The same question may have been asked in the ‘Dark Ages’ by the odd insightful peasant, as the Church sequestered all power on Earth and in Heaven. Not only was one doomed to misery on Earth, but it was ensured you were doomed in perpetuity. The important question now becomes: when is the next Renaissance?
I agree with your assessment. The illusion of human control, in a world controlled by cause-and-effect, is at the base of the conflict over Earth’s changing climate.
The best available experimental data and observations on our small part of the cosmos suggest that neutron repulsion [1] is the fountain of energy that feeds the stream of cause-and-effect as the universe expands [2].
World leaders may not allow government scientists to openly discussion the energy source that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Aug 1945. That seems to be the same energy source that was historically represented as the Hindu Trinity: The Creator, Preserver and Destroyer of the world.
Out of almost nowhere has come the technology of fracking for natural gas and oil. Reliable, abundant and very much cheaper than ‘renewables’, such as wind and solar power.
Watch how the greenies and left wing politicians will try and sabotage the use of this technology in Europe and Australia. Exaggerated and mostly false stories of seismic events and groundwater pollution will be their main arguments. Russia’s Gazprom is rumoured to be amongst those with vested interests seeking to sabotage the development of this technology in Western Europe.
The US appears destined to soon become energy independent because of fracking. The USA is definitive proof on how well this technology works.
Yet huge financial subsidies will continue to be poured into expensive and unreliable ‘green energy’ projects, when a nearby cheaper and much more reliable energy source is just begging to be developed.
Fracking is just another instance of the utter pointlessness of the Global Warming Industry.
Typical greenie nonsense designed to scare and provide skewered information.
Anyhow, the Chinese manufacturers of solar panels and wind turbines will be pleased with it.
After all, they are the people whose interests matter to the type of government you have in Australia, the UK and far too many other western countries.
Peter Miller,
NASA’s just released some hi res gravity of the moon, showing it was battered by early impact far more than thought. The same applies to the Earth, though the surface of the Earth has changed more and makes the shallow Earth properties hard to determine. While I don’t have much worry about fracking as practised, I’d have more worry when we get deeper and have to rely more on seismic because we might find that deep ground conditions are hard to read in advance. BTW, the NASA article also impacts on sea level change calculations bt GRACE. http://news.yahoo.com/moon-surprisingly-battered-lunar-gravity-map-reveals-193309710.html
Fracking has been around since the 1950’s. It did not “come out of nowhere”. It was brought to the forefront when it became evident that it was the environmentalists’ worst nightmare–cheap, abundant energy. We can’t have that, you know.
Frack off, Obama. And hopefully, frack off Julia. Does Aus have any gas resources economically accessible by the new slickwater fracking process invented in the late 90s?
I predict that rising bills will be absorbed by the People without more than grumbling. It is when the power cuts begin that democracy will reassert itself and this nonsense will be over.
Re borehole temperature profiles: the equation governing temperature down boreholes is the diffusion equation, in which the second derivative of temperature with respect to distance down the hole is proportional to the first derivative of temperature with respect to time. If you know the rate at which heat comes up from below due to geological processes, and the temperature at the surface as a function of time, and the temperature profile down the borehole at one time, then you can solve the equation to give the temperature profile down the borehole at any later time (in particular, the present). If you get rid of ‘transient’ contributions to the solution which decay with time then the result does not depend on the initial profile, just on the other things.
The aim is then to use the measured temperature profile down the hole as the solution to this equation and then ‘invert’ it mathematically to find the temperature at the surface as a function of time running back into the past.
However the diffusion equation is time-asymmetric, which means that it leaks information, which means that you cannot do this inversion uniquely. More than one time profile of the temperature at the surface can correspond to the same solution of the equation. It is possible to say if a particular time profile of the temperature at the surface is *consistent* with the observations, but not to say that it is the only one that is consistent.
This means, of course, that it is possible to cheat (if you wish to be actively dishonest), or to stop looking as soon as you have found an answer that matches your prejudices (which is not dishonest but is lousy science).
Something similar with ice cores; poor old Jaworowski was pilloried for his pressure leakage and downwards ‘diffusion’ of CO2 theories so that ice cores were unreliable.
As Richard C notes:
Pete Ridley has been investigating the possibility that the smaller kinetic diameter of CO2 (.33nm) compared with O2 (.36) and N2 (.38) results in CO2 migrating down the pressure gradient towards the surface of the ice long after O2 and N2 are too large to get through the pores. Apparently there is a great deal of knowledge of this process in the oil industry.
He has checked with paleo-climatologists but they use collision diameter and stonewall when kinetic is brought up. He is also engaged in discussion with warmist geologist Mike Palin (Otago University) at Hot Topic but is just being preached to: “there is no significant fractionation of molecular proportions. End of story”.
Precisely. The assumption is made that heat from the surface progresses underground as waves that can be reconstructed hundreds to thousands of years later. Ref the moon article above http://news.yahoo.com/moon-surprisingly-battered-lunar-gravity-map-reveals-193309710.html same thing applies, jumbled geology in old rocks. On land, you have no chance of an understandable sequence of heat waves transmitting into the earth because of the heterogeneity of the shallow Earth to the depths drilled. I’ve not studied the math on ice, but remember that the base of some ice sheets like at Vostok has water, so that implies a thermal gradient with a direction opposite to the heat moving from the surface, whose magnitude would be hard to measure. In an open hole (as apposed to one that no longer takes a probe) there is air or water or both moving up and down all the time, smearing any signal in the temperatures of the walls of the hole. I don’t know why they bother.
To continue: the Greens function for the diffusion equation, from which all solutions are assembled, is a spreading Gaussian form in space with a width proportional to the square root of time. So it is unable to handle negative time values. (The square root of a negative number makes no physical sense in this context.) Yet the boundary condition at the surface involves the surface temperature for all times, running back indefinitely, before the instant of the borehole temperature profile measurement. This is a nonsense.
9 Dec: SMH: Tom Arup: Evans peddles change on energy use
It was the biggest moment of Cadel Evans’s sporting life – his extraordinary triumph at the 2011 Tour de France. And yet he wanted to get Cate Blanchett a message.
The actor had been wrapped up in a political storm after appearing in advertising backing the carbon tax. Some media had dubbed her ”Carbon Cate”.
Evans followed the debate, and at the end of last year’s Tour declared to the press: ”Let’s just say I like Cate Blanchett a lot.”…
”If they [the government] just didn’t use the word tax, it would have gone a whole lot better,” the champion cyclist said with a laugh…
Evans – who spends off-seasons in Barwon Heads on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula – now wants to make a contribution to environmental issues as well. He has reached out to people such as Australia’s Chief Climate Commissioner, Professor Tim Flannery, to learn more.
On Tuesday night, Evans will lead an event at Melbourne’s Federation Square to promote sustainability in everyday life. It is sponsored by global engineering company Siemens, and will be attended by a suite of state and federal ministers, along with Professor Flannery.
Evans will lead a peloton of 480 cyclists to power lights in the shape of a Christmas tree with the energy they produce by stationary riding. During the event it is hoped two Guinness world records will be broken: one for most power produced by pedalling on bicycles for one hour; and another for the most lights lit by pedal power.
Evans said it was all about spreading a message about a cultural shift to consume less in our daily lives…
He traces his interest in the environment to his mother, who over the years has given him books on sustainability and climate change. The first he remembers was David Suzuki’s From Naked Ape to Superspecies, which explored humanity’s dominance over and damage to the natural world.
But Evans readily admits he is by no means perfect, and concedes there is much more at home he can do to be sustainable.
***And while cycling is generally seen as an environmental positive, Evans said it became less so when you are jetting around the world to compete in races that are televised by helicopters and followed by hundreds of cars and motorbikes…
He said where he believes he can be of best use will be lending his profile to help educate about the issues. There are early plans with Siemens to run in-school programs, for example.
Evans said education and climate change were tied more often than thought, and it would be crucial if there was to be a better understanding and acceptance of some of the changes to be made.
”It is a slow process, but to make big changes takes time. Ultimately we all will make a cultural change, we are going to have to, if we want to have a quality of life for our children and their children,” Evans said. http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/evans-peddles-change-on-energy-use-20121208-2b24m.html
19 Nov: AFR: John Stensholt: Cadel chases a cause, not cash
Photo Caption: Fired up for sustainability . . . Tim Flannery, left, Jeff Connolly and Cadel Evans. Photo: Arsineh Houspian
That win, after many near misses, gave his popularity – and sponsor appeal – a large boost.
But even as Evans, who turns 36 next February, moves closer to retirement, he is still reluctant to sign a large number of endorsement deals in order to cash in on his fame before his sporting career ends.
“If I’m going to endorse something I won’t just do it for the sake of a company’s bottom line, it’s got to be a good cause,” Evans tells The Australian Financial Review…
“Since winning the Tour de France, I’ve had so many sponsorship opportunities that as an individual I couldn’t commit to them all anyway, but I’d rather just work on a few good-quality projects because I’m still trying to win the Tour in 2013 – and that by itself is not an easy task,” he says.
Having already aligned himself with local companies such as Ernst & Young, Swisse vitamins and Paradice Investment Management, Evans has also this month signed a deal with the engineering and environmental technology giant Siemens.
The Siemens deal, Evans claims, fits with his and his family’s views about the need to live more sustainably in order to protect the environment – topics he will help promote as a Siemens sustainability ambassador, which will involve him trying to help raise awareness of sustainable actions in the community.
Critics may claim Evans would say that about a sponsor, but he insists he considers his personal ideals before signing endorsement deals.
“I wanted to do this as an individual and secondly the public seems to notice what I do and what I say. If I can do something that is a good cause and make the world a better place, I’d like to do it.”
Evans has signed a three-year agreement with Siemens, which will involve appearing at an event in Melbourne in December called FutuRide, in which more than 1000 riders on stationary bikes will try to enter the Guinness Book of Records by generating enough power to light up giant Christmas trees.
There are also plans for a primary school program that will use cycling as a catalyst to help students learn more about sustainability…
Evans says he was also attracted to Siemens because he has prominent environmentalist Tim Flannery on the company’s sustainability advisory board.
Flannery says he joined the advisory board, which was formed in 2010, to try to gain a better understanding of the business sector.
“There probably is a traditional view that business and the environment are separate, so I think this helps break it down.”. http://afr.com/p/lifestyle/sport/cadel_chases_cause_not_cash_zBPKNvI1c6uCcOe0howiYM
Really, could anyone be worse to seek for advice than Siemens (sell windmill parts by the shipload, no proven benefit in almost all cases, slaves of PIK), Flannery (sells propaganda by the shipload, no proven benefit in almost all cases), Swisse Vitamins (sell pills by the shipload, no proven benefit in almost all cases), PIM (sells money and advice to by the shipload, no guarantee of benefit in most cases).
Does one have to be gullible to win the Tour? You have to respect his performance, but I pity his thoughts.
Siemens, as a very quick and casual online search will confirm, are not about the Green, they are about the Power.
Go on their website and they will happily tell you they can make 1900 MW steam turbines. The piddly amount of money they give to people like Evans is pure corporate image and they will happily wear a green badge for as long as it makes the public feel all warm and fuzzy about it. They currently support renewables and will continue to do so as long as someone is willing to pay them to do so (ie, with government grants and subsidies) and the moment that money stops they will calmly close that business unit and go back to making their profit from coal and gas fired units.
Hard fact is that the average reader of this blog is probably greener then Siemens.
Still, as long as Cadel gets a nice signed photo of Carbon Cate to put on his bedside table I guess all is good in the world 😛
I suspect that Siemens and G.E. (and others) are into “green energy” because they can sell generating capacity twice: Green generating capacity in nameplate only and then real capacity to prematurely replace conventional plant with plant capable of actually supplying electricty on demand.
It’s the “green” bit that makes the traditional plant and distribution grid equipment “obsolete” because it introduces massive generating perturbations which the old equipment was never designed to accommodate.
Economics from the school of the broken window fallacy.
For those short of cash, here a ‘good scheme’ to get some.
1. get gullible government
2. Burning savanna creates carbon credit cash
indigenous organisation could earn up to $500,000 a year by selling carbon credits it creates by deliberately burning savannas ahead of the fire season to reduce the amount of pollution. The Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) has gained approval to generate the credits on its 1800 square kilometre Fish River property which is a two hour drive south of Darwin. It’s the first indigenous project approved under the carbon farming initiative (CFI) which forms part of the federal government’s carbon price regime. Under the CFI, grasslands can be purposely burnt early in the dry season to reduce fuel load and therefore the severity of late-season fires. Savannas are also burnt to create fire breaks. “Both actions reduce the high level of pollution that would otherwise be generated by out-of-control wild fires,” parliamentary secretary Mark Dreyfus said in a statement on Friday. The ILC will be able to generate up to 20,000 carbon credits each year. CFI credits are expected to sell for less than the current $23-a-tonne fixed price but Fish River could still earn close to $500,000 annually. “The ILC’s carbon credits can be sold to big polluting businesses that need to offset their carbon price liability,” Mr Dreyfus said. “The extra income will be used to help conserve the significant biodiversity of the Fish River property, support indigenous jobs and training and investigate other investment opportunities.” Historically around 70 per cent of the property would be burnt by uncontrolled fires each year. But in recent years that’s been cut to just three per cent by combining traditional knowledge with satellite tracking and mapping technology. Carbon credits created under savanna-burning projects are Kyoto compliant and count towards Australia’s national emission-reduction targets.
Burning grass in the Top End – there’s been a scheme going with the local power company for a decade or more. They pay indulgences to aborigines who burn cooler fires and generate a smaller % of low concentration but more absorbing GHG.
I wonder about the ultimate source of the funds? Perhaps the electricity and fuel consumers of the Top End?
We must destroy the planet to save it. Always start in areas with few people, pay them to participate in your scheme and tell everyone how environmentally green you are. This all reminds me of the plantation owners in colonial America. Rich people running rip shod over those who could not fight back. My point is not that this was definitely a bad thing. but rather if it was wrong to colonize America and take huge pieces of land and convert them to plantations, it is wrong to pay poor people in third world countries to burn their land, stop farming and grow useless trees, etc. If this behaviour is good (as environmentalists claim) then Americans have no reason to do anything but praise Columbus and others who did the same to America.
We’ve been watching the SyFy channel all Saturday afternoon…………
Ice Age 2012, Polar Ice, Ice Twisters and coming up is Ice Quake and then Snowmageddon. Why is it that none of the “disaster movies” are ever about being too hot? You’d think that with high temps they be filling the screen with young nubile young ladies all in bikinis and well muscled men going shirtless…….
I get it now; it’s phase inversion. The colder it gets the hotter it gets. They must have been hanging the thermometers upside down (good enough for government work, don’t you know).
It certainly will need research. So where’s my government grant? I may even be able to patent something out of this, who knows?
Don’t you wish they got the inverse of the grant money they use up?
Dueling protests on opposite sides of the world, one hot, one cold, one in a major city, the other, a small town. The winner, the small town in very hot weather (over 40C). The cold city was about climate change or frakking, the hot town was about preserving the world class dinosaur trackways for science, rare flora and fauna, and local heritage and culture. Hot trumps cold every time.
IF it’s about heat it involves volcanoes, etc. Heat is just not scary. Even though it kills hundreds every year. Plus, all those bikinis would distract from the complex plot of the show!
Evans will lead a peloton of 480 cyclists to power lights…During the event it is hoped two Guinness world records will be broken: one for most power produced by [sic] pedalling on bicycles for one hour; and another for the most lights lit by pedal power. (pat #7)
Wrong.
Three records will in fact be broken, the third record being the single largest public gathering of dim luminaries…given the average cyclist can barely light a 100-watt lamp.
Or is this perhaps the informal introduction of a new renewable that accustoms people to another outlandish Green idea? Are we surreptitiously being introduced to future policy?
There is a whisper that plans are being discussed to harness the resources of the incarcerated. Given new LED technology, thousands of peddling prisoners may go some way to lighting selected streets of the Green elite. Regrettably, some streets would of necessity need to be kept dark to maintain the renewable aspect of the resource, but all in all, the Green-Labor policy makers are delighted with their new rehabilitation policy that sees 22,492 internees put to an obvious beneficial societal use. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri-crime-prisoners
Future policy plans include sustainability, that is ‘everyone doing their bit’ at public central generating peddle-in’s. It is considered that an hour a day will allow one to maintain one’s legal citizenship. Hours may be traded in the markets courtesy of the Peddle Trading Scheme. As this policy will go global, the UN has commenced discussion with the World Trading Bank for a global market in peddle power. The disenfranchised ‘denier’ community will be placed in State Peddle Camps. It is envisaged that they will peddle their way to sanity and health. Finally, it has been calculated that the exhaust emissions of the peddle generating scheme may be off-set by suitable planting around and throughout such facilities. This will have the addition useful purpose of screening any passerby from the heaving, sweating, steaming mass of power generating humanity and their whip cracking overseers.
So regarding these radio hosts and the backwash from their stunt.
I wonder how many people throwing stones at these guys are the same people who listened to numerous other immature prank calls and found them entertaining? How many will continue to in a few weeks time?
Just like the muppets who after Diana Spencers death were scathing about the paparazzi but who still go out and by the junk magazines with photos taken by the paparazzi.
And yes, the word is… Hyppocrites!
And so now we all need to watch over the next week as the people who demand this immature crap all vent their guilty spleens all across the lamestream media in some sort of catarthic spectacle of self righteous hypocrisy.
Just think how many jobs can be created by shifting our power production over to bike pedal generation. One job for every 100 watts! We will have millions of new jobs!
This is a green politician’s dream.
Of course they are to illiterate too realize that the price of electricity will be somewhere beyond $80/kw-hr (at $8/hr for the peddler) And the peddlers will certainly produce more CO2 than a power plant per kw-hr.
MadJak, not sure about ‘how many’ hypocrites or the overall ‘hypocrisy’ involved, though I suppose the circulation figures might help in that direction?
Given decades of shriveling sound-bites, diminished attention spans, focus upon only the most superficial (argument, fashion, moment etc…), an MSM sleeping on the job, celebration of fatuous toilet humour – vacuous shows with vacuous hosts catering to mass societal immaturity, it has come to finally pass that many? most? have perhaps succumbed to ‘mushroomhood’.
In this state, kept in the dark and fed an endless stream of manure the belief that they are happy is secure. Little will rock their shelf. Indeed, The Black Adder #1 today laments our loss of common sense. I heard recently that current occupational health and safety thinking places no value on common sense, decrying it to be a ‘subjective’ phenomena (!!). Little wonder then that the mantra ‘saving the planet’ has such appeal. It radiates ‘feel-good’ factor.
No, there may be few hypocrites left because so few are really listening. Instead, the legions of the ‘brain dead’ MSM and entertainment shows continue to busily ‘suck the life blood’ (ref. ‘vampires’ & ‘zombies’) out of all that once passed as ‘civilisation’.
The greenies hate fracking because it has made natural gas, in the US at least, extremely cheap. They are upset because that fact tends to make alternative energy look like not such a great alternative. They are trying to figure out how to make it more expensive. They are also upset that the green energy subsidies are headed for the infamous fiscal cliff.
obviously, we’re also going to pay, or pretend to pay, or make loans, or force poor countries to buy our renewables, or whatever, but it will still require carbon dioxide trading getting off the ground, and that is something every person with money in any kind of Super/Pension Fund can take action to stop from happening:
9 Dec: Telegraph: : Doha: climate change talks end with compensation deal for poor nations that could cost billions
By Louise Gray, Doha and Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Angry exchanges between delegations over the measure brought threats of walkouts and even tears from small island states, which pushed to have the new mechanism introduced despite fierce opposition from the United States…
It comes as economists warned that commitments to cut carbon emissions – agreed earlier in the talks as part of negotiations carried out by the European Union as a whole – could cost the British economy around £23 billion by 2020.
Other major economies such as the USA, China and Japan refused to sign up to similar commitments, leaving businesses in the UK and other European countries at a competitive disadvantage…
Ed Davey, the climate change and energy secretary, who is leading the UK delegation, said the UK had backed putting a reference to loss and damage into the agreement and was in favour of stronger targets on climate change.
There were cheers around the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha yesterday when the final text of the agreement setting out the plan to introduce the compensation measures was passed despite objections from Russia and the USA.
Ed Davey, the climate change secretary, said poor countries were already dealing with rising sea levels and the seepage of salt into water supplies – and rich countries like the UK had a duty to help by developing a loss and damage mechanism.
“I do think we have a duty to help people who are losing their countries below the waves,” he said.
Mr Davey said recent floods in Britain showed how important it was to deal with floods…
The exact details of the loss and damage scheme, including how much developed countries will have to pay, are expected to be worked out at future meetings of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, next year or in 2014…
However major polluters including China, USA, Canada, Russia and Japan did not sign up to the pact…
David Cameron, the Prime Minister, is likely to face heavy criticism from his backbenches if Britain is left facing expensive carbon cutting targets that are not being matched by industrial competitors.
More than 100 Conservative MPs – including several within the Cabinet – are said to be climate change sceptics.
Clacton MP Douglas Carswell, one of the leading Conservative climate-change sceptics, said: “Britain should have absolutely no part in this. The whole science of climate change is highly questionable. By pursuing new emissions targets we are only accelerating a process of deindustrialisation in Europe, which is transporting manufacturing jobs to other countries.
“The United States was right to oppose this. We would be doing the same if we had democratically accountable people negotiating on our behalf. But we have European Union officials negotiating on our behalf who are immune to the ballot box.” …
There are more than 17,000 delegates attending the talks in the desert in Doha. It is estimated that the talks themselves have had a carbon footprint of more than 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide – equivalent to cutting down 64 hectares of rainforest.
The Swarovski chandeliers in the main meeting hall and a skyline of sky scrapers, with delegates ferried around in limousines, have made a surreal setting for the talks. Qatar, one of the world’s richest nations, but with plentiful supplies of cheap energy from its oil, has the largest carbon footprint per person in the world… http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9732226/Doha-climate-change-talks-end-with-compensation-deal-for-poor-nations-that-could-cost-billions.html
With the USA, China, Japan, Russia and Canada not signing up there is no hope of Kyoto No.2 getting off the ground. With the undeveloped countries not called on to contribute, and South Korea, NZ, South Africa, Brazil and India all very likely to reject it, something like 90% of the world economy isn’t in line for any contributions.
That leaves Europe and Australia to pay the bills. Thanks Julia.
The tolerant and caring Green movement is at it again — this time opposing fracking in the US state of Colorado.
Longmont resident Jeff Thompson, a fracking foe, told commissioners later during the hearing that the proposed county regulations “are just a big fraud, just a big farce.”
Thompson compared Boulder County officials’ stated position — that they’ll adopt the strictest local drilling rules possible under Colorado law — to what it would have been like if Nazi Adolf Eichmann had said: “I did everything I could within the law to protect the Jews.”
Now that the Murray Darling Basin Plan is signed off, and millions of megalitres are to be taken away from the nations food bowl, and just as the environment movement is doing collective congratulatory back slapping we have this;
“The endangered Australasian Bittern – source of bunyip legends. If you’re near rice in the Riverina, keep your eyes peeled for this intriguing species and sing out if you find one. We don’t have long before the rice will have grown enough to conceal them. Then we’ll be relying on their booming calls to locate them”. http://www.birdlife.org/community/2012/12/bitten-by-the-bittern-bug-down-under/
The effect of the MDBP will be to decimate rice growing, which the endangered Bittern has taken to like a Bittern to water. The effect will be to further endanger the bird by reducing the habitat it has adapted to.
The Ricegrowers Association of Australia is working closely with local wildlife ecologists to survey Bittern numbers. http://www.rga.org.au/f.ashx/Media-Release-Bitterns-boom-in-rice.pdf
I wonder how long it will be before the light bulb moment when environmentalists realize the wild life is brighter than they are and that rice growing sustains wildlife, and is therefore now a necessary part of the ecosystem.
I can recall the building of the Fogg Dam near Darwin, the new start Humpty Doo rice plantations and the invasions of the magpie geese. In the end they brought in the military with machine guns but did not make a dint in bird numbers. There must be something special in rice, like in the middle of Mandy Rice Davies.
no doubt at all, it’s all about carbon dioxide trading:
9 Dec: Australian: AAP: Kyoto signing good for industry: Emerson
Dr Emerson said this gave Australian businesses the capacity to participate in global emissions trading markets and access to lowest cost abatement measures.
“What we’re doing is ensuring that Australian industry is in there with a predictable regime and is able to tap into those international markets,” he told ABC TV on Sunday.
“We’re doing the right thing not only by Australian industry but by the planet.”
The 27-member European Union, Switzerland and eight other industrialised countries joined Australia in signing the extension to Kyoto, the first leg of which expires on December 31.
They represent about 15 per cent of global emissions…
Dr Emerson said it wasn’t as if the major countries were doing nothing on climate change at the moment.
He noted there were at least 10 states within the US which had set up emissions trading schemes.
“Within a year we’ll have either a carbon price or an emissions trading scheme in 50 or more national and sub-national jurisdictions covering well over a billion people,” he said.
“That’s a pretty good start.”… http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/kyoto-signing-good-for-industry-emerson/story-e6frg6xf-1226533051979
same AAP story as The Australian, but at least AFR got a negative quote into the puff piece. note the area of specialisation of the journalist:
9 Dec: AFR: UN accord right for business and planet: Emerson
by John KERIN with wires
(John writes about defence, national security and foreign affairs from our Canberra bureau)
But Climate Change Director for the Institute of Public Affairs Tim Wilson said the extension was a “dud deal’’ for Australia.
“Kyoto has become meaningless,’’ Mr Wilson said. “Countries have continued to rig the rules so they can claim compliance and do nothing. Australia is an exception, we seem to be the only ones participating in good faith and thinking others will follow.
“With only 15 per cent of the world’s emitters in play it is a save-face agreement for countries that think their leadership will get others to follow.”
After several days of deadlocked talks, conference chairman Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah finally rushed through the package of deals that he termed the Doha Climate Gateway, riding roughshod over country objections as he swung the gavel in quick succession, proclaiming: “It is so decided.”
Observers said Russia had been trying to halt the extension of Kyoto, whose first leg expires on December 31.
Moscow objected to the passing of the deal, and noted that it retained the right to appeal the president’s action… http://www.afr.com/p/world/un_accord_right_for_business_and_DvQhjJdG3mrRPPB1ynnlDO
for anyone still believing Murdoch media is on the side of the sceptics, note:
7 Dec: Sky News: News Limited to cut 60 production jobs
The company is outsourcing the sub-editing of The Mercury in Hobart, Sunday Tasmanian, Geelong Advertiser, The Cairns Post, Townsville Bulletin, Gold Coast Bulletin, NT News, Sunday Territorian and Centralian Advocate to Pagemasters, a subsidiary of Australian Associated Press.
News Limited did not disclose how many positions would be made redundant, however the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) said 60 editorial positions would be affected…
In September, News Limited announced the outsourcing of sub-editing for more than 100 of its community newspapers to Pagemasters.
That move resulted in the loss of about 65 jobs at News Limited, while Pagemasters added 40 new staff to do the work… http://www.skynews.com.au/businessnews/article.aspx?id=824017
and who’s in charge of AAP/Pagemasters? long-time Murdoch journo, Bruce Davidson:
May 2011: News Ltd: Pagemasters founder hits out at critics after Fairfax decision to outsource sub-editing
FAIRFAX Media’s decision to outsource sub-editing of its Sydney and Melbourne mastheads to Pagemasters has been widely decried as a blow to quality journalism, but the man who started the newspaper services provider says his staffers do a better job than in-house employees…
Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood last week said in an email to staff that plans to outsource the sub-editing of news, sport and business stories at The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times to Pagemasters would not be scrapped, despite opposition from journalists.
But speaking to The Australian from New York, Bruce Davidson defied the critics to prove a drop in standards since Pagemasters began sub-editing most of the features pages for Fairfax broadsheets The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in 2008…
Few dispute that Pagemasters can offer increased productivity and efficiency: its nickname is “Slavemasters”…
Nevertheless, he sympathises with the plight of the 90 Fairfax production journalists who learned last week they faced losing their jobs to his company.
He was in the same situation himself in 1990 after being made redundant in the merger of News Limited Melbourne papers The Herald and The Sun News Pictorial into today’s Herald Sun.
It was that enforced career change that prompted Mr Davidson and former colleague Martin Thomas to start Pagemasters in 1991.
Soon afterwards, the company was acquired by Australian Associated Press, which is 94 per cent owned by Fairfax and News (publisher of The Australian). Davidson is now AAP chief executive… http://www.news.com.au/business/pagemasters-founder-hits-out-at-critics/story-e6frfm1i-1226052322447
the monolithic MSM. give thanx for the internet, and sites like jo’s.
The wetlands are one of Australia’s unknown environmental wonders.
Larger than their equivalent in Kakadu National Park, they support all manner of waterbirds, reptile and mammal life as well as being home to traditional owners.
Iconic, unspoilt wilderness.
Not any more!
IT IS early morning on Cape York and Environment Minister Tony Burke is bouncing across the vast Aurukun wetlands in the back of a speedboat.
No paddling around in a canoe, reducing his ‘carbon [sic] footprint to protect the environment for ‘our’ environment minister!
I’m looking for a detailed analysis of the cost of Global Warming avoidance to Australia. Ideally, all sources, and including citations.
My idea is to compare costs and benefits, but perhaps someone has already done that? Any help will be appreciated.
I think other attempts have been thwarted with the whole how to put a quantifiable number on something that hasn’t been proven to exist thing.
It’s kindof like trying to figure out the cost of not believing in the tooth fairy or santa claus or baba yaga the witch of the north.
For those that claim to have done this analysis (like the australian treasury dept), they won’t release the figures because their assumptions read like a terry pratchett novel.
Andy has a couple of good links to the costs of the RET.
That’s just the tip of the ice-berg since the poles and wire controversy raised by Gillard to obfuscate it is apparent that those costs are mainly to do with hooking up the renewables.
The CO2 tax is pick a number and double it; for instance carbon offsets alone could cot Australia $600 billion.
Thanks for the comments to date.
Still looking for more information.
As I calculate it, if Australia hadn’t gone the Kyoto route, the world would have reached it’s current high level of CO2 12 hours sooner. During those 12 hours the amount of CO2 in the air was cut to 99.98% of what it would otherwise have been.
As I understand it, we have to pay hundreds of millions under Kyoto. Who to, where does it say so, and how do we determine how much?
How much has been paid under Carbon Tax?
How much have we spent on the Office of the Climate Change Commissioner?
How much have we spent, State and Federal, on renewable subsidies because of climate change?
Those of you who thought that the battle over anthropogenic global warming would be won or lost based on scientific evidence think again. A group of faculty and students at San Juan State University has conspired to bring us The Green Ninja. What, you might ask, is the Green Ninja? It is an animated climate-action superhero aimed squarely at school children. In other words, mind poisoning climate alarmist propaganda meant to indoctrinate children into the green belief system. What’s worse, it is being funded by US government grant money. Not since communism has such a concerted effort been made to brainwash the young before they have a chance to learn how to think for themselves. Moreover, the conspiracy is international with an Australian film festival awarding “Green Ninja: Footprint Renovation” its Grand Prize.
The Green Ninja Team consists of faculty, staff and students from all across San Jose State University working together to bring creative and effective messages and tools to inspire climate change literacy. If that was all the project amounted to things would be fine, but there are bigger players in this little drama. The project has received a $390,000 grant from NASA to support professional development for teachers, and $20,000 from PG&E to pilot an energy reduction contest for Santa Clara County middle schoolers (PG&E is pushing energy conservation).
I’m not surprised. Obama has turned our Department of Education into his personal propaganda machine. And since NASA hasn’t a useful thing to do in this whole world anymore, why not turn its budget to good use as well?
I would be slapped down by Jo for saying what I really want to say. But I think you can guess accurately enough. And I deeply regret that our government has so long a reach that it can make a power grab for the minds of your children half a world away.
🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁
Child abusers belong in prison, even when they occupy high office — especially when they occupy high office. Instead they’re now celebrated.
Hello all! I discovered why Wayne Swan likes Bruce Springsteen. It is because Bruce is launching a Tour around Australia called “Wrecking ball”. Wayne applies that idea to his day job it seems.
I have copied this from the King Island website
It’s long but basically outlines all the produce that makes King Island a legend in produce.
The Island enjoys a reputation for excellence in the production of mouth watering fine beef, superior and delectable dairy products, as well as magnificent fresh seafoods. Other renowned produce include rain water, free-range eggs, honey, locally made breads, pies and cakes.
King Island has gained an extraordinary reputation for its dairy products. King Island cheeses and creams are in fashionable suburban delicatessens on mainland Australia and around the world and have become a byword for dairy quality. King Island Dairy are internationally renowned for masterfully handcrafting cheese and dairy products.
King Island’s grass-fed beef industry is widely regarded as Australia’s leading beef brand due to its consistent tenderness and mouth-watering flavour. JBS Australia processes Australia’s premium natural beef, King Island Beef. Russell’s Butchery carries a wide range of King Island meat, including lamb and locally made small goods.
The local fishing fleet have bases in Currie and Grassy, where wharf facilities and sheltered anchorages are available. It is estimated that the fishing industry brings about 20 million into the community annually. The Rock Lobster industry is a large employer with 18 boats operating from the Island. The majority of these vessels operate out of Currie Harbour, with a smaller number using Grassy Harbour. King Island is reputed to have the biggest and best rock lobster in Australia. The industry is protected by a quota system with seasonal closures, no female lobster may be taken between May and mid-November, and a complete shutdown from mid-September until November yearly. These measures ensure breeding stock can carry and dispatch their eggs therefore securing the industry’s future. Rock Lobster is sold onto the live export market via Victorian processors. If you would like cooked product on King Island then you must order in advance.
Giant crab is also a highly desirable commodity landed on the island, these creatures range in size from 2.3kg to 8kg each. The Giant Crab is caught sporadically (weather dependent) and are not always available.
Black and Greenlip abalone are targeted by the Islands two divers. This product is destined for the export market live, canned or dried. This sector is also protected by a strictly governed quota system.
The oyster farm at Sea Elephant River has a maximum capacity of 25,000 oysters with plans to expand the area under production. It sells approximately 5,000 dozen oysters per annum locally.
Victorian restaurants are a small market for live wrasse.
Kelp Industries manages a factory and site for receiving, drying and milling stormcast bull kelp (Durvillea Pototorum). The alginates produced are for local Australian customers and for export to Scotland and Norway. Harvesting kelp is a commonly recognized occupation on the island.
King Island Cloud Juice is pure rainwater sourced from the cleanest air in the world at 40 Degrees South. Cloudjuice is available locally but is also distributed to the rest of Tasmania, mainland Australia, Asia and Europe.
Fruit and vegetables are grown mainly for the local market, with a small amount of product sent to specialist markets in Victoria and Tasmania. Fresh seasonal produce, which can be bought direct from the growers, includes garlic, lettuce, tomatoes, apples, pears, raspberries and blueberries. Kelp chutneys and wild mountain pepper berries are sold through local retail outlets.
The King Island Grazing Trails offer itineraries for walking and food trails around King Island.
This ABC Tasmania report – states “The footprint for each turbine tower would be around 50×50 metres” – Yup – only little bits affected ABC Greenies.
Wind Mills on King Island will FU(K up the following:
1. Reduce dairy herds by 1/3 within 5 years.
2. Avian wildlife decimated within two generations.
3. Bats affected severely.
4. No more organic chickens with good egg production.
5. Horse population reduced to nags (no breeding program after ten years)
6. Sea mammals will have increased beaching.
7. Human population will leave (up to 15% within 6 years)
8. 200,000 tonnes of concrete implanted into the strata of King Island soil layer.
9. 160,000 tonnes steel constructed on King Island as statues.
10.8 years to huge backlash by local King Island residents when windmill farm fails.
11.Over run of $2 billion on construction of windfarm and cable to Victoria.
12.12 years to huge legal cases involving fraud from the developers, government departments etc by the people.
The feeling currently on King Island is slowly being worked on by the ABC, The ALP, The Government departments, Fairfax, The Greens etc for a positive feel good about being the best renewable energy production in the world per square kilometer. But – none of these people are giving them any information on the downsides of windmills in this project.
King Island Produce will cease to exist in 10 to 15 years – but will be a good place to visit and witness the biggest “killing field” by renewable energy in the modern world.
King Island residents are being bribed, bullied and led down the windy garden path. The carbon footprint of this project is shameful considering the size and beauty of this island.
The people involved in this “killing field” will eventually be held to account.
Dave re King Island,
My employer company worked the King Island Scheelite mines at Grassy for many years. I had the terrible job of wndering down a few times a year, staying in the Directors’ Lodge with sweeping views of the coast, enjoying the local cray (which is among the best in the world) and discovering other interesting facts. For example, known to a few and hard to find are gigantic tree stumps, about level with the ground now, that are several metres diameter. The trees (maybe Eucalyptus regnans) were harvested. The must have been among the biggest in the world.
In due course we exhausted the mine, part open cut then underground and undersea. The remains of mining were obliterated and a small tourism village established. As I recall, we gained an award of excellence for post-mining rehab.
One can ask it it was necessary or desirable to have either felled those giant trees or to have mined the scheelite (tungsten ore). The answer has to be yes, because this is almost definitionally ‘progress’. Tungsten punches higher than its weight, because in tiny quantities in machine tools it shapes many other metals to produce many useful goods. If you don’t want cars, turbines, windmills, don’t mine tungsten. If you don’t want to build large buildings in places where stone is rare, don’t fell large trees. Don’t progress at all, just sit in the dark and freeze.
I would not recommend an intensive windmill program on King Island. It’s too nice in its present state. Besides, it rather dangerous because there are many tiger snakes with particularly powerful venom and my bet is that these will keep some terrified workers off the Island. As for the kelp, I’d close that down as well because there is no substantiated scientific evidence that kelp acts as a fertilizer (and much that it does not – might as well use plastic bags instead) and its so-called ‘tonic’ chemicals are little more than a marketing ploy. That’s why gardening programmes have so many ads for kelp products – if scientifically evalualted, they fail the tests, so keep up sales by marketing repetition.
Which brings us back to windmill power. Also fails the test in most cases. Also drowning in marketing repetition.
I have a question for any botanists out there, and it concerns the use of tree rings as proxy data.
As a tree ages, is it possible that DNA senescence can affect tree ring thickness?
Adding further question to the above…
What percentage of the median lifetime is the safe limit for how long temperature could be judged from ring thickness before senescence throws off the proxy relationship?
And adding my own completely unqualified wild guess about the answer: any metric derived from an artefact produced by a process that is affected by DNA is never going to be a reliable proxy for anything, and the more factors in the process the less reliable it is. Oxygen-18 isotope ratio in clam shells is mainly temperature dependant, unaffected by DNA, so it’s reliable. Clam shell thickness is probably affected by genes for calcification so that’s not good as a temperature proxy over more than a single clam’s life. Tree ring thickness would be affected by soil nutrients, parasites, CO2 levels, rainfall, and unpredictable non-linear DNA response to all the above, so is surely hopeless as a proxy even in aggregate. So hopeless that favourable freak Russian trees will need to be anointed and declines will need to be hidden.
Although M&M are economic statisticians they are capable of reading the work of botanists, so at this juncture perhaps a choice quote from “The M&M critique of the MBH98 Northern Hemisphere Climate Index” (Energy & Environment · Vol. 16, No. 1, 2005. Page 88.) would give some broader perspective on the issue:
Cedar growth is optimal under cool and moist conditions [Kelly et al., 1994; Matthes-
Sears and Larson, 1990] and declines both in very hot and very cold weather (an upside-
down U). A similar upside-down U pattern has been reported for bristlecone pines and
two other conifer species [Schoettle, 2004]. In fact, the possibility of a quadratic ring
width response to temperature has been recently posited by D’Arrigo et al. [2004] in
connection with Twisted Tree Heartrot Hill. This possibility has far-reaching
implications on the entire enterprise of estimating past temperatures from tree ring
widths: with a quadratic (upside-down U) response, it is impossible to determine
whether a past narrow ring width resulted from cold or hot weather.
We carried out our own comparison between gridcell temperature in the Gaspé area
and Gaspé temperatures and did not find any correlation.
Cook and Peters [1997] discussed above, explored spurious end-of-sample growth
bias as an artifact of tree-ring chronology de-trending. Amazingly, in addition to the
Campito Mountain bristlecone pine site, their other main example was the Gaspé
series (cana036). In order to eliminate this bias, the underlying tree ring chronologies
would have to be re-calculated, a calculation which would have the effect of reducing
its hockey-stick shape, with implications that stand alone from any of the other issues
raised in this paper.
The Gaspé site was re-sampled in the early 1990s; we have seen a site chronology
showing that the re-sampling did not replicate the previously reported 20th century
growth spurt. However, the new data has not been published or archived, and the
originating authors have refused to disclose the new data on the grounds that the older
data “better” shows temperature and because their research is “mission-oriented”. We
have sought coordinates of the actual site in order to commission a re-sampling of the
site, but we have not received this information despite repeated requests.
Understanding whether cellular senescence prematurely suppresses ring response to temperature might be interesting scientifically, but for the purposes of informing policy response to climate change it pales into insignificance when compared to the factors highlighted by M&M’s 2005 critique:
1. The ring width by itself is not a uniquely invertible function of temperature.
2. Climate science is corrupt and won’t divulge raw measurements for audit anyway.
Whether directly caused by senescence (btw, DNA does not senesce as such)or just the fact that the tree is larger and is servicing more surface area each year, tree rings do change as you move from the centre out. These changes are known and should be calibrated at regular intervals.
Gee Aye: Re your comment ‘Whether directly caused by senescence (btw, DNA does not senesce as such)or just the fact that the tree is larger and is servicing more surface area each year, tree rings do change as you move from the centre out. These changes are known and should be calibrated at regular intervals.’
In humans, DNA changes occur with age.
Here’s just one example of a relevant paper:
Aging Cell. 2012 Nov 21.
‘Cytogenetic analysis of human cells reveals specific patterns of DNA damage in replicative and oncogene-induced senescence.’
Falcone G, Mazzola A, et al.
From the abstract:
‘Senescence is thought to be triggered by DNA damage, usually indirectly assessed as activation of the DNA damage response (DDR), but direct surveys of genetic damage are lacking.’
Hence my question for the botanists.
As regards tree ring proxies, Andrew McRae’s comment: ‘adding my own completely unqualified wild guess about the answer: any metric derived from an artefact produced by a process that is affected by DNA is never going to be a reliable proxy for anything, and the more factors in the process the less reliable it is’ is I think close to the truth – particularly as fractions of a degree are claimed to be measurable using proxies.
thanks Carbon, I know all this. And I said “DNA does not senesce as such”, and you provided two titles to back me up. I’m glad not everyone is as lazy as me.
So leaving this matter aside, you are right to look at individual variation with age. When looking at what influences an individual tree though the tree’s own genotype (VG) and the local environment (VE) and the interaction between them (VGE) are huge factors in determining growth characteristics. Rate of senescence is just one phenotype affected.
Gee Aye: Thank you for your comments.
In humans, genetic changes can result due to for example mutation, faulty DNA repair, deletion, duplication, or translocation to another part of the genome. These genetic ‘accidents’ can lead to enhancement, loss, or critical function of a gene product – thus old (senescent) DNA is likely to exhibit changes for a variety of reasons.
Since I first posted my question, I have found a botanist with an interest in tree rings. He may not wish to become involved with this discussion, so I can’t reference him for you – however, he comments that as far as he is aware, no one has tried to study the problem, but he thinks that it is unlikely that DNA changes could influence ringwidth.
He states that ringwidth is the product of many environmental inputs and physiological adaptations, which would have to change very substantially in order to appreciably modify ring width (that is, apart from changes that were fatal mutations to “crash the system”).
9 Dec: Daily Mail: Britain gives millions in ‘climate aid’ to tackle flatulent Colombian cows… plus £31m to Turkish wind farms and funding for talks with Kenyan ‘rain-makers’
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said: ‘After an Autumn Statement where people are making significant cuts, to have a £2.9billion budget for a random collection of projects which have questions hanging over them as to whether or not they are corrupt is just an extraordinary waste of money.
‘The Government does not exist to make charitable donations – that’s something people should do privately. We’re looking for a further £10billion of cuts and this seems to me the easiest place to start.’… http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2245300/Britain-gives-millions-climate-aid-tackle-flatulent-Colombian-cows–plus-31m-Turkish-wind-farms-funding-talks-Kenyan-rain-makers.html
I especially liked the “lying” comment. It is not allowed to be merely questioning and inquiring, it is necessarily lying now if you disagree. Seems like an angry person.
Methinks Matthew England is sensing that he could taking his donkey for a ride, RSN. Desperate times call for desperate action!
IIRC, the 1990-ish “projections” had a wide band of “uncertainty”; including the lower limit producing a cooling of 0.5°C. Of course the projection was based on the vast expanse of ignorance of factors which are not modelled adequately or at all.
Of course the IPCC themselves doesn’t call those things “projections” any more. They’re called “scenarios” … like Doom, SimCity, SimEarth, ESCM and CMIP.
Jo
Using data from the Vic desal plant’s web site I calculated this. To provide the flow to my garden tap ( 27 l/min, a good flow )requires over 8 kW at the desal plant.Watering your garden uses as much energy as turning on every element in your stove.
Monstrous from a green government.
I wonder why Bracksie replaced the entire board of Melbourne Water in his first year in office.
The State Government was too scared about creating dams due to pressure from Green groups therefore created a Desalination Plant which The Greens still did not support. The Desalination Plant is a terrible waste which could have instead funded schools, hospitals and vital infrastructure projects such as the Metro Link in Melbourne.
SMH is seen as leftwing over here, yet they claim this article is from UK’s conservative Telegraph. it’s rubbish wherever it’s from, shortcuts what he said, makes no comment on the veracity of his statements, but would appear to have been published only to use a photo that accenuates Monckton’s eyes. how disgusting can u get?
Combet wants $3bn p.a. to go into foreign climate funds while both Commonwealth and State Governments struggle to fund vital projects for the country’s future. Sigh…
love how Veolia, whose website claims: “Veolia Environmental Services is one of Australia’s largest providers of sustainable and innovative environmental solutions” looks set to make money out of this racket, which means more trucks on the highways!
10 Dec: Gold Coast Bulletin: Tweed to send rubbish to Queensland
Councillors will be asked on Thursday to endorse a proposal to transport the shire’s 40,000 tonnes of waste each year to a private landfill site near Ipswich until a replacement landfill site can be built.
The council is proposing to award the transport and disposal of rubbish to Veolia Environmental Services, trading as Ti Tree Bioenergy Pty Ltd, for up to three years… http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2012/12/10/443408_tweed-byron-news.html
9 Dec: Sky News: NSW waste still being dumped in Qld
The NSW government says it has plans to reduce the problem of NSW businesses trucking thousands of tonnes of rubbish to Queensland to avoid a waste levy…
Waste Contractors and Recyclers Association of NSW executive director Tony Khoury says about 2000 tonnes of waste a month is being trucked across the border to avoid a levy of up to $95.20 a tonne.
He says the problem has worsened since the NSW government lifted the levy in July to try to make recycling more attractive, at the same time that Queensland scrapped its waste levy of $35 per tonne.
‘Around four to five trucks are leaving (NSW) every couple of days,’ Mr Khoury told AAP on Sunday.
Each truck carried an average of 40 tonnes, he said.
There were even reports of landfill operators trucking waste from their own sites, as they were able to claim back the levy for material that goes out the door, he said…
A spokesman for Environment Minister Robyn Parker said the government was aware of the problem an announcement was planned in the new year.
He said consultancy firm KPMG had overseen a review into the NSW levy… http://www.skynews.com.au/eco/article.aspx?id=824640
9 Dec: Border Mail: More Sydney trash to be dumped in Queensland
Drivers heading north on the Pacific Highway will be jostling a rising number of B-double trucks following a decision by the Queensland government earlier this year to remove a levy on waste going to landfill…
Not only general waste is being put on the road, but a rising volume of contaminated waste is also being shipped north, including an estimated 3,000 tonnes of waste from Barangaroo, the redevelopment site on the western side of Sydney’s central business district.
“The Queensland government’s move has had the perverse effect of it receiving contaminated waste from NSW,” the Total Environment Centre’s Jeff Angel said of the changing dynamics… http://www.bordermail.com.au/story/1174198/more-sydney-trash-to-be-dumped-in-queensland/?cs=12
Kyoto deal to hit U.N carbon credit demand
DOHA, Dec 9 (Reuters Point Carbon) – A deal to extend the Kyoto Protocol will mean lower demand for U.N. carbon credits, government envoys said late Saturday, after nations that refused to take legal targets to reduce emissions were partly cut out of a deal to extend the life of the treaty’s carbon offset market… http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2091932
if the EU has 27 member States, & only 4 other countries are listed here, how do they get the 35 countries figure, much less the 38 countries which the MSM were reporting at the end of the conference? does anyone know?
9 Dec: Reuters: FACTBOX: Key decisions at Doha talks on climate change
It now obliges about 35 industrialised countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during the period 2008-12. Nations will pick their own targets for 2020.
But backers of Kyoto will dwindle from 2013 to a group including the European Union, Australia, Ukraine, Switzerland and Norway. Together they account for less than 15 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.2091941?&ref=searchlist
INSIGHT-US, China turned EU powers against airline pollution law
Dec 9 (Reuters) – The European Union’s landmark effort to charge foreign airlines for carbon emitted on flights in and out of Europe was already failing by the time French President Francois Hollande shared his deep concerns with the European Commission chief in October.
The U.S. aviation industry had mustered fierce political opposition, China was threatening to withhold aircraft orders from Airbus and the most influential European nations feared retaliation against their national carriers. Chinese and Indian airlines refused to submit emissions data; U.S. lawmakers were readying a law that could make it illegal to pay the tariff.
Ultimately it came down to an economy-versus-environment debate, with issues of national sovereignty and freedom of the skies also playing a decisive role in grounding the effort for now, to the relief of global carriers and airplane makers whose businesses stood to lose out…
The way forward for the law after the one-year moratorium looks uncertain.
The dominant influence of Britain, France and Germany within Europe could make it difficult to restart the clock, although Hedegaard insists it would start automatically if ICAO fails to deliver…ETCETC http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.2091973?&ref=searchlist
INSIGHT-US, China turned EU powers against airline pollution law
Funny how self-interest gets in the way of these idiotic plans isn’t it?
The little guy’s financial stake in carbon madness is collectively larger around the world than all the airlines combined. How can we turn that collective interest into a single force to be reckoned with?
of course it was newspoll that twice came out with polls suggesting the current govt had almost caught up with the coalition. the framing of this piece is a disgrace and tells us once again where AAP/News Ltd stand on the carbon tax/ETS. now, if they coulf only get turnbull back in place, wouldn’t they be happy little vegemites:
10 Dec: Australian: Power price fall under coalition in doubt by: By Paul Osborne, AAP Senior Political Writer
AUSTRALIAN households won’t see instant cuts in their power bills if the federal Labor government’s carbon tax is abolished, energy retailers say.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott plans to repeal the carbon price on big polluters if his coalition wins the 2013 national election and “instantly” reduce electricity bills by 10 per cent.
But Energy Retailers Association of Australia chief Cameron O’Reilly says that won’t be the case…
Legislative changes and regulatory reviews would have to take place before retailers could review pricing and notify customers.
But it’s not clear if prices would fall in any case…
Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said this showed electricity bills should fall when the carbon tax was abolished.
“We expect, on the basis of what the regulators have said, that the bills would fall by the full amount of the carbon tax charge,” Mr Hunt told AAP…
A spokesman for Climate Change Minister Greg Combet told AAP that Mr Abbott would not go ahead with the repeal, so the question of price reductions was redundant.
He said carbon pricing had none of the dire economic consequences predicted by Mr Abbott, and its revenue was delivering renewable energy, tax cuts and increases in family benefits and pensions.
Consumer group Choice estimates power prices have risen more than 50 per cent in real terms over the past five years, mainly due to network costs… http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/abbott-cant-instantly-cut-power-bills/story-fn3dxiwe-1226533495754
had to get up early today, and foolishly turned on ABC RN for a minute or two, precisely at the moment presenter paul barclay reacted with a positive yea the moment maxine mckew said Q&A had been interesting recently…did he know in advance she was going on to say because of the intellectually interesting politicking of rudd and turnbull? felt nauseous, turned off the radio and jumped in the shower:
notice how ABC doesn’t say mckew worked for ABC for more than 30 years, so Big Ideas was just one more incestuous, ABC-insider talkfest. perhaps they could have said she “was rewarded with a cadetship at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Brisbane in 1974 following a brief stint as a news analyst at the investment bank Goldman Sachs”, even tho it was brief and a long time ago! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxine_McKew
that taxpayers pay for the rubbish on ABC makes me angrier by the minute, and i say this as a lifelong labor, and later green, voter…who now votes informally.
6 Dec: San Francisco Chronicle: David R. Baker: California faces carbon conundrum
Refineries in California participating in the cap-and-trade system could be double taxed if the U.S. institutes a carbon-emissions levy…
One possible fix, suggested by some carbon-tax advocates, would involve Congress exempting California companies from the tax if they’re already participating in cap and trade. Young said the board would also be willing to tweak its own system, if necessary, to harmonize it with any federal global warming legislation.
“We promote the possibility of the federal government addressing climate change,” he said. “And on our part, we’re prepared to align our program in a way that allows California to move forward.”…
A tax, however, is simpler. It’s relatively easy to administer and easy for the public to understand. Cap-and-trade systems, in contrast, are fiendishly complex, full of rules meant to thwart market manipulation and protect specific industries from price shocks…
“Cap and trade provides more clarity on the level of emissions, and a carbon tax provides more clarity on costs,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who recently co-authored a proposal for a federal carbon tax. “You have a non-moving target, and that’s very appealing to businesses.”
***
A carbon tax even has the backing of Rex Tillerson, chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil Corp. He prefers the predictability of a tax to the wild price swings possible under cap and trade…
Interest in a carbon tax resurfaced this summer as part of the broader debate about taxes triggered by the presidential race and the looming “fiscal cliff.” President Obama has downplayed the idea and said he isn’t pursuing it. But several think tanks and advocacy groups have promoted it as a way to raise new revenue. It could be part of a grand bargain on taxes, providing enough cash to let the government cut other taxes while still addressing the deficit.
Some GOP support
And while many Republicans reject the idea, that opposition isn’t universal. Arthur Laffer, former economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, both support carbon pricing.
“There is an impeccable conservative lineage for this thing,” Muro said. His proposal calls for a carbon tax of $20 per ton, rising 4 percent each year. Of the $150 billion raised annually, $30 billion would go toward clean-energy research, while the rest would go to cutting other taxes and reducing the deficit… http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/California-faces-carbon-conundrum-4098030.php#page-1
There’s no conundrum. These fools have wanted this, now let them live a while with what they’ve created. Nothing will wake up California and America in general faster than actually living in the “green paradise” this stuff will create.
I say let them have their way. The sooner we hit bottom the sooner we can climb back up again. The best way to win the war might be to lose a strategic battle or two and let nature take its course.
Much will be lost to the cause. But frankly it seems lost anyway. So if people must suffer then let it accomplish something. 🙁
10 Dec: BUSTED: Police raid City office after we warn on the menace of investment scams for worthless carbon credits
By Tony Hetherington, Financial Mail On Sunday
They sound so ethically correct. They appear to offer a decent return on savings in these troubled times. Yet carbon credits are at the centre of increasingly adventurous scams.
And last Tuesday morning, police investigating a suspected fraud network of investment firms selling worthless carbon credits arrested ten men and a woman in co-ordinated raids on offices in the City of London, Essex and Hertfordshire.
The raids follow mounting official concern at the scale of carbon credit scams, where investors pay thousands of pounds for overpriced certificates that are said to be linked to environmentally friendly projects such as tree planting.
There is virtually no resale market for the certificates and investors typically lose every penny…
As police continued their enquiries at Hudson Forbes, one of the company’s bosses arrived, apparently late for work.
He was promptly arrested. Another late arrival said he had come for a job interview as a salesman. He left to look for work elsewhere. Hudson Forbes is linked to a number of other suspect investment firms. Police are known to be investigating CT Carbon, which Financial Mail warned against in August, and a firm of accountants connected to carbon credit companies and to an earlier land banking scam. Police declined to name those arrested for legal reasons, but said all had been released on bail while enquiries continue… http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2245046/Police-raid-City-office-Financial-Mail-warns-carbon-credits.html
No, that’s no plan for $250 cuts in power bills
(From Business Spectator) The third leg of Gillard’s plan requires the roll-out of so-called smart meters and the introduction of time-of-use charges designed to make consumption of electricity very expensive between 2pm and 8pm and much cheaper at other times in an effort to lop the top off peak demand…
comment by Billy Bob of the valley:
Yesterday Demand on electricity hardled moved between 2 and 8 pm. it was well below the summer peaks.
Today, there will be a slight increase. Well below the summer peaks.
In winter demand is well belwo the summer peaks. As it is for most of Autumn and Spring.
But for some reason we need to pay more during a blanket certain time frame.
There “not very smart metres” if thats the case.
in winter we will have to sit in the dark with the heater off and save cooking tea to after 8 pm to save money…
comment by Maurice of Sydney
Our new home in Sydney built 2 years ago had a ‘Smart’ Meter installed which I believe is a mandatory requirement for new homes in NSW.
Our young family of 2 all under the age of 3, cannot even attempt to defer electricity use between 2-8pm.
As a result our bill was excessive, having sold that home and moved into an older house without the ‘Smart’ Meter, the difference during the same quarter is over $200! (& that is with the price increases in the past year)
Calling them ‘Smart Meters’ is like Gillard using the term ‘Clean Energy’, its all a scam and another socialist attempt to modify our behavior at the expense of hard working families….
10 Dec: The Hill: Ben Geman: House Energy Chairman Upton: Exxon’s support for carbon tax isn’t ‘very serious’
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) suggested Monday that Exxon Mobil Corp. isn’t pushing lawmakers especially hard for a carbon tax despite the company’s public embrace of the idea.
“I don’t think it is a very serious effort on their part,” Upton said on Fox News. Upton said he told Exxon representatives personally that it’s a nonstarter…
Upton made the comments when asked about support for a carbon tax from Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell.
However, a tax isn’t Shell’s preferred option. Shell, in a joint statement in November with a range of businesses, affirmed its support for somehow creating a cost for carbon emissions.
But the company said its preferred approach for pricing carbon is a more flexible system such as pollution permit trading under an emissions cap (known as cap-and-trade). Exxon, in contrast, says a tax would be better policy…
“Combined with further advances in energy efficiency and new technologies spurred by market innovation, a well-designed carbon tax could play a significant role in addressing the challenge of rising emissions,” an Exxon spokeswoman told Bloomberg in November…
Carbon-tax proposals have, however, gained traction in climate policy circles of late despite the dim political prospects.
For instance, former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), who recently launched a new energy program at George Mason University, is pushing for a tax on fossil fuel production that would be offset by reductions in income taxes… http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/271877-rep-upton-exxon-carbon-tax-support-isnt-very-serious
given most people still get their news from free-to-air TV (tho the internet is making big inroads), why isn’t stuff like this headlining TV news current affair program nightly. i am almost speechless. LOL.
10 Dec: The Hill: Ben Geman: House Energy Chairman Upton: Exxon’s support for carbon tax isn’t ‘very serious’
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) suggested Monday that Exxon Mobil Corp. isn’t pushing lawmakers especially hard for a carbon tax despite the company’s public embrace of the idea.
“I don’t think it is a very serious effort on their part,” Upton said on Fox News. Upton said he told Exxon representatives personally that it’s a nonstarter…
Upton made the comments when asked about support for a carbon tax from Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell.
However, a tax isn’t Shell’s preferred option. Shell, in a joint statement in November with a range of businesses, affirmed its support for somehow creating a cost for carbon emissions.
But the company said its preferred approach for pricing carbon is a more flexible system such as pollution permit trading under an emissions cap (known as cap-and-trade). Exxon, in contrast, says a tax would be better policy…
“Combined with further advances in energy efficiency and new technologies spurred by market innovation, a well-designed carbon tax could play a significant role in addressing the challenge of rising emissions,” an Exxon spokeswoman told Bloomberg in November…
Carbon-tax proposals have, however, gained traction in climate policy circles of late despite the dim political prospects.
For instance, former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), who recently launched a new energy program at George Mason University, is pushing for a tax on fossil fuel production that would be offset by reductions in income taxes… http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/271877-rep-upton-exxon-carbon-tax-support-isnt-very-serious
Typical politics. I kiss your behind and you kiss mine. I pretend to care about the environment and you do to. The scary thing is people are so stupid they actually believe this has some new meaning. It’s still I buy you a $10 lunch and you buy me a $10 lunch. Zero sum but we both look generous. How depressing…..
I suppose so long as we don’t end up like Europe or Australia where actual loses are incurred, we should be grateful. As long as it’s a “fake” exchange, we retain status quo. However, if Exxon misjudges its clout and gets the enviro ball rolling too fast, it will be a very bad thing for this country.
It’s called playing both ends against the middle and is hardly new in politics. The idea is to be sufficiently in favor with whatever faction comes out on top that you retain your influence on Capitol Hill.
Let’s face it squarely, we all want politics to go our way. The idea of fairness and impartiality is not a natural one. We’ve learned to at least appear to want it because of fear that the other guy will get an advantage detrimental to our own interests.
That’s pretty cynical I admit. But who will argue against it? Do we not want to come out on top in this fight for instance?
Yes, we want to come out on top of this fight. I would hope the difference would be that we would not agree that chemicals are all evil in exchange for global warming is a lie. Science wants facts, not tradeoffs. Politics wants to win any way possible and cares little for facts.
It seems likely that the desire not to look bad is exactly how bad people win battles. “If you say anything bad about climate change, we will shred you.” So people pretend to go along until the true costs are revealed and then it’s often too late. At that point, natural consequences or complete destitution lead people to change.
I don’t think your view is cynical–it’s just reality as it stands today.
Lord Monckton has exposed Cop18 and the associated gravy train for what it is … Bullshit!!
Well done to the Monckster!!
The fact that it is not reported on MSM is disgraceful!
While we tsk tsk over some stupid Sydney DJ’s…
… The Govts of this country continue the green UN line!
Be that, Qld, NSW, Vic or anywhere…
What the F$&k is going on?
Where are our leaders?
Where are our Scientific Leaders?
Where is our common sense??
…..sigh !!
220
The same question may have been asked in the ‘Dark Ages’ by the odd insightful peasant, as the Church sequestered all power on Earth and in Heaven. Not only was one doomed to misery on Earth, but it was ensured you were doomed in perpetuity. The important question now becomes: when is the next Renaissance?
80
I agree with your assessment. The illusion of human control, in a world controlled by cause-and-effect, is at the base of the conflict over Earth’s changing climate.
The best available experimental data and observations on our small part of the cosmos suggest that neutron repulsion [1] is the fountain of energy that feeds the stream of cause-and-effect as the universe expands [2].
World leaders may not allow government scientists to openly discussion the energy source that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Aug 1945. That seems to be the same energy source that was historically represented as the Hindu Trinity: The Creator, Preserver and Destroyer of the world.
[1] “Neutron repulsion,” The Apeiron Journal 19, 123-150 (2012): http://tinyurl.com/7t5ojrn
[2] “Is the Universe expanding?” The Journal of Cosmology 13, 4187-4190 (2011): http://journalofcosmology.com/BigBang102.html
10
Out of almost nowhere has come the technology of fracking for natural gas and oil. Reliable, abundant and very much cheaper than ‘renewables’, such as wind and solar power.
Watch how the greenies and left wing politicians will try and sabotage the use of this technology in Europe and Australia. Exaggerated and mostly false stories of seismic events and groundwater pollution will be their main arguments. Russia’s Gazprom is rumoured to be amongst those with vested interests seeking to sabotage the development of this technology in Western Europe.
The US appears destined to soon become energy independent because of fracking. The USA is definitive proof on how well this technology works.
Yet huge financial subsidies will continue to be poured into expensive and unreliable ‘green energy’ projects, when a nearby cheaper and much more reliable energy source is just begging to be developed.
Fracking is just another instance of the utter pointlessness of the Global Warming Industry.
183
It’s started here already Peter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztFT4V6pN60
Interestingly the Innaminka region is where Flannery’s unsuccessful geothermal drilling is occuring.
10
Watched the video.
Typical greenie nonsense designed to scare and provide skewered information.
Anyhow, the Chinese manufacturers of solar panels and wind turbines will be pleased with it.
After all, they are the people whose interests matter to the type of government you have in Australia, the UK and far too many other western countries.
12
Peter Miller,
NASA’s just released some hi res gravity of the moon, showing it was battered by early impact far more than thought. The same applies to the Earth, though the surface of the Earth has changed more and makes the shallow Earth properties hard to determine. While I don’t have much worry about fracking as practised, I’d have more worry when we get deeper and have to rely more on seismic because we might find that deep ground conditions are hard to read in advance. BTW, the NASA article also impacts on sea level change calculations bt GRACE. http://news.yahoo.com/moon-surprisingly-battered-lunar-gravity-map-reveals-193309710.html
10
Fracking has been around since the 1950’s. It did not “come out of nowhere”. It was brought to the forefront when it became evident that it was the environmentalists’ worst nightmare–cheap, abundant energy. We can’t have that, you know.
30
Gazprom. Now there’s a name you can trust! Mwahahaha!!!!
00
Lyndon Larouche and associated contacts exposed all this “green” bullshit, way before the internet was in full swing.
Laurence Hecht, take a bow!
Nice move from Monckton in the current political climate.
81
Frack off, Obama. And hopefully, frack off Julia. Does Aus have any gas resources economically accessible by the new slickwater fracking process invented in the late 90s?
I predict that rising bills will be absorbed by the People without more than grumbling. It is when the power cuts begin that democracy will reassert itself and this nonsense will be over.
90
http://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/.a/6a0177444b0c2e970d017d3e93d9a2970c-pi
50
Re borehole temperature profiles: the equation governing temperature down boreholes is the diffusion equation, in which the second derivative of temperature with respect to distance down the hole is proportional to the first derivative of temperature with respect to time. If you know the rate at which heat comes up from below due to geological processes, and the temperature at the surface as a function of time, and the temperature profile down the borehole at one time, then you can solve the equation to give the temperature profile down the borehole at any later time (in particular, the present). If you get rid of ‘transient’ contributions to the solution which decay with time then the result does not depend on the initial profile, just on the other things.
The aim is then to use the measured temperature profile down the hole as the solution to this equation and then ‘invert’ it mathematically to find the temperature at the surface as a function of time running back into the past.
However the diffusion equation is time-asymmetric, which means that it leaks information, which means that you cannot do this inversion uniquely. More than one time profile of the temperature at the surface can correspond to the same solution of the equation. It is possible to say if a particular time profile of the temperature at the surface is *consistent* with the observations, but not to say that it is the only one that is consistent.
This means, of course, that it is possible to cheat (if you wish to be actively dishonest), or to stop looking as soon as you have found an answer that matches your prejudices (which is not dishonest but is lousy science).
Is this why borehole analyses find hockey sticks?
50
Something similar with ice cores; poor old Jaworowski was pilloried for his pressure leakage and downwards ‘diffusion’ of CO2 theories so that ice cores were unreliable.
As Richard C notes:
60
Precisely. The assumption is made that heat from the surface progresses underground as waves that can be reconstructed hundreds to thousands of years later. Ref the moon article above http://news.yahoo.com/moon-surprisingly-battered-lunar-gravity-map-reveals-193309710.html same thing applies, jumbled geology in old rocks. On land, you have no chance of an understandable sequence of heat waves transmitting into the earth because of the heterogeneity of the shallow Earth to the depths drilled. I’ve not studied the math on ice, but remember that the base of some ice sheets like at Vostok has water, so that implies a thermal gradient with a direction opposite to the heat moving from the surface, whose magnitude would be hard to measure. In an open hole (as apposed to one that no longer takes a probe) there is air or water or both moving up and down all the time, smearing any signal in the temperatures of the walls of the hole. I don’t know why they bother.
20
To continue: the Greens function for the diffusion equation, from which all solutions are assembled, is a spreading Gaussian form in space with a width proportional to the square root of time. So it is unable to handle negative time values. (The square root of a negative number makes no physical sense in this context.) Yet the boundary condition at the surface involves the surface temperature for all times, running back indefinitely, before the instant of the borehole temperature profile measurement. This is a nonsense.
00
what a laugh:
9 Dec: SMH: Tom Arup: Evans peddles change on energy use
It was the biggest moment of Cadel Evans’s sporting life – his extraordinary triumph at the 2011 Tour de France. And yet he wanted to get Cate Blanchett a message.
The actor had been wrapped up in a political storm after appearing in advertising backing the carbon tax. Some media had dubbed her ”Carbon Cate”.
Evans followed the debate, and at the end of last year’s Tour declared to the press: ”Let’s just say I like Cate Blanchett a lot.”…
”If they [the government] just didn’t use the word tax, it would have gone a whole lot better,” the champion cyclist said with a laugh…
Evans – who spends off-seasons in Barwon Heads on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula – now wants to make a contribution to environmental issues as well. He has reached out to people such as Australia’s Chief Climate Commissioner, Professor Tim Flannery, to learn more.
On Tuesday night, Evans will lead an event at Melbourne’s Federation Square to promote sustainability in everyday life. It is sponsored by global engineering company Siemens, and will be attended by a suite of state and federal ministers, along with Professor Flannery.
Evans will lead a peloton of 480 cyclists to power lights in the shape of a Christmas tree with the energy they produce by stationary riding. During the event it is hoped two Guinness world records will be broken: one for most power produced by pedalling on bicycles for one hour; and another for the most lights lit by pedal power.
Evans said it was all about spreading a message about a cultural shift to consume less in our daily lives…
He traces his interest in the environment to his mother, who over the years has given him books on sustainability and climate change. The first he remembers was David Suzuki’s From Naked Ape to Superspecies, which explored humanity’s dominance over and damage to the natural world.
But Evans readily admits he is by no means perfect, and concedes there is much more at home he can do to be sustainable.
***And while cycling is generally seen as an environmental positive, Evans said it became less so when you are jetting around the world to compete in races that are televised by helicopters and followed by hundreds of cars and motorbikes…
He said where he believes he can be of best use will be lending his profile to help educate about the issues. There are early plans with Siemens to run in-school programs, for example.
Evans said education and climate change were tied more often than thought, and it would be crucial if there was to be a better understanding and acceptance of some of the changes to be made.
”It is a slow process, but to make big changes takes time. Ultimately we all will make a cultural change, we are going to have to, if we want to have a quality of life for our children and their children,” Evans said.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/evans-peddles-change-on-energy-use-20121208-2b24m.html
19 Nov: AFR: John Stensholt: Cadel chases a cause, not cash
Photo Caption: Fired up for sustainability . . . Tim Flannery, left, Jeff Connolly and Cadel Evans. Photo: Arsineh Houspian
That win, after many near misses, gave his popularity – and sponsor appeal – a large boost.
But even as Evans, who turns 36 next February, moves closer to retirement, he is still reluctant to sign a large number of endorsement deals in order to cash in on his fame before his sporting career ends.
“If I’m going to endorse something I won’t just do it for the sake of a company’s bottom line, it’s got to be a good cause,” Evans tells The Australian Financial Review…
“Since winning the Tour de France, I’ve had so many sponsorship opportunities that as an individual I couldn’t commit to them all anyway, but I’d rather just work on a few good-quality projects because I’m still trying to win the Tour in 2013 – and that by itself is not an easy task,” he says.
Having already aligned himself with local companies such as Ernst & Young, Swisse vitamins and Paradice Investment Management, Evans has also this month signed a deal with the engineering and environmental technology giant Siemens.
The Siemens deal, Evans claims, fits with his and his family’s views about the need to live more sustainably in order to protect the environment – topics he will help promote as a Siemens sustainability ambassador, which will involve him trying to help raise awareness of sustainable actions in the community.
Critics may claim Evans would say that about a sponsor, but he insists he considers his personal ideals before signing endorsement deals.
“I wanted to do this as an individual and secondly the public seems to notice what I do and what I say. If I can do something that is a good cause and make the world a better place, I’d like to do it.”
Evans has signed a three-year agreement with Siemens, which will involve appearing at an event in Melbourne in December called FutuRide, in which more than 1000 riders on stationary bikes will try to enter the Guinness Book of Records by generating enough power to light up giant Christmas trees.
There are also plans for a primary school program that will use cycling as a catalyst to help students learn more about sustainability…
Evans says he was also attracted to Siemens because he has prominent environmentalist Tim Flannery on the company’s sustainability advisory board.
Flannery says he joined the advisory board, which was formed in 2010, to try to gain a better understanding of the business sector.
“There probably is a traditional view that business and the environment are separate, so I think this helps break it down.”.
http://afr.com/p/lifestyle/sport/cadel_chases_cause_not_cash_zBPKNvI1c6uCcOe0howiYM
20
yep -there are lot’s of good green jobs, pedalling the bicycles to generate the electricity when all the other green power schemes aren’t producing.
10
Hook the bicycle riders up to the desal plant.
Really, could anyone be worse to seek for advice than Siemens (sell windmill parts by the shipload, no proven benefit in almost all cases, slaves of PIK), Flannery (sells propaganda by the shipload, no proven benefit in almost all cases), Swisse Vitamins (sell pills by the shipload, no proven benefit in almost all cases), PIM (sells money and advice to by the shipload, no guarantee of benefit in most cases).
Does one have to be gullible to win the Tour? You have to respect his performance, but I pity his thoughts.
10
Considering that I am a massive cycling and Cadel Evans fan, it is very hard for me to say this but he is talking out his backside.
30
Siemens, as a very quick and casual online search will confirm, are not about the Green, they are about the Power.
Go on their website and they will happily tell you they can make 1900 MW steam turbines. The piddly amount of money they give to people like Evans is pure corporate image and they will happily wear a green badge for as long as it makes the public feel all warm and fuzzy about it. They currently support renewables and will continue to do so as long as someone is willing to pay them to do so (ie, with government grants and subsidies) and the moment that money stops they will calmly close that business unit and go back to making their profit from coal and gas fired units.
Hard fact is that the average reader of this blog is probably greener then Siemens.
Still, as long as Cadel gets a nice signed photo of Carbon Cate to put on his bedside table I guess all is good in the world 😛
30
I suspect that Siemens and G.E. (and others) are into “green energy” because they can sell generating capacity twice: Green generating capacity in nameplate only and then real capacity to prematurely replace conventional plant with plant capable of actually supplying electricty on demand.
It’s the “green” bit that makes the traditional plant and distribution grid equipment “obsolete” because it introduces massive generating perturbations which the old equipment was never designed to accommodate.
Economics from the school of the broken window fallacy.
00
For those short of cash, here a ‘good scheme’ to get some.
1. get gullible government
2. Burning savanna creates carbon credit cash
indigenous organisation could earn up to $500,000 a year by selling carbon credits it creates by deliberately burning savannas ahead of the fire season to reduce the amount of pollution. The Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) has gained approval to generate the credits on its 1800 square kilometre Fish River property which is a two hour drive south of Darwin. It’s the first indigenous project approved under the carbon farming initiative (CFI) which forms part of the federal government’s carbon price regime. Under the CFI, grasslands can be purposely burnt early in the dry season to reduce fuel load and therefore the severity of late-season fires. Savannas are also burnt to create fire breaks. “Both actions reduce the high level of pollution that would otherwise be generated by out-of-control wild fires,” parliamentary secretary Mark Dreyfus said in a statement on Friday. The ILC will be able to generate up to 20,000 carbon credits each year. CFI credits are expected to sell for less than the current $23-a-tonne fixed price but Fish River could still earn close to $500,000 annually. “The ILC’s carbon credits can be sold to big polluting businesses that need to offset their carbon price liability,” Mr Dreyfus said. “The extra income will be used to help conserve the significant biodiversity of the Fish River property, support indigenous jobs and training and investigate other investment opportunities.” Historically around 70 per cent of the property would be burnt by uncontrolled fires each year. But in recent years that’s been cut to just three per cent by combining traditional knowledge with satellite tracking and mapping technology. Carbon credits created under savanna-burning projects are Kyoto compliant and count towards Australia’s national emission-reduction targets.
link for above story http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/burning-savanna-creates-carbon-credit-cash/story-e6frfku9-1226509215115
20
Burning grass in the Top End – there’s been a scheme going with the local power company for a decade or more. They pay indulgences to aborigines who burn cooler fires and generate a smaller % of low concentration but more absorbing GHG.
I wonder about the ultimate source of the funds? Perhaps the electricity and fuel consumers of the Top End?
10
We must destroy the planet to save it. Always start in areas with few people, pay them to participate in your scheme and tell everyone how environmentally green you are. This all reminds me of the plantation owners in colonial America. Rich people running rip shod over those who could not fight back. My point is not that this was definitely a bad thing. but rather if it was wrong to colonize America and take huge pieces of land and convert them to plantations, it is wrong to pay poor people in third world countries to burn their land, stop farming and grow useless trees, etc. If this behaviour is good (as environmentalists claim) then Americans have no reason to do anything but praise Columbus and others who did the same to America.
00
We’ve been watching the SyFy channel all Saturday afternoon…………
Ice Age 2012, Polar Ice, Ice Twisters and coming up is Ice Quake and then Snowmageddon. Why is it that none of the “disaster movies” are ever about being too hot? You’d think that with high temps they be filling the screen with young nubile young ladies all in bikinis and well muscled men going shirtless…….
80
Wendy,
Because the cooling is all because of the warming apparently (and yes, I’m struggling to understand how that can be the case too).
70
Cooling is the new warming !
60
I get it now; it’s phase inversion. The colder it gets the hotter it gets. They must have been hanging the thermometers upside down (good enough for government work, don’t you know).
It certainly will need research. So where’s my government grant? I may even be able to patent something out of this, who knows?
Don’t you wish they got the inverse of the grant money they use up?
70
Some thermometers, at least, are used horizontally. That’s fair. Oh, and I don’t mean medically.
20
I certainly hope not! 🙂
10
Dueling protests on opposite sides of the world, one hot, one cold, one in a major city, the other, a small town. The winner, the small town in very hot weather (over 40C). The cold city was about climate change or frakking, the hot town was about preserving the world class dinosaur trackways for science, rare flora and fauna, and local heritage and culture. Hot trumps cold every time.
30
IF it’s about heat it involves volcanoes, etc. Heat is just not scary. Even though it kills hundreds every year. Plus, all those bikinis would distract from the complex plot of the show!
20
Wrong.
Three records will in fact be broken, the third record being the single largest public gathering of dim luminaries…given the average cyclist can barely light a 100-watt lamp.
Or is this perhaps the informal introduction of a new renewable that accustoms people to another outlandish Green idea? Are we surreptitiously being introduced to future policy?
There is a whisper that plans are being discussed to harness the resources of the incarcerated. Given new LED technology, thousands of peddling prisoners may go some way to lighting selected streets of the Green elite. Regrettably, some streets would of necessity need to be kept dark to maintain the renewable aspect of the resource, but all in all, the Green-Labor policy makers are delighted with their new rehabilitation policy that sees 22,492 internees put to an obvious beneficial societal use. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri-crime-prisoners
Future policy plans include sustainability, that is ‘everyone doing their bit’ at public central generating peddle-in’s. It is considered that an hour a day will allow one to maintain one’s legal citizenship. Hours may be traded in the markets courtesy of the Peddle Trading Scheme. As this policy will go global, the UN has commenced discussion with the World Trading Bank for a global market in peddle power. The disenfranchised ‘denier’ community will be placed in State Peddle Camps. It is envisaged that they will peddle their way to sanity and health. Finally, it has been calculated that the exhaust emissions of the peddle generating scheme may be off-set by suitable planting around and throughout such facilities. This will have the addition useful purpose of screening any passerby from the heaving, sweating, steaming mass of power generating humanity and their whip cracking overseers.
We are after all destined to ‘die in the saddle’.
70
So will Tony Abbot be on his bike for this one??
01
So regarding these radio hosts and the backwash from their stunt.
I wonder how many people throwing stones at these guys are the same people who listened to numerous other immature prank calls and found them entertaining? How many will continue to in a few weeks time?
Just like the muppets who after Diana Spencers death were scathing about the paparazzi but who still go out and by the junk magazines with photos taken by the paparazzi.
And yes, the word is… Hyppocrites!
And so now we all need to watch over the next week as the people who demand this immature crap all vent their guilty spleens all across the lamestream media in some sort of catarthic spectacle of self righteous hypocrisy.
Spare us all from the sheeple. Please…
42
Actually, the word is Hypocrites.
30
Right you are. Thanks for that
20
Just think how many jobs can be created by shifting our power production over to bike pedal generation. One job for every 100 watts! We will have millions of new jobs!
This is a green politician’s dream.
Of course they are to illiterate too realize that the price of electricity will be somewhere beyond $80/kw-hr (at $8/hr for the peddler) And the peddlers will certainly produce more CO2 than a power plant per kw-hr.
Thanks
Jk
50
MadJak, not sure about ‘how many’ hypocrites or the overall ‘hypocrisy’ involved, though I suppose the circulation figures might help in that direction?
Given decades of shriveling sound-bites, diminished attention spans, focus upon only the most superficial (argument, fashion, moment etc…), an MSM sleeping on the job, celebration of fatuous toilet humour – vacuous shows with vacuous hosts catering to mass societal immaturity, it has come to finally pass that many? most? have perhaps succumbed to ‘mushroomhood’.
In this state, kept in the dark and fed an endless stream of manure the belief that they are happy is secure. Little will rock their shelf. Indeed, The Black Adder #1 today laments our loss of common sense. I heard recently that current occupational health and safety thinking places no value on common sense, decrying it to be a ‘subjective’ phenomena (!!). Little wonder then that the mantra ‘saving the planet’ has such appeal. It radiates ‘feel-good’ factor.
No, there may be few hypocrites left because so few are really listening. Instead, the legions of the ‘brain dead’ MSM and entertainment shows continue to busily ‘suck the life blood’ (ref. ‘vampires’ & ‘zombies’) out of all that once passed as ‘civilisation’.
90
And so we must sit back and tolerate their endless misdirection of their own guilt driven self loathing.
30
That’s the odd thing about happiness. If you believe you’re happy, you are happy.
As to how one gets one’s mind into such a state without the application of drugs, I am not entirely certain.
Though I note that Washington has recently achieved a decisive conclusion in The War On Drugs: if ya can’t beat`em, join `em!
00
The greenies hate fracking because it has made natural gas, in the US at least, extremely cheap. They are upset because that fact tends to make alternative energy look like not such a great alternative. They are trying to figure out how to make it more expensive. They are also upset that the green energy subsidies are headed for the infamous fiscal cliff.
61
obviously, we’re also going to pay, or pretend to pay, or make loans, or force poor countries to buy our renewables, or whatever, but it will still require carbon dioxide trading getting off the ground, and that is something every person with money in any kind of Super/Pension Fund can take action to stop from happening:
9 Dec: Telegraph: : Doha: climate change talks end with compensation deal for poor nations that could cost billions
By Louise Gray, Doha and Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Angry exchanges between delegations over the measure brought threats of walkouts and even tears from small island states, which pushed to have the new mechanism introduced despite fierce opposition from the United States…
It comes as economists warned that commitments to cut carbon emissions – agreed earlier in the talks as part of negotiations carried out by the European Union as a whole – could cost the British economy around £23 billion by 2020.
Other major economies such as the USA, China and Japan refused to sign up to similar commitments, leaving businesses in the UK and other European countries at a competitive disadvantage…
Ed Davey, the climate change and energy secretary, who is leading the UK delegation, said the UK had backed putting a reference to loss and damage into the agreement and was in favour of stronger targets on climate change.
There were cheers around the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha yesterday when the final text of the agreement setting out the plan to introduce the compensation measures was passed despite objections from Russia and the USA.
Ed Davey, the climate change secretary, said poor countries were already dealing with rising sea levels and the seepage of salt into water supplies – and rich countries like the UK had a duty to help by developing a loss and damage mechanism.
“I do think we have a duty to help people who are losing their countries below the waves,” he said.
Mr Davey said recent floods in Britain showed how important it was to deal with floods…
The exact details of the loss and damage scheme, including how much developed countries will have to pay, are expected to be worked out at future meetings of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, next year or in 2014…
However major polluters including China, USA, Canada, Russia and Japan did not sign up to the pact…
David Cameron, the Prime Minister, is likely to face heavy criticism from his backbenches if Britain is left facing expensive carbon cutting targets that are not being matched by industrial competitors.
More than 100 Conservative MPs – including several within the Cabinet – are said to be climate change sceptics.
Clacton MP Douglas Carswell, one of the leading Conservative climate-change sceptics, said: “Britain should have absolutely no part in this. The whole science of climate change is highly questionable. By pursuing new emissions targets we are only accelerating a process of deindustrialisation in Europe, which is transporting manufacturing jobs to other countries.
“The United States was right to oppose this. We would be doing the same if we had democratically accountable people negotiating on our behalf. But we have European Union officials negotiating on our behalf who are immune to the ballot box.” …
There are more than 17,000 delegates attending the talks in the desert in Doha. It is estimated that the talks themselves have had a carbon footprint of more than 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide – equivalent to cutting down 64 hectares of rainforest.
The Swarovski chandeliers in the main meeting hall and a skyline of sky scrapers, with delegates ferried around in limousines, have made a surreal setting for the talks. Qatar, one of the world’s richest nations, but with plentiful supplies of cheap energy from its oil, has the largest carbon footprint per person in the world…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9732226/Doha-climate-change-talks-end-with-compensation-deal-for-poor-nations-that-could-cost-billions.html
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With the USA, China, Japan, Russia and Canada not signing up there is no hope of Kyoto No.2 getting off the ground. With the undeveloped countries not called on to contribute, and South Korea, NZ, South Africa, Brazil and India all very likely to reject it, something like 90% of the world economy isn’t in line for any contributions.
That leaves Europe and Australia to pay the bills. Thanks Julia.
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A good news story just so we all remember what we are fighting for,worth a read all.
Keep up the good fight against Tyranny and spread the word
http://www.northlandsnewscenter.com/news/iron-range/Bemidji-Grocer-Retires-Gives-Company-to-Employees-182122541.html
20
The tolerant and caring Green movement is at it again — this time opposing fracking in the US state of Colorado.
Such nice people.
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/ci_22124306/demonstrators-disrupt-delay-boulder-county-oil-and-gas
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Better to have Jack the Ripper as a house guest than these people meddling with your energy supply.
00
The stupidity of ivory tower environmentalists.
Now that the Murray Darling Basin Plan is signed off, and millions of megalitres are to be taken away from the nations food bowl, and just as the environment movement is doing collective congratulatory back slapping we have this;
“The endangered Australasian Bittern – source of bunyip legends. If you’re near rice in the Riverina, keep your eyes peeled for this intriguing species and sing out if you find one. We don’t have long before the rice will have grown enough to conceal them. Then we’ll be relying on their booming calls to locate them”.
http://www.birdlife.org/community/2012/12/bitten-by-the-bittern-bug-down-under/
The effect of the MDBP will be to decimate rice growing, which the endangered Bittern has taken to like a Bittern to water. The effect will be to further endanger the bird by reducing the habitat it has adapted to.
The Ricegrowers Association of Australia is working closely with local wildlife ecologists to survey Bittern numbers.
http://www.rga.org.au/f.ashx/Media-Release-Bitterns-boom-in-rice.pdf
I wonder how long it will be before the light bulb moment when environmentalists realize the wild life is brighter than they are and that rice growing sustains wildlife, and is therefore now a necessary part of the ecosystem.
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I can recall the building of the Fogg Dam near Darwin, the new start Humpty Doo rice plantations and the invasions of the magpie geese. In the end they brought in the military with machine guns but did not make a dint in bird numbers. There must be something special in rice, like in the middle of Mandy Rice Davies.
10
no doubt at all, it’s all about carbon dioxide trading:
9 Dec: Australian: AAP: Kyoto signing good for industry: Emerson
Dr Emerson said this gave Australian businesses the capacity to participate in global emissions trading markets and access to lowest cost abatement measures.
“What we’re doing is ensuring that Australian industry is in there with a predictable regime and is able to tap into those international markets,” he told ABC TV on Sunday.
“We’re doing the right thing not only by Australian industry but by the planet.”
The 27-member European Union, Switzerland and eight other industrialised countries joined Australia in signing the extension to Kyoto, the first leg of which expires on December 31.
They represent about 15 per cent of global emissions…
Dr Emerson said it wasn’t as if the major countries were doing nothing on climate change at the moment.
He noted there were at least 10 states within the US which had set up emissions trading schemes.
“Within a year we’ll have either a carbon price or an emissions trading scheme in 50 or more national and sub-national jurisdictions covering well over a billion people,” he said.
“That’s a pretty good start.”…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/kyoto-signing-good-for-industry-emerson/story-e6frg6xf-1226533051979
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same AAP story as The Australian, but at least AFR got a negative quote into the puff piece. note the area of specialisation of the journalist:
9 Dec: AFR: UN accord right for business and planet: Emerson
by John KERIN with wires
(John writes about defence, national security and foreign affairs from our Canberra bureau)
But Climate Change Director for the Institute of Public Affairs Tim Wilson said the extension was a “dud deal’’ for Australia.
“Kyoto has become meaningless,’’ Mr Wilson said. “Countries have continued to rig the rules so they can claim compliance and do nothing. Australia is an exception, we seem to be the only ones participating in good faith and thinking others will follow.
“With only 15 per cent of the world’s emitters in play it is a save-face agreement for countries that think their leadership will get others to follow.”
After several days of deadlocked talks, conference chairman Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah finally rushed through the package of deals that he termed the Doha Climate Gateway, riding roughshod over country objections as he swung the gavel in quick succession, proclaiming: “It is so decided.”
Observers said Russia had been trying to halt the extension of Kyoto, whose first leg expires on December 31.
Moscow objected to the passing of the deal, and noted that it retained the right to appeal the president’s action…
http://www.afr.com/p/world/un_accord_right_for_business_and_DvQhjJdG3mrRPPB1ynnlDO
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for anyone still believing Murdoch media is on the side of the sceptics, note:
7 Dec: Sky News: News Limited to cut 60 production jobs
The company is outsourcing the sub-editing of The Mercury in Hobart, Sunday Tasmanian, Geelong Advertiser, The Cairns Post, Townsville Bulletin, Gold Coast Bulletin, NT News, Sunday Territorian and Centralian Advocate to Pagemasters, a subsidiary of Australian Associated Press.
News Limited did not disclose how many positions would be made redundant, however the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) said 60 editorial positions would be affected…
In September, News Limited announced the outsourcing of sub-editing for more than 100 of its community newspapers to Pagemasters.
That move resulted in the loss of about 65 jobs at News Limited, while Pagemasters added 40 new staff to do the work…
http://www.skynews.com.au/businessnews/article.aspx?id=824017
and who’s in charge of AAP/Pagemasters? long-time Murdoch journo, Bruce Davidson:
May 2011: News Ltd: Pagemasters founder hits out at critics after Fairfax decision to outsource sub-editing
FAIRFAX Media’s decision to outsource sub-editing of its Sydney and Melbourne mastheads to Pagemasters has been widely decried as a blow to quality journalism, but the man who started the newspaper services provider says his staffers do a better job than in-house employees…
Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood last week said in an email to staff that plans to outsource the sub-editing of news, sport and business stories at The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times to Pagemasters would not be scrapped, despite opposition from journalists.
But speaking to The Australian from New York, Bruce Davidson defied the critics to prove a drop in standards since Pagemasters began sub-editing most of the features pages for Fairfax broadsheets The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in 2008…
Few dispute that Pagemasters can offer increased productivity and efficiency: its nickname is “Slavemasters”…
Nevertheless, he sympathises with the plight of the 90 Fairfax production journalists who learned last week they faced losing their jobs to his company.
He was in the same situation himself in 1990 after being made redundant in the merger of News Limited Melbourne papers The Herald and The Sun News Pictorial into today’s Herald Sun.
It was that enforced career change that prompted Mr Davidson and former colleague Martin Thomas to start Pagemasters in 1991.
Soon afterwards, the company was acquired by Australian Associated Press, which is 94 per cent owned by Fairfax and News (publisher of The Australian). Davidson is now AAP chief executive…
http://www.news.com.au/business/pagemasters-founder-hits-out-at-critics/story-e6frfm1i-1226052322447
the monolithic MSM. give thanx for the internet, and sites like jo’s.
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The vast Aurukun wetlands.
The wetlands are one of Australia’s unknown environmental wonders.
Larger than their equivalent in Kakadu National Park, they support all manner of waterbirds, reptile and mammal life as well as being home to traditional owners.
Iconic, unspoilt wilderness.
Not any more!
No paddling around in a canoe, reducing his ‘carbon [sic] footprint to protect the environment for ‘our’ environment minister!
What chance he walked or rode a bike to the wetlands from Canberra to save the environment?
What a rolled gold, environmental vandal, GreenLaboUr knob.
That is the only legacy this hypocritical fool will make for himself.
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I’m currently in Dubai so here’s today’s cartoon in the Dubai newspaper
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/images/carhm1_9dec12.jpg
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So they’re green in Dubai?
It must be all that windpower they use.
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I’m looking for a detailed analysis of the cost of Global Warming avoidance to Australia. Ideally, all sources, and including citations.
My idea is to compare costs and benefits, but perhaps someone has already done that? Any help will be appreciated.
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Hi leo,
I think other attempts have been thwarted with the whole how to put a quantifiable number on something that hasn’t been proven to exist thing.
It’s kindof like trying to figure out the cost of not believing in the tooth fairy or santa claus or baba yaga the witch of the north.
For those that claim to have done this analysis (like the australian treasury dept), they won’t release the figures because their assumptions read like a terry pratchett novel.
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Plenty of costs Leo not many benefits.
Andy has a couple of good links to the costs of the RET.
That’s just the tip of the ice-berg since the poles and wire controversy raised by Gillard to obfuscate it is apparent that those costs are mainly to do with hooking up the renewables.
The CO2 tax is pick a number and double it; for instance carbon offsets alone could cot Australia $600 billion.
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Thanks for the comments to date.
Still looking for more information.
As I calculate it, if Australia hadn’t gone the Kyoto route, the world would have reached it’s current high level of CO2 12 hours sooner. During those 12 hours the amount of CO2 in the air was cut to 99.98% of what it would otherwise have been.
As I understand it, we have to pay hundreds of millions under Kyoto. Who to, where does it say so, and how do we determine how much?
How much has been paid under Carbon Tax?
How much have we spent on the Office of the Climate Change Commissioner?
How much have we spent, State and Federal, on renewable subsidies because of climate change?
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The Green Ninja
Those of you who thought that the battle over anthropogenic global warming would be won or lost based on scientific evidence think again. A group of faculty and students at San Juan State University has conspired to bring us The Green Ninja. What, you might ask, is the Green Ninja? It is an animated climate-action superhero aimed squarely at school children. In other words, mind poisoning climate alarmist propaganda meant to indoctrinate children into the green belief system. What’s worse, it is being funded by US government grant money. Not since communism has such a concerted effort been made to brainwash the young before they have a chance to learn how to think for themselves. Moreover, the conspiracy is international with an Australian film festival awarding “Green Ninja: Footprint Renovation” its Grand Prize.
The Green Ninja Team consists of faculty, staff and students from all across San Jose State University working together to bring creative and effective messages and tools to inspire climate change literacy. If that was all the project amounted to things would be fine, but there are bigger players in this little drama. The project has received a $390,000 grant from NASA to support professional development for teachers, and $20,000 from PG&E to pilot an energy reduction contest for Santa Clara County middle schoolers (PG&E is pushing energy conservation).
More at the; The Resilient Earth
http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/crank-week-%E2%80%93-december-3-2012-%E2%80%93-green-ninja
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The Green Ninja,eh? NW had Planetslayer in which kids were encouraged to kill themselves if they were too fat and pig-like.
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Snafu,
I’m not surprised. Obama has turned our Department of Education into his personal propaganda machine. And since NASA hasn’t a useful thing to do in this whole world anymore, why not turn its budget to good use as well?
I would be slapped down by Jo for saying what I really want to say. But I think you can guess accurately enough. And I deeply regret that our government has so long a reach that it can make a power grab for the minds of your children half a world away.
🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁
Child abusers belong in prison, even when they occupy high office — especially when they occupy high office. Instead they’re now celebrated.
🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁
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PS: Yes, NASA was out of control before Obama took office. But the thing is much worse now.
10
Biased BBC
The BBC have removed my comments about misuse of the “smoking” stacks for being off topic, but have then changed the offending image!
Is the BBC the bastard son of SkS?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20653018
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Hello all! I discovered why Wayne Swan likes Bruce Springsteen. It is because Bruce is launching a Tour around Australia called “Wrecking ball”. Wayne applies that idea to his day job it seems.
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I notice that there a lot of, “This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.”
Please ‘Explain’!
20
.
King Island residents are in doubt.
I have copied this from the King Island website
It’s long but basically outlines all the produce that makes King Island a legend in produce.
This ABC Tasmania report – states “The footprint for each turbine tower would be around 50×50 metres” – Yup – only little bits affected ABC Greenies.
Wind Mills on King Island will FU(K up the following:
1. Reduce dairy herds by 1/3 within 5 years.
2. Avian wildlife decimated within two generations.
3. Bats affected severely.
4. No more organic chickens with good egg production.
5. Horse population reduced to nags (no breeding program after ten years)
6. Sea mammals will have increased beaching.
7. Human population will leave (up to 15% within 6 years)
8. 200,000 tonnes of concrete implanted into the strata of King Island soil layer.
9. 160,000 tonnes steel constructed on King Island as statues.
10.8 years to huge backlash by local King Island residents when windmill farm fails.
11.Over run of $2 billion on construction of windfarm and cable to Victoria.
12.12 years to huge legal cases involving fraud from the developers, government departments etc by the people.
The feeling currently on King Island is slowly being worked on by the ABC, The ALP, The Government departments, Fairfax, The Greens etc for a positive feel good about being the best renewable energy production in the world per square kilometer. But – none of these people are giving them any information on the downsides of windmills in this project.
King Island Produce will cease to exist in 10 to 15 years – but will be a good place to visit and witness the biggest “killing field” by renewable energy in the modern world.
King Island residents are being bribed, bullied and led down the windy garden path. The carbon footprint of this project is shameful considering the size and beauty of this island.
The people involved in this “killing field” will eventually be held to account.
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Dave re King Island,
My employer company worked the King Island Scheelite mines at Grassy for many years. I had the terrible job of wndering down a few times a year, staying in the Directors’ Lodge with sweeping views of the coast, enjoying the local cray (which is among the best in the world) and discovering other interesting facts. For example, known to a few and hard to find are gigantic tree stumps, about level with the ground now, that are several metres diameter. The trees (maybe Eucalyptus regnans) were harvested. The must have been among the biggest in the world.
In due course we exhausted the mine, part open cut then underground and undersea. The remains of mining were obliterated and a small tourism village established. As I recall, we gained an award of excellence for post-mining rehab.
One can ask it it was necessary or desirable to have either felled those giant trees or to have mined the scheelite (tungsten ore). The answer has to be yes, because this is almost definitionally ‘progress’. Tungsten punches higher than its weight, because in tiny quantities in machine tools it shapes many other metals to produce many useful goods. If you don’t want cars, turbines, windmills, don’t mine tungsten. If you don’t want to build large buildings in places where stone is rare, don’t fell large trees. Don’t progress at all, just sit in the dark and freeze.
I would not recommend an intensive windmill program on King Island. It’s too nice in its present state. Besides, it rather dangerous because there are many tiger snakes with particularly powerful venom and my bet is that these will keep some terrified workers off the Island. As for the kelp, I’d close that down as well because there is no substantiated scientific evidence that kelp acts as a fertilizer (and much that it does not – might as well use plastic bags instead) and its so-called ‘tonic’ chemicals are little more than a marketing ploy. That’s why gardening programmes have so many ads for kelp products – if scientifically evalualted, they fail the tests, so keep up sales by marketing repetition.
Which brings us back to windmill power. Also fails the test in most cases. Also drowning in marketing repetition.
10
Sorry, that should be in reply to MangoChutney above.
10
I have a question for any botanists out there, and it concerns the use of tree rings as proxy data.
As a tree ages, is it possible that DNA senescence can affect tree ring thickness?
00
Adding further question to the above…
What percentage of the median lifetime is the safe limit for how long temperature could be judged from ring thickness before senescence throws off the proxy relationship?
And adding my own completely unqualified wild guess about the answer: any metric derived from an artefact produced by a process that is affected by DNA is never going to be a reliable proxy for anything, and the more factors in the process the less reliable it is. Oxygen-18 isotope ratio in clam shells is mainly temperature dependant, unaffected by DNA, so it’s reliable. Clam shell thickness is probably affected by genes for calcification so that’s not good as a temperature proxy over more than a single clam’s life. Tree ring thickness would be affected by soil nutrients, parasites, CO2 levels, rainfall, and unpredictable non-linear DNA response to all the above, so is surely hopeless as a proxy even in aggregate. So hopeless that favourable freak Russian trees will need to be anointed and declines will need to be hidden.
Although M&M are economic statisticians they are capable of reading the work of botanists, so at this juncture perhaps a choice quote from “The M&M critique of the MBH98 Northern Hemisphere Climate Index” (Energy & Environment · Vol. 16, No. 1, 2005. Page 88.) would give some broader perspective on the issue:
Understanding whether cellular senescence prematurely suppresses ring response to temperature might be interesting scientifically, but for the purposes of informing policy response to climate change it pales into insignificance when compared to the factors highlighted by M&M’s 2005 critique:
1. The ring width by itself is not a uniquely invertible function of temperature.
2. Climate science is corrupt and won’t divulge raw measurements for audit anyway.
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Just a quick answer from a non-Botanist.
Whether directly caused by senescence (btw, DNA does not senesce as such)or just the fact that the tree is larger and is servicing more surface area each year, tree rings do change as you move from the centre out. These changes are known and should be calibrated at regular intervals.
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Gee Aye: Re your comment ‘Whether directly caused by senescence (btw, DNA does not senesce as such)or just the fact that the tree is larger and is servicing more surface area each year, tree rings do change as you move from the centre out. These changes are known and should be calibrated at regular intervals.’
In humans, DNA changes occur with age.
Here’s just one example of a relevant paper:
Aging Cell. 2012 Nov 21.
‘Cytogenetic analysis of human cells reveals specific patterns of DNA damage in replicative and oncogene-induced senescence.’
Falcone G, Mazzola A, et al.
From the abstract:
‘Senescence is thought to be triggered by DNA damage, usually indirectly assessed as activation of the DNA damage response (DDR), but direct surveys of genetic damage are lacking.’
Hence my question for the botanists.
As regards tree ring proxies, Andrew McRae’s comment: ‘adding my own completely unqualified wild guess about the answer: any metric derived from an artefact produced by a process that is affected by DNA is never going to be a reliable proxy for anything, and the more factors in the process the less reliable it is’ is I think close to the truth – particularly as fractions of a degree are claimed to be measurable using proxies.
20
thanks Carbon, I know all this. And I said “DNA does not senesce as such”, and you provided two titles to back me up. I’m glad not everyone is as lazy as me.
So leaving this matter aside, you are right to look at individual variation with age. When looking at what influences an individual tree though the tree’s own genotype (VG) and the local environment (VE) and the interaction between them (VGE) are huge factors in determining growth characteristics. Rate of senescence is just one phenotype affected.
00
Gee Aye: Thank you for your comments.
In humans, genetic changes can result due to for example mutation, faulty DNA repair, deletion, duplication, or translocation to another part of the genome. These genetic ‘accidents’ can lead to enhancement, loss, or critical function of a gene product – thus old (senescent) DNA is likely to exhibit changes for a variety of reasons.
Since I first posted my question, I have found a botanist with an interest in tree rings. He may not wish to become involved with this discussion, so I can’t reference him for you – however, he comments that as far as he is aware, no one has tried to study the problem, but he thinks that it is unlikely that DNA changes could influence ringwidth.
He states that ringwidth is the product of many environmental inputs and physiological adaptations, which would have to change very substantially in order to appreciably modify ring width (that is, apart from changes that were fatal mutations to “crash the system”).
00
China’s buying up Australia’s coal country has even made it to the U.S. news now.
China is yet another serious problem for the west.
20
9 Dec: Daily Mail: Britain gives millions in ‘climate aid’ to tackle flatulent Colombian cows… plus £31m to Turkish wind farms and funding for talks with Kenyan ‘rain-makers’
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said: ‘After an Autumn Statement where people are making significant cuts, to have a £2.9billion budget for a random collection of projects which have questions hanging over them as to whether or not they are corrupt is just an extraordinary waste of money.
‘The Government does not exist to make charitable donations – that’s something people should do privately. We’re looking for a further £10billion of cuts and this seems to me the easiest place to start.’…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2245300/Britain-gives-millions-climate-aid-tackle-flatulent-Colombian-cows–plus-31m-Turkish-wind-farms-funding-talks-Kenyan-rain-makers.html
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I guess you have seen/heard this http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-10/climate-change-conforming-to-un-predictions/4417644
I especially liked the “lying” comment. It is not allowed to be merely questioning and inquiring, it is necessarily lying now if you disagree. Seems like an angry person.
20
Methinks Matthew England is sensing that he could taking his donkey for a ride, RSN. Desperate times call for desperate action!
IIRC, the 1990-ish “projections” had a wide band of “uncertainty”; including the lower limit producing a cooling of 0.5°C. Of course the projection was based on the vast expanse of ignorance of factors which are not modelled adequately or at all.
Of course the IPCC themselves doesn’t call those things “projections” any more. They’re called “scenarios” … like Doom, SimCity, SimEarth, ESCM and CMIP.
10
Jo
Using data from the Vic desal plant’s web site I calculated this. To provide the flow to my garden tap ( 27 l/min, a good flow )requires over 8 kW at the desal plant.Watering your garden uses as much energy as turning on every element in your stove.
Monstrous from a green government.
I wonder why Bracksie replaced the entire board of Melbourne Water in his first year in office.
10
The State Government was too scared about creating dams due to pressure from Green groups therefore created a Desalination Plant which The Greens still did not support. The Desalination Plant is a terrible waste which could have instead funded schools, hospitals and vital infrastructure projects such as the Metro Link in Melbourne.
21
Does anything ever make the Greens happy?
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SMH is seen as leftwing over here, yet they claim this article is from UK’s conservative Telegraph. it’s rubbish wherever it’s from, shortcuts what he said, makes no comment on the veracity of his statements, but would appear to have been published only to use a photo that accenuates Monckton’s eyes. how disgusting can u get?
10 Dec: Sydney Morning Herald: from Telegraph, London: Sceptic sneaks into UN climate gathering
RIDING through the desert, white robes billowing in the breeze, ”Monckton of Arabia” made his way towards the Gulf gathering of 7000 climate change representatives…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sceptic-sneaks-into-un-climate-gathering-20121209-2b3z1.html
00
Combet wants $3bn p.a. to go into foreign climate funds while both Commonwealth and State Governments struggle to fund vital projects for the country’s future. Sigh…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/doha-sets-up-3bn-hit-for-taxpayers-as-climate-deal-fails-to-deliver-on-emissions-targets/story-e6frg6xf-1226533267543
01
love how Veolia, whose website claims: “Veolia Environmental Services is one of Australia’s largest providers of sustainable and innovative environmental solutions” looks set to make money out of this racket, which means more trucks on the highways!
10 Dec: Gold Coast Bulletin: Tweed to send rubbish to Queensland
Councillors will be asked on Thursday to endorse a proposal to transport the shire’s 40,000 tonnes of waste each year to a private landfill site near Ipswich until a replacement landfill site can be built.
The council is proposing to award the transport and disposal of rubbish to Veolia Environmental Services, trading as Ti Tree Bioenergy Pty Ltd, for up to three years…
http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2012/12/10/443408_tweed-byron-news.html
9 Dec: Sky News: NSW waste still being dumped in Qld
The NSW government says it has plans to reduce the problem of NSW businesses trucking thousands of tonnes of rubbish to Queensland to avoid a waste levy…
Waste Contractors and Recyclers Association of NSW executive director Tony Khoury says about 2000 tonnes of waste a month is being trucked across the border to avoid a levy of up to $95.20 a tonne.
He says the problem has worsened since the NSW government lifted the levy in July to try to make recycling more attractive, at the same time that Queensland scrapped its waste levy of $35 per tonne.
‘Around four to five trucks are leaving (NSW) every couple of days,’ Mr Khoury told AAP on Sunday.
Each truck carried an average of 40 tonnes, he said.
There were even reports of landfill operators trucking waste from their own sites, as they were able to claim back the levy for material that goes out the door, he said…
A spokesman for Environment Minister Robyn Parker said the government was aware of the problem an announcement was planned in the new year.
He said consultancy firm KPMG had overseen a review into the NSW levy…
http://www.skynews.com.au/eco/article.aspx?id=824640
9 Dec: Border Mail: More Sydney trash to be dumped in Queensland
Drivers heading north on the Pacific Highway will be jostling a rising number of B-double trucks following a decision by the Queensland government earlier this year to remove a levy on waste going to landfill…
Not only general waste is being put on the road, but a rising volume of contaminated waste is also being shipped north, including an estimated 3,000 tonnes of waste from Barangaroo, the redevelopment site on the western side of Sydney’s central business district.
“The Queensland government’s move has had the perverse effect of it receiving contaminated waste from NSW,” the Total Environment Centre’s Jeff Angel said of the changing dynamics…
http://www.bordermail.com.au/story/1174198/more-sydney-trash-to-be-dumped-in-queensland/?cs=12
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Kyoto deal to hit U.N carbon credit demand
DOHA, Dec 9 (Reuters Point Carbon) – A deal to extend the Kyoto Protocol will mean lower demand for U.N. carbon credits, government envoys said late Saturday, after nations that refused to take legal targets to reduce emissions were partly cut out of a deal to extend the life of the treaty’s carbon offset market…
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2091932
if the EU has 27 member States, & only 4 other countries are listed here, how do they get the 35 countries figure, much less the 38 countries which the MSM were reporting at the end of the conference? does anyone know?
9 Dec: Reuters: FACTBOX: Key decisions at Doha talks on climate change
It now obliges about 35 industrialised countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during the period 2008-12. Nations will pick their own targets for 2020.
But backers of Kyoto will dwindle from 2013 to a group including the European Union, Australia, Ukraine, Switzerland and Norway. Together they account for less than 15 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.2091941?&ref=searchlist
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INSIGHT-US, China turned EU powers against airline pollution law
Dec 9 (Reuters) – The European Union’s landmark effort to charge foreign airlines for carbon emitted on flights in and out of Europe was already failing by the time French President Francois Hollande shared his deep concerns with the European Commission chief in October.
The U.S. aviation industry had mustered fierce political opposition, China was threatening to withhold aircraft orders from Airbus and the most influential European nations feared retaliation against their national carriers. Chinese and Indian airlines refused to submit emissions data; U.S. lawmakers were readying a law that could make it illegal to pay the tariff.
Ultimately it came down to an economy-versus-environment debate, with issues of national sovereignty and freedom of the skies also playing a decisive role in grounding the effort for now, to the relief of global carriers and airplane makers whose businesses stood to lose out…
The way forward for the law after the one-year moratorium looks uncertain.
The dominant influence of Britain, France and Germany within Europe could make it difficult to restart the clock, although Hedegaard insists it would start automatically if ICAO fails to deliver…ETCETC
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.2091973?&ref=searchlist
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Funny how self-interest gets in the way of these idiotic plans isn’t it?
The little guy’s financial stake in carbon madness is collectively larger around the world than all the airlines combined. How can we turn that collective interest into a single force to be reckoned with?
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SBS Monday night, 10/12/12, reporting that climate predictions for the next 40 years, made 20 years ago (?) were ‘surprisingly accurate’ ?
What the… !
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of course it was newspoll that twice came out with polls suggesting the current govt had almost caught up with the coalition. the framing of this piece is a disgrace and tells us once again where AAP/News Ltd stand on the carbon tax/ETS. now, if they coulf only get turnbull back in place, wouldn’t they be happy little vegemites:
10 Dec: Australian: Power price fall under coalition in doubt by: By Paul Osborne, AAP Senior Political Writer
AUSTRALIAN households won’t see instant cuts in their power bills if the federal Labor government’s carbon tax is abolished, energy retailers say.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott plans to repeal the carbon price on big polluters if his coalition wins the 2013 national election and “instantly” reduce electricity bills by 10 per cent.
But Energy Retailers Association of Australia chief Cameron O’Reilly says that won’t be the case…
Legislative changes and regulatory reviews would have to take place before retailers could review pricing and notify customers.
But it’s not clear if prices would fall in any case…
Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said this showed electricity bills should fall when the carbon tax was abolished.
“We expect, on the basis of what the regulators have said, that the bills would fall by the full amount of the carbon tax charge,” Mr Hunt told AAP…
A spokesman for Climate Change Minister Greg Combet told AAP that Mr Abbott would not go ahead with the repeal, so the question of price reductions was redundant.
He said carbon pricing had none of the dire economic consequences predicted by Mr Abbott, and its revenue was delivering renewable energy, tax cuts and increases in family benefits and pensions.
Consumer group Choice estimates power prices have risen more than 50 per cent in real terms over the past five years, mainly due to network costs…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/abbott-cant-instantly-cut-power-bills/story-fn3dxiwe-1226533495754
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had to get up early today, and foolishly turned on ABC RN for a minute or two, precisely at the moment presenter paul barclay reacted with a positive yea the moment maxine mckew said Q&A had been interesting recently…did he know in advance she was going on to say because of the intellectually interesting politicking of rudd and turnbull? felt nauseous, turned off the radio and jumped in the shower:
10 Dec: ABC Big Ideas: Lessons from the Political Trenches
Maxine McKew is a TV journalist who became a Labor MP…
Presented by Paul Barclay
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/2012-12-10/4412986
notice how ABC doesn’t say mckew worked for ABC for more than 30 years, so Big Ideas was just one more incestuous, ABC-insider talkfest. perhaps they could have said she “was rewarded with a cadetship at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Brisbane in 1974 following a brief stint as a news analyst at the investment bank Goldman Sachs”, even tho it was brief and a long time ago!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxine_McKew
that taxpayers pay for the rubbish on ABC makes me angrier by the minute, and i say this as a lifelong labor, and later green, voter…who now votes informally.
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6 Dec: San Francisco Chronicle: David R. Baker: California faces carbon conundrum
Refineries in California participating in the cap-and-trade system could be double taxed if the U.S. institutes a carbon-emissions levy…
One possible fix, suggested by some carbon-tax advocates, would involve Congress exempting California companies from the tax if they’re already participating in cap and trade. Young said the board would also be willing to tweak its own system, if necessary, to harmonize it with any federal global warming legislation.
“We promote the possibility of the federal government addressing climate change,” he said. “And on our part, we’re prepared to align our program in a way that allows California to move forward.”…
A tax, however, is simpler. It’s relatively easy to administer and easy for the public to understand. Cap-and-trade systems, in contrast, are fiendishly complex, full of rules meant to thwart market manipulation and protect specific industries from price shocks…
“Cap and trade provides more clarity on the level of emissions, and a carbon tax provides more clarity on costs,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who recently co-authored a proposal for a federal carbon tax. “You have a non-moving target, and that’s very appealing to businesses.”
***
A carbon tax even has the backing of Rex Tillerson, chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil Corp. He prefers the predictability of a tax to the wild price swings possible under cap and trade…
Interest in a carbon tax resurfaced this summer as part of the broader debate about taxes triggered by the presidential race and the looming “fiscal cliff.” President Obama has downplayed the idea and said he isn’t pursuing it. But several think tanks and advocacy groups have promoted it as a way to raise new revenue. It could be part of a grand bargain on taxes, providing enough cash to let the government cut other taxes while still addressing the deficit.
Some GOP support
And while many Republicans reject the idea, that opposition isn’t universal. Arthur Laffer, former economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, both support carbon pricing.
“There is an impeccable conservative lineage for this thing,” Muro said. His proposal calls for a carbon tax of $20 per ton, rising 4 percent each year. Of the $150 billion raised annually, $30 billion would go toward clean-energy research, while the rest would go to cutting other taxes and reducing the deficit…
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/California-faces-carbon-conundrum-4098030.php#page-1
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There’s no conundrum. These fools have wanted this, now let them live a while with what they’ve created. Nothing will wake up California and America in general faster than actually living in the “green paradise” this stuff will create.
I say let them have their way. The sooner we hit bottom the sooner we can climb back up again. The best way to win the war might be to lose a strategic battle or two and let nature take its course.
Much will be lost to the cause. But frankly it seems lost anyway. So if people must suffer then let it accomplish something. 🙁
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read all:
10 Dec: BUSTED: Police raid City office after we warn on the menace of investment scams for worthless carbon credits
By Tony Hetherington, Financial Mail On Sunday
They sound so ethically correct. They appear to offer a decent return on savings in these troubled times. Yet carbon credits are at the centre of increasingly adventurous scams.
And last Tuesday morning, police investigating a suspected fraud network of investment firms selling worthless carbon credits arrested ten men and a woman in co-ordinated raids on offices in the City of London, Essex and Hertfordshire.
The raids follow mounting official concern at the scale of carbon credit scams, where investors pay thousands of pounds for overpriced certificates that are said to be linked to environmentally friendly projects such as tree planting.
There is virtually no resale market for the certificates and investors typically lose every penny…
As police continued their enquiries at Hudson Forbes, one of the company’s bosses arrived, apparently late for work.
He was promptly arrested. Another late arrival said he had come for a job interview as a salesman. He left to look for work elsewhere. Hudson Forbes is linked to a number of other suspect investment firms. Police are known to be investigating CT Carbon, which Financial Mail warned against in August, and a firm of accountants connected to carbon credit companies and to an earlier land banking scam. Police declined to name those arrested for legal reasons, but said all had been released on bail while enquiries continue… http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2245046/Police-raid-City-office-Financial-Mail-warns-carbon-credits.html
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Now will they learn?
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from Bolt’s blog today:
No, that’s no plan for $250 cuts in power bills
(From Business Spectator) The third leg of Gillard’s plan requires the roll-out of so-called smart meters and the introduction of time-of-use charges designed to make consumption of electricity very expensive between 2pm and 8pm and much cheaper at other times in an effort to lop the top off peak demand…
comment by Billy Bob of the valley:
Yesterday Demand on electricity hardled moved between 2 and 8 pm. it was well below the summer peaks.
Today, there will be a slight increase. Well below the summer peaks.
In winter demand is well belwo the summer peaks. As it is for most of Autumn and Spring.
But for some reason we need to pay more during a blanket certain time frame.
There “not very smart metres” if thats the case.
in winter we will have to sit in the dark with the heater off and save cooking tea to after 8 pm to save money…
comment by Maurice of Sydney
Our new home in Sydney built 2 years ago had a ‘Smart’ Meter installed which I believe is a mandatory requirement for new homes in NSW.
Our young family of 2 all under the age of 3, cannot even attempt to defer electricity use between 2-8pm.
As a result our bill was excessive, having sold that home and moved into an older house without the ‘Smart’ Meter, the difference during the same quarter is over $200! (& that is with the price increases in the past year)
Calling them ‘Smart Meters’ is like Gillard using the term ‘Clean Energy’, its all a scam and another socialist attempt to modify our behavior at the expense of hard working families….
10 Dec: The Hill: Ben Geman: House Energy Chairman Upton: Exxon’s support for carbon tax isn’t ‘very serious’
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) suggested Monday that Exxon Mobil Corp. isn’t pushing lawmakers especially hard for a carbon tax despite the company’s public embrace of the idea.
“I don’t think it is a very serious effort on their part,” Upton said on Fox News. Upton said he told Exxon representatives personally that it’s a nonstarter…
Upton made the comments when asked about support for a carbon tax from Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell.
However, a tax isn’t Shell’s preferred option. Shell, in a joint statement in November with a range of businesses, affirmed its support for somehow creating a cost for carbon emissions.
But the company said its preferred approach for pricing carbon is a more flexible system such as pollution permit trading under an emissions cap (known as cap-and-trade). Exxon, in contrast, says a tax would be better policy…
“Combined with further advances in energy efficiency and new technologies spurred by market innovation, a well-designed carbon tax could play a significant role in addressing the challenge of rising emissions,” an Exxon spokeswoman told Bloomberg in November…
Carbon-tax proposals have, however, gained traction in climate policy circles of late despite the dim political prospects.
For instance, former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), who recently launched a new energy program at George Mason University, is pushing for a tax on fossil fuel production that would be offset by reductions in income taxes…
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/271877-rep-upton-exxon-carbon-tax-support-isnt-very-serious
given most people still get their news from free-to-air TV (tho the internet is making big inroads), why isn’t stuff like this headlining TV news current affair program nightly. i am almost speechless. LOL.
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10 Dec: The Hill: Ben Geman: House Energy Chairman Upton: Exxon’s support for carbon tax isn’t ‘very serious’
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) suggested Monday that Exxon Mobil Corp. isn’t pushing lawmakers especially hard for a carbon tax despite the company’s public embrace of the idea.
“I don’t think it is a very serious effort on their part,” Upton said on Fox News. Upton said he told Exxon representatives personally that it’s a nonstarter…
Upton made the comments when asked about support for a carbon tax from Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell.
However, a tax isn’t Shell’s preferred option. Shell, in a joint statement in November with a range of businesses, affirmed its support for somehow creating a cost for carbon emissions.
But the company said its preferred approach for pricing carbon is a more flexible system such as pollution permit trading under an emissions cap (known as cap-and-trade). Exxon, in contrast, says a tax would be better policy…
“Combined with further advances in energy efficiency and new technologies spurred by market innovation, a well-designed carbon tax could play a significant role in addressing the challenge of rising emissions,” an Exxon spokeswoman told Bloomberg in November…
Carbon-tax proposals have, however, gained traction in climate policy circles of late despite the dim political prospects.
For instance, former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), who recently launched a new energy program at George Mason University, is pushing for a tax on fossil fuel production that would be offset by reductions in income taxes…
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/271877-rep-upton-exxon-carbon-tax-support-isnt-very-serious
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Typical politics. I kiss your behind and you kiss mine. I pretend to care about the environment and you do to. The scary thing is people are so stupid they actually believe this has some new meaning. It’s still I buy you a $10 lunch and you buy me a $10 lunch. Zero sum but we both look generous. How depressing…..
I suppose so long as we don’t end up like Europe or Australia where actual loses are incurred, we should be grateful. As long as it’s a “fake” exchange, we retain status quo. However, if Exxon misjudges its clout and gets the enviro ball rolling too fast, it will be a very bad thing for this country.
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Sheri,
It’s called playing both ends against the middle and is hardly new in politics. The idea is to be sufficiently in favor with whatever faction comes out on top that you retain your influence on Capitol Hill.
Let’s face it squarely, we all want politics to go our way. The idea of fairness and impartiality is not a natural one. We’ve learned to at least appear to want it because of fear that the other guy will get an advantage detrimental to our own interests.
That’s pretty cynical I admit. But who will argue against it? Do we not want to come out on top in this fight for instance?
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Yes, we want to come out on top of this fight. I would hope the difference would be that we would not agree that chemicals are all evil in exchange for global warming is a lie. Science wants facts, not tradeoffs. Politics wants to win any way possible and cares little for facts.
It seems likely that the desire not to look bad is exactly how bad people win battles. “If you say anything bad about climate change, we will shred you.” So people pretend to go along until the true costs are revealed and then it’s often too late. At that point, natural consequences or complete destitution lead people to change.
I don’t think your view is cynical–it’s just reality as it stands today.
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Sheri,
The problem is always the same isn’t it — how to keep your own interests from suffering without becoming dishonest.
It’s not easy. And it’s harder when the other guy is dishonest.
You’re very generous about whether it’s cynical or not. Thank you.
I think it’s probably always been that way though.
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