indicted if torture, or anything illegal they did should be later found to be a crime. What greater admission of guilt need we? WE THE PEOPLE, should expect another type 911 event and soon, now that Eric Lawyer and the Architects & engineers for 911 truth have scientifically proved that planes did NOT take down two of the three World Trade Center buildings.
FACT is 47 story 7WTC bldg also came down 6 hours later and NO PLANE hit it at all. But the video of that 3rd bldg which Silverstein ordered “Pulled” by demolition charges was NEVER broadcast on West Coast, and ran only once in N.Y.C. by BBC & NBC which called it about 22 minutes before it actually came down…. supposedly from small fires, which never EVER happened before to a steel frame and concrete building, and in only 6 hours of small fires, later on Sept. 11, 2001. No ONE on West Coast Saw that, because CNN & FOX & the rest CENSORED it.
The Media was in on the demolition job, as proved by BBC Jane S. announcing it “has fallen” when it was clearly still standing behind her. Did her London based que get confused because of the hour switch in Time Americans do every Sept. but they don’t do in London? Ooops? SNAFU. now the coverup. I spoke to an educated medical doctor, today, Mar. 1, 2010, and he STILL had not heard that 3 buildings at WTC came down.
Even tonight, he is probably thinking, he mis-understood, or that I am just “nuts”… I looked at my 6 hours of Video VHS tape last week, and no where on all the channels that ran 9-11 coverage in 2001 … not one on my Central Coast of California showed 7WTC 47 story building coming down. Just the twin towers , over and over and OVER ab nauseum. Shock and AWE. Now it is time to have a REAL Investigation… with subpoena and Contempt Powers. Go See: “Arrest of George W. Bush,soon” and positively pray for justice and TRUTH…. finally.
Then go read: FireFightersFor911Truth.org
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1) I think you meant censor instead of censure
2) The internet is already regulated. All the same defamation laws that apply to print and broadcast media also apply to the internet. It is the responsibility of moderators of sites like this one to ensure that defamatory comments are removed.
[NO! it is the responsibility of the poster to self edit-that means NOT posting defamatory comments. The poster owns his or her posts.] ED
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The enquiry into the media is a Greens’ event courtesy of the spite, ego and loathing of Brown. In a perverse way it is grist to the mill for anti-green people [which would include every reasonable minded person] since every manifestation of the real nature of the green psychology will turn more normal people aginst them.
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What I find really odd here is that at sites like this, when there people are looking for answers, questions get asked.
In the main, those who have some knowledge about those questions then either reply to the questions, or go looking for the answer, and then reply, and do so in some detail, so readers get as full a picture as they can.
It seems that does not apply to our good friend Doctor Smith.
He won’t answer questions directed at him, but just says that the question is irrelevant, or does not require an answer, because the questioner lost the argument somehow.
When asked to address things that everyone would like to know HIS answer to, he just changes the subject, does not even bother to find any REAL information, and just stays on HIS own message.
THAT is not the debate you so frequently claim to want to engage in Doctor.
Where are your answers?
Tony.
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Adam Smith,
I have started to feel very sorry for you.
You are trying to argue for something that is all about intellectual/financial mumbo jumbo and ‘sleight of hand’ economics and wondering why there are so many who are laughing at you.
Even though I know you’re likely to highlight some of these comments out of context and then give me a lecture on ‘engagement’, I am going to state the problem very simply.
The carbon tax….onto an ETS scheme is based on a false assumption and is intending to force a market on a valueless product.
So just so you can highlight what you won’t like about this….let me help you.
Point one:
The false assumption is that governments and bureaucracies can control the climate/weather if they could interfere in the fossil fuel market/trade and the production of energy.
That is not just a false assumption BTW, I would call that an extraordinary conceit to believe that a bureaucracy can manage the climate.
And point 2:
In all political speeches at the moment, CO2 is called carbon POLLUTION.
Would you like to buy some pollution folks?
The only way anyone is going to buy pollution is if the the Govt attaches some ‘paper’ value to it via grants and subsides. Despite your assertion otherwise, that will be coming directly and indirectly from the taxpayer and NOT just the ‘big polluters’ as we’re being told endlessly.
And finally, these ‘big polluters’ when you look them up are actually the people who supply power to your home, supply the materials to put a roof over your head and bring food to your table.
A little dose of actual reality would be very welcome from you Adam!
We’re laughing at you because you seem to have come from another planet which believes that reality and common sense has nothing to do with it!!!!!
That’s essentially why you have repeatedly failed to answer the very specific question that everyone has been politley asking you.
How will this fabulous theory of yours actually work in practice?
And don’t forget now….a large % of us agree that Nuclear power is a good idea.
So that answer that you keep giving is entirely irrelevant to the point I am making here and does not answer the actual question.
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TonyfromOz, the frustrations are many, but the debate which posters like Dr. Adam Smith stir up can often generate much solid info. Your postings on power and the practicalities of energy policy have been of great value. Just to be reminded of the scale of brown coal in Victoria – not far off 100% of its power – gives one a jolt when viewed along side Green objectives. Your comparisons and numbers on such subjects, and on the subjects of the alternative energies, are well worth filing away. They have, in fact, been filed away.
The ease with which intellectuals still feel they can bring about change with their Big Levers, irrespective of on-the-ground consequences, shows that the lessons of the last century have still not been learned. The fact that this Big Lever collectivism has been spiced and flavoured with notions of classical liberalism to make us all swallow like good children is something we should take as compliment.
By the way, if anyone wants to cut and paste in order to quote something I’ve just said, please be attentive to the words quoted and respond to those words. One should not use others’ comments as mere decor for one’s own opinionating.
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Not sound ethnocentric, but here in the US our leader (The One) promised transparency, accountability, etc. you know, all the small stuff. And, AND upon winning the
SocialistDemocrat nomination for president he declared:“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
So obviously,
“Global Warming”“Climate Change” is no more…all is good. Cancel the carbon tax scheme, Barry righted the wrong, leveled the playing field, castigated the wicked and bestowed Environmental Justice to the world.00
Adam Smith @ 506
I apologise for my lack of formating skills (even the ‘blue” has stopped working for me).
“Nuclear costs slightly more than the most efficient coal power stations” Agreed
“The carbon price makes fossil fuels far more expensive than nuclear.” Agreed
“Solar and wind will remain very expensive and not viable baseload options.” Agreed – with the rider added: no matter how heavily subsidised!
“Which political party and /or which current politician do you see as having the courage to even try to legislate for the use of nuclear?
Well, short answer none.” Agreed
It is not the cost of nuclear stopping that option for Australia, IMO it’s the disproportionate Green dictatorship of all things environmental which has frightened a noisy irrational minority of a gullible population and consequently has paralysed timid politicians of all persuasions. Much the same applies to coal. Yet we continue and will continue to export our vast natural resources of both for others to use! Now, the Government proposes we should be forced to spend our money in dodgy rort-ridden “carbon credit” markets overseas to allow us to use our own resources!
Bringing forward nuclear is not on the radar of the present Labor/Green Government and never will be in the foreseeable future so IMO, linking it to imposition of the “carbon price” is neither a realistic nor valid argument in this context.
“If Australia doesn’t have a price on carbon, then in a decade or so Australia will be subject to carbon tariffs.”
That may be, but is a matter of opinion dependent upon not only climatic conditions, but on atttudes of the UN and world governments remaining the same.
In my opinion, even without the period of global cooling that most reliable scientific and lay observations indicate is approaching, within a decade people will have suffered so much both physically and financially under the vicissitudes of imposed Green “Renewable Energies” regimes that they will have demanded a return to sanity and reliable energy generation.
“Um, what subsidies? We are adopting a carbon price so that we can end the wasteful round of subsidies.”
What do you call the money being showered on projects involving wind, solar, hot rocks etc.,etc.?
“you’d need a bureaucracy that would make Vladimir Lenin blush.”
Adam. Check the expenditure on the various bureaucracies and associated government-favoured AGW believing organisations furthering “the message”, since the original “Departments of Climate Change” were set up by Federal and State governments, together with the number of new bureaucracies being set up to “administer” (and based on this government’s history, I use that term very loosely) this most complex economic upheaval. I think Vladimir Lenin would have already blushed himself scarlet!
On a personal note, in my relatively long life (in human terms) I have lived through many of these environmental and weather scare campaigns, including the A-bomb and H-bomb testings of the late forties onwards. I can even remember my dear old Dad telling me of the time when “weird weather” was blamed on those “new-fangled horseless carriages”. What I have always found is that as history shows us, Nature just keeps on going doing it’s own thing irrespective of whatever temporary insignificant effect any particular species may have locally. The evidence greets us every day. The Sun warms, the clouds generally cool, the oceans store, shift and release that stored heat as required to keep this planet liveable for all animal and plant species that are current inhabitants. And of course, CO2 can quite confidently be described as an essential and very necessary part of the lifeblood enabling all those inhabitants to survive!
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I see NASA is building a rocket to take us to Mars and beyond and the princely sum of US$ 16 billion, remind me again how much are we spending to bury some glass to every home?
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I come to blogs like these to learn things.
I’m not ‘full bottle’ on the Science so I learn viewpoints on that here, and at other places.
I do have something to give in reply, some expertise in electrical power generation, and when asked questions, I will reply to the best of what I have available.
I don’t contribute here to see my name on the comments. If I wanted to do that I need go no further than the Large Blog where I am the Editor, and look at any of the now nearing 900 Posts in my name over the last three and a half years.
Here, I also learn from others, and it’s become easy to pick out the people who don’t know anything on the subject where I have that knowledge.
One of those is obviously Doctor Smith.
People will read what he Posts in his comments, and may be swayed to think that he might have a point.
Let’s then look at one of his earlier Comments at 462 where he says:
This shows his absolute ignorance on electrical power generation.
He thinks of it as a ‘Command Economy’ where it is dictated how soon plants he wants closed, Hazelwood’ will be replaced.
As I explained in Comments 482 and 483, it has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘Command Economy’. That’s how long it takes to actually construct new power plants, seven to ten years if everything goes right.
Then he goes on to say in Comment 503:
He waves his piece of paper around thinking that of itself will drive Hazelwood to the wall.
Doctor Smith’s Labor colleagues in Victoria sold off Hazelwood for the sum of $2.35 Billion, achieving this with the certainty of a binding contract to supply electricity until the mid 2030’s to recover that amount.
Just from the sale of electricity alone, 12,500GWH per year, that amount comes to a tick under $10 Billion.
They won’t be asking that much, because as I have already explained, that amount takes numerous things into account, but a figure of at least $2 Billion is not out of the question, as a minimum.
Just waving around a piece of paper and calling Hazelwood operators moneygrubbing vampires sucking up what they don’t deserve may be okay for Doctor Smith, but it seems his piece of paper is the justification he will use to go back on a deal his Labor colleagues themselves struck in all fairness.
Doctor Smith’s colleague Peter Garret may indeed have got it correct when he said … “no matter, when we get in, we’ll just change it all.”
Ping, Doctor Smith. Your piece of paper closes down Hazelwood.
Ping, Doctor Smith. Victoria goes into the dark.
Ping, Doctor Smith. They won’t be getting power from surrounding States. They also are almost tapped out themselves, due solely to your Labor State Colleagues not constructing new plants, selling off existing plants, and then not allowing them to replace those aging plants.
Ping, Doctor Smith. There are no current plans to replace the power Hazelwood provides.
Ping, Doctor Smith. Why should you worry if vast numbers of people go without electrical power. You have your piece of paper.
Doctor Smith, your quoted years are not a ‘Command Economy’. They are the facts on the time it will take for constructing new power plants.
Read the Posts Doctor Smith.
Don’t wave your piece of paper at us and tell us that will provide.
Tony.
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@Adam Smith says…
Hi Adam.
Who or what will impose tariffs on Oz?
What will these tariffs be?
How much will these tariffs cost?
Under what (global?) law to which Australia may be a signatory to, will these tariffs be imposed?
Considering that our major trading partners are China + Asia, are you suggesting China + Asia will impose tariffs on our exports? China will impose tariffs on the coal and iron ore it imports from us?
To whom will these tariffs be paid to?
You’d be aware that the EU has proposed charging tariffs on international flights. How is that going?
What are the consequences if Oz decides not to pay?
How did you determine that these tariffs will be a massive shock to our economy?
thnx in advance
p.s. last time I posed a polite query to you, your reply was offensive. Lets hope your civility has returned.
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Keith H @ 535
Hear hear!
It is such a shame that the Adam Smiths of this world are so intent on repeating mistakes instead of learning from them.
Of course anyone who has been around for a while or who has bothered to study history (as opposed to political history) knows perfectly well that this scam has been tried many times over in many places around the world.
Their excuse this time is that they need to control the weather and protect the environment.
Same book, different page.
We are in the process of watching a senseless, shameful and profligate waste of human ingenuity and even worse, Australia’s rich natural resources.
Keep speaking up everyone, it is essential that sanity prevails.
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Baa Humbug #538:
Further, I note that China is on record as stating that they will not tolerate any oversight of their economy for emissions from any body.
Invasion of China anyone? Nah, didn’t think so.
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“……As if his overwhelming Obama Care regulations (including a 3.8% tax on the sale of your home) were not enough it was reported on television this morning that Obama’s Czars are creating 10 (ten) new regulations on business EVER SINGLE DAY. Our country is being destroyed right before your eyes. While his Majesty is constantly on T.V. saying one thing he is busy doing exactly the opposite as ordered by the New World Order/Illuminati/One World Government he works for. With Bush Senior having announced the NWO nearly 20 years ago and various “Proofs” having been reported to you in these updates it is my best guess that OBAMA was APPOINTED PRESIDENT of THE WORLD which would explain his many ‘I am God’ declarations which began with his ‘discovery’ of his likeness (big ears) carved into the interior walls of the pyramids. Remember? How easily the people forget. No wonder the Politicians think they can get away with anything. And everything.
The Swiss, the Euro, Brazil, Japan, The Philippines, the world’s currencies are engaged in a WAR, a race to the bottom, a race to devalue, a race caused by the incompetence and corruption of Western Banks, their Puppet Politicians, and the FED. In a desperate attempt to keep asset prices fraudulently pumped up so as to hide the coming consequences of their policies they are destroying ‘Savers’, specifically the elderly, and wiping out all hope of ‘Capital Formation’ which is the heart and soul of ‘Capitalism’. They are intentionally destroying all that made America great after which they will scream “Capitalism failed us, time to try Communism”. The NWO is being implemented at break neck speed right before your eyes and half our people remain completely blind to it…….”
http://www.truthwinds.com/siterun_data/nesara/news/news.php?q=1315895625
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US Energy Department panel endorses shale fracking, suggests pumping ground with millions of gallons of chemical water will help save the environment.
“(NaturalNews) Hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” for the purpose of extracting natural gas from the earth involves flooding it with millions of gallons of chemical-laden water, a practice that by all estimates is damaging the environment to some extent.
But a US Energy Department (ED) advisory panel, which happens to be padded with members connected to the natural gas industry, insists that fracking is safe, and even contends that it will help to lower the carbon dioxide emissions allegedly responsible for so-called climate change.
A recent report in The Washington Post (WP) explains the ED panel’s notion that, despite continual outcry over fracking operations polluting rivers and groundwater supplies, natural gas fracking can safely continue as long as fracking companies agree to be more open about their actions, and comply with monitoring requirements that track environmental impact and make this information publicly available.
But in an industry that is already knowingly hiding the truth about its polluting activities — and secretly dumping its toxic waste directly into the environment, for instance — it is naive for ED committee members to purport that simply telling drilling companies to be more forthcoming is going to have a substantially beneficial impact.
Fracking, no matter how closely monitored, pollutes the environment in devastating ways.
In order to release oil and gas from shale rock deep underground, giant machines must force large amounts of water, sand, chemicals, and radioactive elements deep into the earth’s upper crust in order to crack the rock that potentially holds this valuable fuel. But in the process, the resultant radioactive chemical cocktail seeps into water tables, wells, rivers, and lakes, as well as the various drinking water supplies to which these sources are fed.
Even if the fracking industry suddenly decides to be more open and honest about the fact that drilling fluids are severely contaminating soil and water, the only thing that will change is that now everyone will be aware of it.
Thanks to an energy bill passed by Congress back in 2005 that exempts the natural gas drilling industry from having to comply with the US Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), fracking operations are free to pollute as much as they please — they just might have to disclose this fact at some point in the future.
The Shale Gas Subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SGS) which put out the recent report endorsing fracking does not even address this SDWA exemption. As a result, its recommendations are meaningless in all practical terms, as they will do absolutely nothing to stop the tide of environmental pollution being spewed by the fracking industry.
Current water purification techniques are unable to capture methane and radon, for instance, both of which come from fracking. Consequently, drinking water supplies throughout Pennsylvania, which is a fracking hot spot due to its location in the Marcellus Shale Formation region, are becoming increasingly toxic with no end in sight.
So as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues its ongoing investigation into the environmental impacts of fracking, the SGS committee comes along and makes a few useless recommendations that it says will address the problems with fracking, but that in reality will do absolutely nothing to solve them.
At least six SGS committee members have ties to the natural gas industry
The mindless recommendations made by SGS in support of the fracking industry make a lot more sense, however, in light of the industries to which many of its members are connected. According to a recent report issued by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), at least six SGS committee members are known to have connections to the oil and gas industries.
Signed by 28 scientists from 22 universities and institutions in 13 states, all of whom object to the SGS panel’s recommendations, the EWG report explains that Chairman John Deutch, Stephen Holditch, Kathleen McGinty, Susan Tierney, Daniel Yergin, and Mark Zoback all have financial ties to the oil and gas industries, a blatant conflict of interest for a committee that is supposed to offer unbiased counsel to the ED.
SGS Chairman John Deutch, for instance, currently serves on the board of the natural gas firm Cheniere Energy. According to the WP, Deutch was paid more than $1.4 million by both Cheniere and Schlumberger, another oil and gas firm, between 2006 and 2009. And Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who was appointed directly by President Obama, chose Deutch for the SGS Chairman position knowing full well his connections to the oil and gas industries.
So just like the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is filled with officials connected to the pharmaceutical industry, and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is filled with officials connected to the biotechnology industry, the Energy Department, is filled with officials connected to the oil and gas industries.
And so it goes in the “land of the free,” where special interests run the government and its powerful regulatory agencies. Driven by greed and an insatiable lust for power, corporate snakes have quietly infiltrated the very agencies that were designed to protect the interests of the people, and have restructured them to serve corporate interests instead.
Sources for this story include:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio…
http://www.naturalnews.com/z033464_shale_fracking_environment.html
Aug. 30, 2011
http://www.truthwinds.com/siterun_data/environment/pollution/news.php?q=1314813895
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This is not an accurate summary of how Australian defamation laws apply to the internet.
The moderator of a website can be sued for defamation simply by leaving defamatory comments on a forum or website that they own (i.e. that they allowed to be published). They do not need to be the author of the comments themselves.
Here is a site that explains how defamation applies to the internet:
http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Censor/defamation.html#defendant
If you don’t believe me, by all means seek legal advice. But another lawyer will tell you exactly what I have said. You can be sued for defamatory comments made by others, because you are publishing them.
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China is starting up 6 trial ETSs in the middle of next year, which will cover about 200 million people and which has an economic output larger than Australia’s.
The Chinese aren’t idiots, they know that a market mechanism will acheive the least cost abatement.
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Countries that have imposed a carbon price.
Taxes on Australian exports, thus inflating the cost of our exports relative to other countries.
They will cost our economy billions of dollars every year.
The World Trade Organisation has already started consideration on carbon tariffs which countries will be able to impose without breaching their WTO trade obligations.
Yes. Not within the next few years, but perhaps within ten or so. Let’s put this in context. China will start a carbon price in some provinces next year, Japan is set to follow in half a dozen years time. Those are our two biggest export markets.
They will be like all tariffs. A tax on imports.
Yes, but that is simply part of their ETS.
How can Australians decide not to pay this fee? Do you honestly thing people will go back to sailing to England?
Because they will dramatically increase the cost of our exports so our exports won’t be as competitive as the same products from other countries.
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debbie
Even if you don’t think atmospheric carbon pollution is a problem, doesn’t it make sense for Australia to use our fossil fuels as efficiently as possible?
If we are going to burn coal to produce electricity, shouldn’t we get the absolute most energy out of each unit of coal so we don’t use up our coal as quickly?
Isn’t it only fair that the current generation conserve fossil fuels and use them as efficiently as possible so they are available to be used for future generations?
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Adam @ above
You have offered nothing except
to all questions.
All the other contributors (incuding Gee Aye) have at least included some fact within their replies!
An example is your reply to the question To whom will these tariffs be paid to?
Your reply They will be like all tariffs. A tax on imports
Useless answers Adam!
Getting Chilly – have to go!
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@Adam Smith
Thnx Adam. I just woke up and am preparing to go to work. Will respond when I get back.
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Dave… thanks for including me. I am not actually aspiring to meet anyone else’s aspirations for this web log but I am glad to have contributed. You should know that Dr Adam and Dr Gee are from different sides of the political spectrum, just in case I have been ambiguous (to some at least) in the past.
I respect your honesty and that of the esteemed figure from history in the discussion above.
I do wonder though if you included me because you believe there is a global conspiracy to cover up events like 9-11 and you think that people who don’t believe in this conspiracy are somehow aligned with Adam Smith?
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Dave,
PS with regards to cut and paste are you rewarding Kevin Moore’s efforts with a thumbs up?
I mean I could replicate his posts with a similar cut and paste effort.
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Gee Aye 549 & 550
I have no interest in the 9-11 conspiracy!
I do not thumbs up or thumbs down!
I have not included a reference to an esteemed figure from history above!
I agree with Adam Smith only on his positive response to Nuclear Energy!
I disagree with Adam Smith on all his other methods of supplying power to Australians!
I do enjoy learning each and every day from reading different opinions!
I am worried why this Tax is imposed to reduce global temperature!
I am worried why they (Combet) call it a
This site is one of the most open discussion forums available.
You are normally less influenced by personnel attacks than by scientific arguement!
That was the reason for my statement above.
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She really said that? That is exactly what Obama said (substituting American for Australian) – and of course we know that the opposite is what we got. Are all progressives complete liars?
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That is a subjective view. You do not KNOW they do not have the authority. The Queen has the authority by virtue of the people believing in her right to be queen. Yet she is a dictator based upon the strictest definition. Again, I am not going to get into a morality discussion. Stick to the facts. You are off on your scarecrow hunt again, and I will not follow.
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Australia is more likely to develop nuclear energy projects with a carbon price than without because a carbon price makes nuclear cheaper than all the other viable baseload alternatives.
If you support nuclear energy you should support the carbon price even if you don’t think it will do anything to reduce CO2 emissions.
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Strawman! Please show me where I am defending (or for that matter attacking) dictatorships. I merely commented on an observation. You merely lied.
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thanks Dave… personal attacks are just silly, although there are some characters who I’d like to…
Not sure why referencing esteemed figures is a problem; If you think it is relevant cite them. Live or die by the citation.
I too have no interest in the 9-11 conspiracy per se. I find it interesting how people think and I am still learning about how people relate to the internet. As an adult of long standing, including the years before the internet, I’ve had many conversations – sometimes in pubs and sometimes more publicly, including discussions and disagreements with people with whom I agree or disagree but this has not fully prepared me for the discourse in the online environment. Something like 911 is great because many features of science vs non science debates are clear and obvious. It is very interesting to observe.
This sounds like I think I am better/smarter than them but I to me it is all about being engaged by new things that make me think about human behaviour. I don’t really have any idea if I am right or wrong.
Actually none of the posters here or anywhere know they are right… they just think they do.
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Thank god America has freedom of speech! The speaker can be sued, but those reporting what the speaker said (which by the definition of Australian law is anyone reproducing it) cannot be.
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there might have been a sentence or two in my post above that are not actually sentences.
Sleep.
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They don’t have authority because they weren’t elected using a democratic process.
You’ll never win this argument. I will never, ever agree with you that a dictatorship may in some circumstances be an acceptable form of government. I am astonished that anyone who cares about democracy or liberty could credibly argue otherwise.
This is absolutely untrue. The Queen is the Queen because of an ancient belief that she is appointed by divine right.
Well, I and many others disagree with that absurd assertion. Your country was founded on the idea that sovereignty should be invested in a nation’s populace. One of your former presidents summarised this by saying that the government should be of, for, and by the people. Well that is a sentiment that I strongly agree with so I reject out of hand your silly assertions that dictators or even unelected nobles should hold their positions without periodically facing democratic election.
Which is why monarchy’s and even constitutional monarchies are an anachronistic and outdated system of government. On this one you should show some patriotism and be proud of the fact you have a far more rational system of government.
Well you’re clearly on the wacky side of the argument because you have found yourself defending the right of dictatorships be they divine or otherwise.
I will never support dictatorships, they are morally wrong because a dictator simply doesn’t have the authority to make decisions on behalf of others because they weren’t elected to do so.
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Dave… oh yeah I meant the “Adam Smith” was an esteemed political figure.
Not following what I initiated here… definitely sleep time
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Well, rather than thanking god, thank your congress that the U.S. has a broad protection for freedom of speech in the Constitution because ultimately it is the people that were elected to the congress that put it in the first amendment.
Thank you for agreeing with me that Joanne’s understanding of Australian defamation law is woefully misguided and potentially very dangerous to the existence of this forum.
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Strawman! I already won it. You are arguing against a straw man that I will not partake in. Again, I am not arguing any type of “moral”. I pointed out that dicators can rule well or ill. you jumped on the moral authority bandwagon. So argue with yourself.
Right, and her army keeps the populace in check. Again, you are barking up the wrong tree. The Emperor of japan is divine. The Royals of England never were.
Strawman! As I said, I am not defending anyone or anything. I am commenting on facts. You apparently do not know the difference.
But please continue! I would love to see how many scarecrows you can cram into one posting! I think 4 is your highest total so far. I am sure you can beat that!
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Adan Smith?
Why?
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Ignorance alert! Congress has nothing to do with it. It is called the Constitution. Congress did not pass the first amendment. The states did. It was part of the document that was ratified by the 13 colonies before the first congress was in place! It had to be. It was the basis of their election.
Strawman! I did not agree with you. I merely noted a difference in your interpretation and American law.
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Wrong. They have no authority to make any decisions, so saying they can rule well is a contradiction in terms. Again you are ultimately proposing that some dictatorships are good, which is an affront to basic principles of liberty and democracy which says people should have a say in how they are governed.
You have this terrible habit of just stating things that are flat out untrue. Queen Elizabeth II’s full title is the following:
I draw your attention in particular to the part “by the grace of god”.
Yes that’s right, the Queen is supposedly appointed by God, and certainly isn’t appointed by the people!
I also draw your attention to the part “defender of the faith”, which relates to the fact the Queen of England is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, who according to the hierarchy of the Church of England, is above even the Archbishop of Canterbury (kind of like the C of E’s version of the Pope), which means the Queen is effectively between god and the good old archbishop.
Now how you go from this state of affairs to saying that the Queen isn’t considered to be divinely appointed, I have absolutely no idea.
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[Ignorance alert! Congress has nothing to do with it. It is called the Constitution. Congress did not pass the first amendment. The states did. ]
Oh ffs mate, I can’t believe I need to tell you the history of the bill of rights.
The bill of rights was an act of the U.S. congress passed in 1789. It then came into effect (i.e. became part of the constitution) when it had been ratified by 3/4 of the states, which happened in 1791.
What on earth are you going on about, the constitution came into effect in 1788. The reason the first amendment is called the first amendment is because it was the first amendment to the constitution that had been ratified the year before!
You’re pretty good at digging holes for yourself.
Oh, so you were being irrelevant as American law has nothing to do with Australian defamation law.
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Because the carbon price makes nuclear the cheapest viable baseload source of electricity.
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I think Dr Adam is disingenuous with his advocacy of nuclear, knowing as he does that his fellow travellers on the AGW bandwagon would never allow it. So, he can appear reasonable by advocating the only viable alternative to the boon of fossils while knowing it will never eventuate while ever the AGW loons hold sway.
In your didactic pronouncements at 543, Dr Adam, about defamation do you mean to say that the primary source of anything defamatory is not responsible for their words while the publisher carries the entire burden of liability?
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Adam Smith,
this is me laughing 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
You need to return to planet reality!
What on earth were you trying to do by asking me rhetorical questions that had absolutely nothing to do with my comment?
🙂 🙂 🙂 :
ROFL
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You are again creating a strawman that I am not arguing. Dictators rule. I have not said whether they rule through any moral right or not. So you again are changing the subject and you can argue all you want with yourself.
I made no statement, true or not. I used sarcasm to show you are wrong. “by the grace of god” is not divine. Learn English.
Grace is not appointed.
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learn english.
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Dr. Adim S. (I’m using incomplete names now so that I can’t possibly be sued for defamation) Should better educate himself. The Declaration of Independence says:
Therefore it is perfectly correct to thank God.
Adim S. says, with regard to a government by and for the people, “that is a sentiment that I strongly agree”. That is good because the Declaration of Independence goes on to say:
But however unpopular the carbon tax is, I hear Adim S. say a lot about how people should “get over it” “it is going to happen” “move on”*
That doesn’t sound like the DEMOCRACY HE ESPOUSES
*(paraphrasing so don’t sue me)
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are. ~ H.L. Mencken
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Good Point Mark D,
We are most certainly being ‘dictated to’ as far as the Carbon Tax (and the implementation of the false economy ETS) is concerned.
Our present Govt and our present Mr Smith seem to have completely blurred the definitions of ‘democracry’ and a ‘dictatorship’.
His ‘get over it it’s going to happen anyway whether you like it or not’ clearly demonstrates that.
He seems to also think that the current Govt has been given a mandate to interfere in places that no Australian Govt has assumed to tread before.
A lot of assumptions are being made here.
I would put that on the ‘dictatorship’ side of this blurred definition.
It would be easy to find out for sure and kill off this whole damaging, obsessive and expensive debate.
Hold an election!
If they are returned then they have been given the mandate to continue with this obsession with the climate/weather and the evil pollutant CO2.
If they’re so sure they’re right….what is their problem?
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Excuse me? Support for nuclear power and cutting carbon emissions are not mutually exclusive. A draw your attention, for example, to the very excellent blog Brave New Climate written by Professor Barry Brook:
http://bravenewclimate.com/
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No I did not make this claim at all. I simply pointed out that BOTH the person who writes the comment AND the publisher, in this case the person who runs this website, can BOTH be sued for defamation.
Joanne’s assertion that it is the responsibility of posters to not post defamatory comments is not enough to insulate her and this site from defamation action. She has a responsibility as the publisher of this site to ensure that any potentially defamatory comments are taken down ASAP.
Now you make think that such laws are unfair, but that is the law as it currently stands. Stating in court something like “I shouldn’t be sued because I didn’t write the comment, I simply allowed it to be published” is not a defense against defamation in Australia.
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Well, gee instead of writing childish nonsense is it so much to ask for you to actually engage with my points?
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[learn english.]
Dear oh dear Phil, that very quote that you cut and pasted points out how you are wrong. In fact, it is the very first clause:
How could the congress sit if the constitution hadn’t first been adopted in 1788?
How could the congress put forward the bill of rights to amend the constitution if the constitution hadn’t been ratified in 1788?
The bill of rights is called the bill of rights because it was a bill of the U.S. congress that then had to be ratified by 3/4 of the states to become part of the constitution.
I mean that is HOW amendment to the U.S. consitution is acheived. Article V explains the procedure:
Now there actually is a mechanism for the states to propose constitutional amendments. But that mechanism was not used for the bill of rights which was passed by the congress in 1789, and then came into effect when ratified by 3/4 of the states in 1791.
You can have your own opinion on whether or not this was a good or bad thing. But what you can’t continue to do is say that the U.S. congress didn’t pass the bill of rights, because that is just factually inaccurate!
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I’m assuming you made this comment as a joke, because animosity does not necessarily mean someone can’t be sued for defamation in Australia.
Well point to me where I have argued otherwise?
Well they should, because to stop it you needed Tony Abbott to win the last election, but he lost so now you’ll be stuck with an ETS, that was the simple point I was making.
And there is nothing stopping a future government from repealing the ETS. They’d just have to pay out something like $20 billion in order to do so, but no government has that kind of cash laying around because at the end of the day most parties agree on what government spending should be and just argue around the margins.
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debbie
What a sad state of affairs the reactionary right has arrived at when it can’t differentiate between a democratically elected government it doesn’t like and genuine dictatorships throughout history.
What an affront to all those innocent people who died at the hands of fascism and communism during the 20th century.
It is this sort of idiotic hyperbole – of putting on the same plane a government you will vote against at the next election – and governments that simply didn’t allow their populace a free and fair vote that makes many think the reactionary right has gone wacky.
Stick to the issues and get rid of the hyperbole. If you were living in a dictatorship you simply wouldn’t be able to go on an internet forum and express your opinions however well or ill-informed they happen to be.
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Dr Adam @575; I am well aware of professor Brook’s stance on the issues of AGW and nuclear; the fact is this government through its carbon tax is promoting wind and solar [w&s] not nuclear; to the tune of $10 billion:
http://www.tia.asn.au/news/media-activity/clean-energy-finance-corp-to-be-set-up
Is this what you support? If not there is no rational justification for a carbon tax because nuclear can compete with coal in any event; however coal is itself capable of producing power while reducing CO2 emissions:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/08/lower-co2-emissions-by-wait-for-it-building-new-coal-plants/
There is nothing wrong in supporting more efficient production of energy but that is light-years away from the AGW based drive to subvert cheap and efficient power. At the end of the day all your arguments are junk because AGW is a failed theory with vast refutation and no verification.
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571 Therefore it is perfectly correct to thank God.
At 561 you say:
But just so there are not any future misunderstandings, do you believe in God the Father, maker of Heaven and Earth? The Holy Trinity? Or that our rights are given by God?
PS, I completely understand if this line of questioning causes some discomfort to others here. To be clear, I don’t intend to proselytize at Jo’s site but Adam has been a little hard to pin down on other issues sometimes. So lets try questions on Faith.
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Thats the whole point Cohenite,
The
planscam goes something like this:1, Force companies to pay for permits to do what they are already doing
2, Slowly strangle these companies by reducing the amount of permits available
3, Hobble the field of emerging competition by banning technologies that require either splitting or joining of atoms and ban the building of dams.
4, Generously fund competition that does not get hobbled (see 3)
5, Silence pesky journo’s that point out the flaws and ask tricky questions by threatening them with an inquiry and a need for a licence to print.
6, Write legislation in such a way that makes it unconstitutional for the next government to dissmantle the legislation unless they pay billions in compensation.
7, Dream of the day when they are showered with rose petals as they stride down the street basking in the glory of the utopian world they have created.
The driving force behind all this is that they know what is best for us, do not question what they do for they know best, they will not explain their actions to us because we are too stupid to understand. This is essentially a description of a dictatorship.
Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil
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582,
Mark whilst i do not want to skewer A dim S@#$%’s response (naming convention changed to overt future litigation)i think that you will find A dim S%^& will be an avid beleiver in the existance of a diety. This belief is in fact a prerequisite
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Oh by the way for those that dont know the UN is about to vote on whether Palistine is to be accepted as the 194th member and therefore be recognised as an independant country. As the US has no right of veto on this vote Israel are in a state of panic.
Countries are being threatened by the US that if they vote “yes” they will lose there
weaponshumanitarian funding, whilst Isreal are just making threats.Expect the odd false flag between now and next week and remember to ask yourself *why would Palistine launch bottle rockets into Isreal on the eve of such an historic vote*.
Expect Turkey, Syria and Egypt to continue to reject Israeli influence which is causing this region to be on the brink of a new middle east war as tensions rise leading up to the vote.
If the UN vote in favour of the Palistinians then Israel must cease and desist all arparthied actions (building of walls, check points, bulldozing of Palistinian homes for Jewish settlements etc) immediately if not then Israel could/should/will be charged with crimes against humanity etc so there is a lot hanging on this vote.
The question is will Israel invoked the “Sampson policy”? I hope they dont………….
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Crakar @ 585
If Israel is faced with intransigence on the part of the Arab leadership then it is almost certain they will invoke the “Sampson policy”; why wouldn’t they?
Arab politicians and despots love Israel because they can focus attention away from their own poor performance as leaders.
The Arabs have Israel while here in Australia we have grog and rugby league to divert our national attention away from poor and self serving governments.
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MFJ,
Do you know what the sampson policy is?
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I feel pretty sure that what was meant was ‘The Samson Option’.
That book refers to the nuclear strategy whereby Israel would launch a massive nuclear retaliatory strike if the state itself was being overrun, just as the Biblical figure Samson is said to have pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who had gathered to see him humiliated.
Tony.
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Google is your friend Tony, a quote from the horses mouth during the Al Aqsa intifada
“We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’ I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”
Martin Van Creveld.
Anyway as i was saying i hope saner minds prevail in Tel Aviv if the UN vote goes against them.
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Hmm!
Don’t think of this as an indicator when you think of me from now on. In my mid to late teens I was involved with Youth Groups in the Baptist Church, and oddly, there was quite a lot of intellectual discussion in that one group I was with stemming oddly from Bible Study groups. My time in the Air Force saw me drift away from that group, but during those discussions, context was placed into what was stated in The Bible, referencing it to current times.
I’m reminded from quite a number of those discussions of what is now called The Jezreel Valley in the Lower Galilee Basin in Israel.
The Southern part of this vast land tract was once called the Valley of Meggido, named after the ancient city that once existed in that Valley.
It was the site of many battles throughout the Centuries, and is reputed to be the site of the Ultimate battle, a name derived from that ancient city Meggido.
That battle is euphemistically referred to as ‘Armageddon’.
It gives some added context to ‘The Samson Option’.
Tony.
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Apparently the labor governmet has allowed us to have our say in this,but we only have 6 days to post submissions as follows
Posted on September 16, 2011 09:52
Australians have less than a week to make submissions on Julia Gillard’s carbon tax that she explicitly promised to never introduce.
Yesterday the Labor-Greens dominated inquiry into the 1,100-plus pages of carbon tax legislation resolved to give Australians just six days to make submissions to the inquiry, despite the massive impact this tax will have.
The committee was also advised that there was not enough time to hold hearings in all states. Most Australians will miss out on the chance to be heard, with those outside of the eastern states or in regional Australia likely to have to resort to phone or video conferencing at best.
Despite Julia Gillard making it as hard as possible for Australians to have their say on her carbon tax, I urge Australians to make their views known by lodging a submission, no matter how brief.
Written submissions must be received by next Thursday, 22 September. They can be emailed to [email protected] or posted to the select committee care of Parliament House, Canberra.
Labor is already denying Australians a vote on whether or not to have a carbon tax, but hopefully people will not allow Julia Gillard’s tactics to silence them as well.
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Crakar24
I knew you were going to ask that.
Was just guessing that it might have to do with columns?
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Sorry; redundant.
Should always read down the page.
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Crakar
“”*why would Palistine launch bottle rockets into Isreal on the eve of such an historic vote*.””
Probably because they have no control over their “army”?
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Tony @ 590
I had a look at the Hebrew meaning of the word armageddon a fair while back. Conclusion was – Chariots of Gideon.
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Documents from the Australian Electoral Commission state that the disqualification of the Commonwealth of Australia renders a person incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a member of either House. The disqualifications operate from the time the process of election starts, that process includes Nomination of Candidates.
On 1st January 2004, the Government of Western Australia, without referendum process, removed the State of Western Australia from the Crown of the United Kingdom and as such committed treason against the Constitution. After 1st January 2004, all Senators and House of Representatives from Western Australia did conceal this material fact from the people of Western Australia, and the Commonwealth of Australia.
By so doing Senators and House of Representatives from Western Australia already ‘Attainted of Treason’, did sit in the Senate and House of Representatives in the Howard / Costello reign in Constitutional Breach of Section 44 of the Commonwealth Constitution Act.
http://www.omegatimes.com/article.php?intid=1321
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And I think this is wrong; nuclear should be eligible for some of this funding because it is a clean energy source.
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No I don’t think human rights are given by god. The idea that humans are all born with the same moral worth is ultimately something invented by humans.
I can appreciate why the framers of the U.S. constitution worked on the assumption that rights were divinely inherited. But we must remember that the constitution was written long before the Theory of Evolution.
Of course some of the U.S. founding fathers were actually secularists and at the very least agnostics and in some cases quite possibly atheists. The most notable example is Thomas Jefferson.
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Well sorry to disappointed you, but I’m an atheist.
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That’s 5 days longer than the Senate committee into WorkChoices.
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Err, WTF?
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Knowing Adam’s limited grasp of the English language, I highlight for others the difference and why my suggestion to “learn English” was written. First off, Congress does not “pass Acts”. that is a royalty (the ones he maintains are immoral) term. Second off, a proposal is a suggestion, not an “act” (and indeed, the actual Bill Of Rights was a condition of the states to ratify the constitution, so it started in the states, not Congress).
They were called the “Bill of Rights” because they were based upon the English “Bill of Rights” enacted in 1689 and upon the Virginia Bill of Rights, adopted in 1776. It had nothing to do with being a bill in congress since Amendments to the Constitution are not Bills, but amendments. And the term predated the creation of the US (as indicated, most states demanded them before ratifying the Constitution).
I have freely admitted several times before that I am woefully uneducated on Australian laws and their Constitution. Indeed, Joanne’s site has provided me with a lot of education on that subject (except from Adam Smith). However, Adam Smith has yet to admit he is wrong. And he has been wrong in every debate we have had. I just showed him were he was wrong again. But instead of manning up and saying “oops! My mistake”, he doubled down on stupid. That is his choice.
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I think everyone can differentiate. Your problem is that you cannot discuss rationally. You interject polemics into the discussion when all anyone else is doing is commenting on the similarities and differences of the subject. No one has voiced “support’ for anything on the subject of dictators, merely noting their characteristics.
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I found this on the internet and thought it might keep Adam Smith busy for a while….
HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT AUSTRALIA? By Michael Baker
How much do you know about Australia’s constitutional/political system: Past & Present? Try this simple TRUE / FALSE TEST.
1. The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900 is United Kingdom legislation. TRUE / FALSE?
2. Under the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900 sovereignty rests with the Queen and not with the Australian people. TRUE / FALSE?
3. That Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is appointed to Her position as Queen by the U.K. Parliament. TRUE /FALSE?
4. That clause 8 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900 describes the Commonwealth of Australia as a colony. TRUE / FALSE?
5. That under ‘Australia’s’ Constitution all Australian politicians, judges, lawyers and many others must swear allegiance to a Sovereignty that has not existed for more than 86 years. TRUE / FALSE?
6. That the ‘Australian’ Constitution – being a colonial Act of the U.K. Parliament – does not contain any elements of civil rights (such as; the right to private property, freedom of expression and freedom of movement, etc). TRUE / FALSE?
7. That under the ‘Australian’ Constitution the unelected Governor-General is commander in chief of the Australian military forces and that he holds this position because he is the Queen’s representative. TRUE/ FALSE?
8. That Australia is the only O.E.C.D. nation not to have a constitutionally enforceable Bill of Rights. TRUE / FALSE?
9. In the years 1973, 1983, 1985 and 1986 the Federal Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia consistently rejected Bills of Rights for the Australian people and consequently have denied Australian citizens even the fundamental human rights enshrined in the U.N.’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966; although the Australian government was a signatory to that Covenant. TRUE / FALSE?
10. That unenacted British law (common law) continues to be applied in Australian courts even though those to whom it is applied are denied all entitlements under British law (and this situation can apply to tourists to Australia). TRUE / FALSE?
If you answered 100% TRUE to each and every question, not only are you 100% correct, you are also not an Australian politician, judge, lawyer or academic. CONGRATULATIONS!!
(For an in depth analysis of Australian political philosophy and practice refer to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll).
Yes, that’s right – The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900 is legislation of the United Kingdom Parliament at Westminster, being enacted into law on the 9th of July, 1900, to come into effect on the 1st of January, 1901. Which of course, it did!
Under that Act – being an Act of the U.K. Parliament – sovereignty rests with their Queen. The Oath of Allegiance which still must be used by all of Australia’s politicians, judges, public servants and others, is contained in a Schedule to the Act and reads:
“I, A.B. do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Her heirs and successors according to law. SO HELP ME GOD!”
( http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/general/constitution – Referenced under the link ‘The Schedule’).
Largely unrecognized by most people, because its not something that grabs the attention, the Monarchs of the United Kingdom have been Statutory Monarchies since the Act of Settlement, 1701 (U.K.). That is, the Kings and Queens of the U.K. have been appointed for more than 300 years by an Act of the Westminster Parliament. The oath of allegiance quoted above makes this crystal clear: “…Her heirs and successors according to law,” and, what’s more, the law that decides Queen Elizabeth’s heirs and successors is not Australian law, its purely U.K. law and always was!
This hardly noticed fact has some interesting consequences. It means that the U.K. Parliament is the supreme authority in the U.K. – with or without a monarch, after all they appoint them! It means that currently a monarch of the U.K. cannot be a Roman Catholic and remain as the monarch.( see the Act of Settlement 1701). Essentially and literally, the U.K. Parliament is the supreme Authority within Australia’s political system and has been since Captain James Cook landed at Botany Bay on the east coast of the Australian continent in 1770. The chain of command runs like this: U.K. Parliament> the Monarch> the Australian Governor-General> the Federal Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia (from which is selected a government).
As an extreme example, but one that proves the point: if the U.K. decided to become a republic where would that leave the so-called independent nation of Australia? The Australian political, judicial and public service systems cannot operate without a Monarch who is appointed by the U.K. Parliament!!
Also and unrecognised by the Australian public at large, ‘their’ constitution works simply because it is no longer adhered to. Take, for example, the powers of the Queen’s representative, the Governor-General. This individual can act under the ‘Australian’ Constitution like a dictator! The fact that since 1901 they have not done so is beside the point. The dismissal of the popularly elected Labor Party federal government in 1975 by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr demonstrated to all who cared to see that in the late twentieth century the non-elected Queen’s man was still a force to be reckoned with in the free democracy of backward looking Australia.
Moreover (and here the situation becomes truly laughable) the ‘Australian” Constitution – being trapped in a time-warp at the end of the 19th century – only recognises the Monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which is a political entity that has not existed since the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922!
So, what are the practical, down-to-earth consequences of all this?
First, that the Australian people have been denied their freedom, independence and sovereignty since at least 1945, when Australia became a member of United Nations. That the Australian people have been denied an effective say as to how they run their country and hence their own lives! Second, that the obligations contained in all of the international treaties to which Australia – through its governments – is a signatory, may be unenforceable. This could have very wide implications. Third, of debatable importance but of definite interest, will be how Australia’s politicians, judges and lawyers try to justify themselves. They can either admit that they knew the truth and therefore that they were parasites of the system, or they can admit their ignorance and thereby the fact that they were negligent by not understanding the very basis of the profession from which they have all happily gained so much. It will be an excruciation choice but one made all the more so for Australia’s highest Judges – the various Chief Justices – by the fact that important documents explaining the situation in detail were delivered to them by courier as long ago as 1999.
But surely Australia’s politicians know that the political system, which gives them so much, is flawed? Unfortunately, the majority do not! A politician needs no formal qualifications to attain high office and history shows that the average Australian politician is below average! Moreover, any new idea, much less any new critical idea based on history, law and exhaustive research, must begin as a minority opinion and there are no vote-winners in minority opinions. Why rock the boat, particularly when you have a first-class cabin (albeit on the Titanic)?
Some may wonder why the media has never ‘picked up’ on the story, but the answers are obvious. In Australia the media is interested in sensationalism and sport. Sensationalism sells and sport is one of Australia’s few fields of successful endeavour. If the international media was at any time interested – and for the most part it was not – their investigative journalism skills vanished after any of their initial suspicions were refuted by the Australian government’s own Department of Foreign Affairs. One telephone call was all it took, for modern investigative journalism always takes the line of least persistence!
In short, the rest of the world was preoccupied. Moreover, the parasitic existence of the United Nations as a self-congratulatory organization for those involved in its self-perpetuating, busy-body activities can be all too clearly seen by anyone who wishes to take even a cursory look! That august body never raised a finger to even try to prevent one of its founding members from continuing to breach its own Charter (in particular Articles 2, 4, 6, 102 and 103, all of which guarantee the right of self-determination!).
The machinations of the United Kingdom’s power-brokers remain largely motivated by a polished reticence to relinquish the trappings of empire. By applying their legislative power to lands no longer under the sovereign authority of the U.K. parliament and in jurisdictions no longer dependencies of the U.K., the very best that can be said is that Queen Elizabeth II has been misled and the laws of Her own kingdom subverted. This is the best that can be said.
The lack of any effective action by ‘those in the know’ to redress the problem – both in the U.K. and Australia – and despite numerous opportunities to do so, is proof of many things, not least being that corruption gives power and absolute corruption gives absolute power. The United Kingdom’s courts failed to do the right thing – with Justice Lightman admitting that the Australian Prime Minister, John Winston Howard flew to London and put pressure on him to decide Mr. Fitzgibbon’s case in the way he did!!
With the problem ready to replicate itself in Canada and New Zealand and the possibility and consequences of such action spreading, perhaps we should all wish the British people the best of their own luck! They may yet need it, because even if the U.K. government has a brilliant ‘Spin-Doctor’ the world can be a very lonely – if more democratic – place.
Ignorance of the law is no defence; all the more so if you were instrumental in putting that law in place!
So why not visit Australia – a land lost in time? Simply ‘put a shrimp on the barbie’ and settle back and watch the nation struggle to reclaim its 19th century colonial past as it lurches into the 21st century backwards.
Never happy with its advance from being a child of Britain to a sovereign adult nation, Australia may yet declare its adolescent longings to the world: almost free, semi-independent, burdened by responsibility, awkwardly immature and not quite certain why it feels so proud of its ‘hand-me-down’ Constitution, borrowed legal system and second-hand politics.
Believe it, or not!
Joosse’s Case
Joosse’s case is important because it was one of the first in a long line of matters where
Australians placed the crucial issues of our history and the foundations of our future before the Australian and eventually, British and European court systems.
All of these courts sold out on every Australian, New Zealander and Canadian.
Joosse’s case – transcript and judgement – lays out those issues.
Refer to: (‘ Joosse High Court of Australia Transcript and Judgement.pdf )
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I’ll just point out here that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are the first Australian Prime Ministers who DID NOT swear loyalty to the Queen when they took the office office. Here is the words Rudd used:
http://australianpolitics.com/2007/12/03/kevin-rudd-sworn-in-as-australias-26th-prime-minister.shtml
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Adam Smith,
You have me laughing again 🙂 🙂 🙂
Please tell me the difference between this:
and this:
🙂 🙂 🙂
Apart from a different use of sentence structure and vocabulary of course.
You most defintely asked rhetorical questions….there was no need for me to answer them.
That’s why people use the lterary device….the answer is embedded in the question.
I laughed because those questions were completely unrelated to the point of my post.
So if your question was: do I believe that the present action in politics can achieve these things?… then …if you actually read my comments……the answer to THAT question is most definitely NO!
I do not believe a policy that assumes a bureaucracy can manage/ mitigate/change the climate/weather through a falsely created market for a valueless product can achieve any of these goals successfully.
In fact I will repeat that I think it is an extraordinary and expensive conceit for a bureaucracy to beleive it can manage/ mitigate/control the climate/weather.
As well as that I can see that the science around AGW is unravelling.
These are 2 different points.
See the problem we’re having here?
And before you get totally didactic and give me yet another lecture and make totally unsupported statements about my character (or lack thereof)…..
Nah! forget it….
I know that’s your MO anyway.
00
None of this answers any of the questions that I asked. You’re simply avoiding the issues.
00
But Adam?
I didn’t need to answer those questions.
They were rhetorical.
Do you not understand what a rhetorical question is?
Surely not?
You keep asking them.
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Well they actually weren’t. You could say that we shouldn’t bother about energy efficiency, and that the current generation shouldn’t worry about the state of our natural resources that are left for future generations.
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Adam,
But why on earth would I say that when your question had the answer embedded in it?
I certainly don’t believe that we shouldn’t bother about energy efficiency….what would lead you to believe that….nothing I have posted that’s for sure.
Of course they were lovely questions, but they were most certainly rhetorical.
I actually stated my position about my beliefs which pointed out that all of the stated goals in your beautifully constructed rhetorical questions will not be achieved by this insane obsession with the carbon tax on its way to an ETS.
Savvy?
I can repeat it for you if you like, just in case you missed it?
00
Um, so how do you propose we acheive it? And who will pay the costs associated with becoming more efficient, such as burning coal more efficiently?
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MFJ 594,
Yeah thats it, you keep thinking that.
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Hopefully Palestine’s push for statehood will result in greater legal recognition.
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Adam,
Simple answer for you.
The REAL market not the ‘sleight of hand’ economic travesty that you have relentlessly pushed here.
The REAL market would likely be interested in Hydro or Nuclear power & they are both efficient and ‘clean’
This legislation is forcing the market towards wind and solar and intending to use a merry go round of taxpayer money to do it.
They can’t cut it and they are mind blowingly expensive.
And BTW Adam, we already have the technology to burn coal more efficiently.
Didn’t you know that?
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Adam Smith @ 605
The Australian Constitution is an Act of the UK parliament.
The Queen is appointed by the Uk parliament.
Kevin Rudd and the Queen are in error or worse in giving the presumption of their authority to write the document “Letters Patent Relating to the Office of Governor General of the Commonwealth of Australia -21 August 2008” in which among other things the oath of allegiance was changed.
The four page document was signed by the Queen on the top right hand corner of the first page – Why? Kevin Rudd simply signed the fourth page Kevin Rudd – Prime Minister.
The office of Governor-General is covered comprehensively in the appendix’s to the UK Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia and as such alterations to the Act can only be made by the UK parliament.
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This makes no sense. If it is cheaper to waste raw materials and energy, then that is what the market will dictate. If you want to increase efficiency you need an incentive of some sort, which means a cost. That’s just basic economics.
A low carbon price makes nuclear relatively cheaper than fossil fuels. Without a carbon price inefficient coal is cheaper than nuclear.
So again you demonstrate that you haven’t really thought through your position.
I agree that nuclear should count as a clean energy source and should be eligible for funding.
We may have the technology, but it isn’t in use in Australia because it is cheaper to burn things inefficiently.
See the contradiction in what you are saying? On the one hand you say just let the market figure it out, but the market won’t prioritise efficiency, it will prioritise the lowest cost, which actually means inefficient generation. It means leaving crappy brown coal power stations open instead of opening new efficient black coal power-stations. It means sticking with fossil fuels instead of going to nuclear which with a low carbon price is cheaper than the most efficient coal power stations.
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Why thank you, but I already knew this.
Wrong. The Queen is appointed by divine right. The UK Parliament can simply amend the laws of succession, but they haven’t been changed for I think 200 years.
Completely wrong. The UK parliament does not have any power to change any Act of the Australian parliament. The UK Parliament gave up this power when the Statute of Westminister was passed by the UK and Australian parliaments.
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30 Lodge Road
Cremorne
NSW 2090
1 November 1995
Mr John….
Dear Mr W…,
Thank you for your letter of 29 October. Although you
state that you are not a lawyer you are on the right track in
expressing the view that the Constitution cannot be altered
under Section L2B to remove the Crown from the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth was established not by the
Constitution but by the Constitution Act which sets out the
Constitution in Section 9 of that Act. Section 1-28 gives
power to amend the Constitution but not the Constitution Act.
As you have recognised the Constitution Act establishes
Australia as an “indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the
Crown”.
The Constitution Act was an Act of the British
Parliament and for that reason cannot be amended by the
Australian Parliament. The British Parliament has by the
Australia Act 1986 terminated its power to legislate for
Australia. Theoretically no one can repeal the Constitution
Act. In practice, if all the Parliaments concerned (British,
Australian and the States) did legislate to amend the
Australia Act that would be effective although it would amount
1ega1ly to a revolution.
Like many other legal questions this one is not
altogether free from doubt but in my opinion which I have
expressed above is shared by a number of other lawyers. The
opinion has been expressed in public but it has received
littIe media attention.
Yours sincerely,
[Sir Harry Gibbs]
00
No Adam,
I haven’t demonstrated that I haven’t thought through my position.
You haven’t recognised my argument.
If I believed for one teensy weensy second that this whole process was intended to help us move towards Nuclear and Hydro (and whatever other proven, efficient ,cost effective methods there are), I would be much more able to live with this process.
However, that is not the stated goal at all and unless you can’t read you must know that too!
You are insistently claiming that this will enable the introduction of nuclear energy….READ THE LEGISLATION….it will not.
It is very painfully obvious it will take years for them to have enough sense to get to that sensible place.
The subsides and cuts and paper credits are going to wind and solar and talking about Tim Flannery’s pet, geothermal.
Even helping existing energy companies to move faster towards the more efficient burning of coal would make far more sense….but NOOOOOOO!…..they’re not going to do that either!
You wonder why I am so sure this policy and the absolute blind refusal to pay attention to some common sense is headed for disaster?
Look no further than the MDB. They have already done to the essential service and essential product of water as what they are in the process of doing to the essential service and essential product of energy.
The result? EVERYONE PAYS for no acheivable gain and no net benefit.
NEXT?
Because the ‘powers that be’ have refused to upgrade in concert with the growing population and growing demands…..all because they have a much holier and nobler goal than that…..there will not be enough for everyone to share.
That means that the people who need reasonable access to that esential service cannot produce.
Whether it be manufactured goods, building services or food…if they can’t get the access to the service/product….they can’t do what they would normally do with it.
It’s not rocket science Adam.
The result you claim they’re looking for….is not the one they are claiming they are looking for. Either you’re wrong or they are…which is it?
Have an honest look for heaven’s sake.
And BTW, the other side are no better as far as their failure to invest in infrastructure upgrades goes, but at least they’re now prepared to look at other alternatives. They won’t be stupid enough to enact something that won’t work. Or… if they are… they will pay for it the same as the current government is in the process of doing.
There are many, many traditional Labor voters who are just as disgusted with this insane obsession with the non pollutant CO2. That’s why the current government is in so much trouble.
Haven’t you figured that out yet?
Those so called ‘big polluters’ are the same companies who supply energy to our homes and businesses, the materials that provide the roof over our heads and also supply the food to our tables.
As well as that, they’re the same ones who EMPLOY people.
Think carefully….if you had a choice between keeping your job safe and your family’s jobs safe or getting fired up about taxing ‘big polluters’ over CO2 which you know perfectly well from high school science is not a pollutant…..which way would you be likely to jump?
Especially Adam…if you know those so called ‘big polluters’ are also your employers?
I am astounded that the current Government hasn’t figured out why they are rapidly losing their support base.
Like I said…it’s not rocket science….it’s not even climate science!
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It occurs to me that maybe Julia Gillard is hellbent on destroying the ALP. She’s behaving like a woman scorned
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How sexist.
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Fiona @ 620
Hammer – nail – head.
Good on you Fiona. Gillard is a ring-in from the Soviet-era Communist Party in Australia. They always saw their greatest threat to ascendancy as the the Labor party, not the coalition.
JulIAR has no interest in either the environment or CO2. She is on a mission to destroy the Labor Party, and it would appear she is about to succeed.
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No one but Gillard is devious enough to sabotage herself. True cunning.
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Tristan @ 623
See, Tristan, there’s your problem in a nutshell.
You think everybody is as totally self-centred as yourself.
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tru homie, tru.
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Tristan @ 625
Best you stick with the “tugging” for the time being.
It’s no substitute for sex, but at least it’s a substitute for no sex.
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I just think it’s a pretty weird sentiment, thinking that Gillard is some anti-ALP Communista. Honestly though, I don’t know what her game is. Can’t say I’d have done the same in her position. I think the people want to see more of the ALP left, rather than the poor-mans-liberal-party ALP right faction.
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re Scaper @ 5: I hate to say that you are wrong about 203 billion deficit. Not even warm! You should put on the top of that, the deficits for the State governments + the borrowed money by the big city councils, plus over a trillion dollars of private borrowing? You buy from Dick Smith some imported plastic junk, you pay cash; but that money is squandered here. It’s paid by OZ bonds to the Chinese.
If the people know; how much Australia paid interest on the foreign deficit only last year… Plus the trillion tones of minerals and coal gone last year that cannot be sold again. When was in the ground, it was an asset – gone; flushed down the dunny… Is your calculator overheating? Talking only about federal borrowing is: people not to notice how they are topping it up; by mortgaging the individual states. (rabbit out of the hat, trick)
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Something seems to have gone badly wrong with the Jonova web page in it new Site-Construction. It is very vertically elongated and narrowed.
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