The political bomb is ticking again. Despite being slayed twice at Australian elections the ETS monster – the emissions trading scheme – has popped back out of the box. This time around, Turnbull and co will not paint it as a big deal grand scheme, nor give it a proper name. It will be eased in under the radar as much as possible (as I predicted) being forced on only the worst “polluters” as a cheaper way to offset carbon emissions.
There’s a strange rush on in Australian politics to force Australian companies (and consumers) to send money to struggling bankers in Europe.
It’s only a few credits…
Greg Hunt says overseas emissions credits will ‘probably’ be allowed
The environment minister talks flexibility in emissions targets as Coalition backbenchers mock international deal reached at Paris climate conference.
The Turnbull government will “probably” allow emission reduction permits to be bought from overseas, giving Australia flexibility to increase the targets it pledged at the Paris climate conference, Greg Hunt has predicted.
Right now, to avoid lighting the same fires that got Turnbull ousted in 2009, Turnbull and Hunt are pretending an ETS was a part of the Abbott plan (it won’t work). But most political commentators don’t hear the ticking. Though surprisingly Annabel Crabb of the ABC sees the vacuum and asked “who will speak for the skeptics”.
Paul Kelly, Editor of the Australian is one of the most influential political commentators in Australia, yet he is utterly misreading and misremembering the climate battle. (Climate Change tends to do that to lots of people.) Kelly has this strange idea that the voters in Australia care about “climate change” despite all the polls that show more than half of Australians don’t believe its an issue, and most of the rest don’t want to pay. The only people who “vote” for climate extremism are never going to vote for the coalition. Pandering to the Green Machine is not a vote winner for conservatives.
Kelly buys the Turnbull-Hunt spin, and completely misses the big power-players in Australian climate politics in 2014 (Al Gore, and Clive Palmer):
Abbott’s policy left the door open from 2017, if needed, for resort to use of international credits.
Hunt had pushed hard early this year for this pivotal opening and finally persuaded Abbott.
This prompts two immediate points. Turnbull should thank Abbott from the bottom of his heart for this provision. Can you imagine the riot from the conservative wing of the Coalition parties if this were not established policy but was now being imposed by Turnbull? “Tony Abbott had opened this door and Malcolm Turnbull kept it open,” Hunt said. Second, international credits, while seen as essential by the business lobbies and a cost-effective mechanism for emission reduction, are a political and ideological red line for many conservative MPs. –– Paul Kelly
Kelly thinks Greg Hunt talked Abbott into keeping the ETS idea alive, but Environment Minister Hunt didn’t have any leverage at all. It was the Gore-Palmer combo that made it happen. Abbott needed Palmer to pass the Direct Action legislation and Palmer insisted on this bizarre clause. And if Paul Kelly (or Turnbull) think that the true conservatives or skeptics will go easy on the ETS just because Abbott’s arm was twisted by Clive Palmer and Al Gore they are in for a shock. Abbott’s bare endorsement of a review of an ETS is worth nothing — he wanted to rule it out entirely, but had to leave the door open in order to get “Direct Action” past the Senate. Worse, most skeptics didn’t want the Direct Action plan in the first place.
So a non-endorsement of a policy skeptics didn’t want is supposed to stop a riot?
Here’s Greg Hunt talking about the an ETS in October last year:
Earlier, he [Hunt] told parliament in question time: “We oppose an ETS – lock, stock and barrel. We will not be bringing one back.”
Here’s Clive Palmer, the coal miner, who suddenly discovered his ETS crusade after Al Gore visited him:
[Palmer] said PUP had achieved what the Greens were unable to, in preserving the Climate Change Authority, retaining the renewable energy target and making “substantial progress towards delivering an ETS”.
“We would expect Green votes to flow to the Palmer United Party on the back of this achievement,” he said.
PUP has proposed an ETS that would only become effective when Australia’s major trading partners also took action.
“This new ETS for all Australians is not the Liberal way or the Labor way but the right way,” Palmer said.
Australian voters chose the Abbott “blood oath” plan to get rid of the carbon tax (it was one of the main themes of the election campaign). Turnbull, and the Liberals who voted him in, are selling out those voters.
Turnbull will want the crowd to believe he is sticking to Abbott’s plan (because he promised the Nats he would).
Turnbull and Hunt are using that as their excuse to talk about bringing an emissions trading scheme back in, despite voters throwing it out twice in the last two national elections. They are trying to maintain the illusion that Turnbull is not breaking the Abbott climate deal. But Abbott understood that carbon markets support big bankers, white collar crooks and third world mafiosi:
Abbott once likened buying international units to sending money offshore “into dodgy carbon farms in Equatorial Guinea and Kazakhstan”.
Can someone find us the fine print of the “Direct Action” legislation? If there are any clauses in there about an emissions trading scheme, or about the need for all other nations to be a part of a legally binding commitment, I would like to know.
h/t Eric Worrall, Tim Andrews ATA.
If a price is placed on an atmospheric trace gas, a price is placed on the very air you breathe. The enslavement is absolute, and there is no going back, no repeal. Walk through this door and you step into an abyss that knows no limit. They will never relinquish that power over you. The idea should be utterly abhorrent to any sane, free individual.
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Sorry but we have already walked through that door a long time ago. What we should be doing is desperately looking for the exit.
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Perhaps PS.
Have you considered what happens when having constructed a carbon dioxide dependent economic model, production and emission fall to a vanishingly small level? Co-dependence is a pathological state of relationship, and if the addict can’t get their ‘fix’ there’s trouble.
The Green addiction to eco-taxes and productivity is the exit for us all.
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Consideration is not necessary. The facts speak for themselves. The ETS approaches and others are a con and a deliberate scam to milk everyone of more money to help pay off their ballooning debts. It will backfire badly and only make things worse for them and us.
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We,the”People”know where the”Exit”is,but our”Politicians”don’t want us to use it.Come the the next”Election”it is up to all of us to clean out these”Career Politicians”ALA in the Senate and Nats or “Independents”in the Lower House.
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It is a price on the use of FIRE, a key human technology.
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It is, too!
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Nero is fiddling in Australia
The U.S. rate is about to go up and commodities is traded in dollars. An important part of the Australian’s revenues accounts is dependent on the extraction of Gold, Silver, Platinium and other metals.
Because commodities are traded in dollars, their prices will drop if the dollar strengthens hurting Australia’s trade balance.
And the Goverment is playing with ETS, whilst other economic forces are threatening…
This obsession with CO2 is beyond the pale 🙁
great post Jo 😀
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As I have said numerous times – there is no difference between “Liberal” and “Labor” – all are globalists, and the same agenda keeps moving forward regardless of who is in power.
Now ask yourself – logically, if the same thing keeps moving forward regardless of what the mug punetrs considered to be ideologically polar opposites ( or close enough to ) – wouldnt that be classified as a conspiracy?
Logically, this means there is no possibility of true democracy in Australia, only the globalist agenda.
Turbull is a monied, elite connected ( and controlled ), champagne socialist. He will do as hes told, when hes told.
I find this kind of rude and its an Elite version of chutzpah and laughing at us , in our face….
http://moadoph.gov.au/
See if you can work it out….
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Successful democracy depends on sound information.
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Jo,
If I’m reading this correctly, the agreement by Abbott to review an ETS would probably not be found in the Direct Action legislation. I’m not saying it doesn’t pay to look, but the agreement to review an ETS could be part of some other document outlining the alleged agreement between Abbott and Hunt.
It appears from this that the agreement by Abbott does not include the stipulation that it would be adopted if other nations also adopt it. This seems to be Palmers’s idea because . . .
Abe
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‘Hunt had pushed hard early this year for this pivotal opening and finally persuaded Abbott.’
Its all Bishop’s doing, she is close to brainless.
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Don’t confuse brainlessness with sharp knives and great throwing skills.
Bishop would have made a great Fabian tactician for the left, though she is only effective because she sits on the right …
And the left of course, work for the banks whether they know it or not, because their underlings are indoctrinated Apparatchiks, whereas the Nomenklatura know exactly who they work for (people such as Al Gore, who would be in the invisible Politburo), and they enjoy the benefits – picture Eddie Obeid sipping tequilas in Cancun if he hadn’t been swatted.
Clive Palmer is no different to Eddie Obeid, and we can be sure that his mission to block the Senate and destroy the Abbott PM-ship, by pandering to disenfranchised voters was planned, and executed perfectly, with a nice sweetner in an off-shore account of his choice. It’s not a conspiracy theory, because human greed is not a conspiracy, it’s a dominant psychological condition with 1000’s of years of social data to prove its dominance.
Clive Palmer is also a member of the Club of Madrid, a spin off of the technocratic Club of Rome. Other members of the Club of Madrid are people such as Bill Clinton. I warned (pleaded with) all my right leaning acquaintances who were anti-CO2-fascism to NOT vote for Palmer before the last election, for the exact scenarios which have now come to fruition, and do you think most listened? No.
When I pleaded that the Senate would become blocked they all said: “That won’t make any difference to a Tax Repeal, because Palmer won’t get away with such a flip flop being a coal miner. Palmer will keep Abbott to his word”. Ha! How did that one work out? That logic was SO stupid I have become convinced that the problem with Australia is a complete lack of IQ, and a morbid contrarian ‘she’ll be right’ attitude, which has destroyed any hope of retaining any freedoms in this country.
If a standardized world ETS movement is conquered anywhere, it will have to be the USA, because the rest of the planet has been utterly conquered regardless of what the demos think about the science behind CAGW. We’ll soon see if any Democracy still exists within a year after the 2016 US election if a Republican like Cruz or Trump are elected and they maintain their stance against CAGW, otherwise, back to the plantation share-croppers. If Bush, Hillary, or Sanders are elected, we can all kiss our behinds goodbye.
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PUP changed its policy after Al Gore appeared on the scene.
PUP’s change of policy stymied Tony Abbott.
Clive Palmer’s personal business is a sitting duck in the international economy.
Enquire hard, far and wide. I suspect that for a year and a half Al Gore has been governing Australia by proxy.
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PUP was a trojan horse planned by people such as Al Gore well before Abbott even started campaigning. These people are consummate political tacticians. Clive Palmer’s businesses are not a sitting duck, because people call him a ‘coal miner’, even though his largest gains were in property speculation. If he declares bankruptcy he can simply slink off to the Bahamas (etc..) where the majority of his wealth probably resides behind the secrecy jurisdiction firewall.
Al Gore’s climate business is incorporated in the City of London and the Isle of Jersey for good reason. If Gore decided to give Palmer share-ownership or direct funds for his assistance beating Abbott, we would never find out, because transfers between Crown off-shore tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions are forever opaque. There is a reason that Turnbull stashes his wealth in the Cayman Islands instead of in Australia. Would anyone ever know if Palmer or Turnbull were being paid for their service in subverting this country?
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On election day, Clive Palmer’s money bought Bob Katter’s turf.
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True, but Bob Katter was a nobody before that election, and all the Katter-Palmer voters were mostly disenfranchised Labor and Libs voters, but much more Libs I would venture to guess. I knew at least 5 people who were Libs voters who voted for Palmer to “keep Abbott honest, and temper him on other issues in the senate” … Ha! I would much have preferred Bob Katter, though:
“Climate change is just a theory; like gravity” – Katter, Q&A 13/06/2011
But how much of what politicians say is just hot air? Especially when they have nothing to lose when they break big promises, because they have no vision of party longevity in the first place. In my opinion, this just makes their agenda easier to buy with relatively little graft compared with lobbying a larger party. People such as Al Gore are political tacticians, and he would have known that all he had to do, was to split the vote and bog the senate which was always predicted to be split evenly by the Labor-Greens on one side, and the Libs-Nats on the other. God help us.
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That doesn’t really follow when Greg Hunt is on record saying “We oppose an ETS – lock, stock and barrel. We will not be bringing one back.”
However, the only wiggle room I could imagine is where an Australian corporation may be able to offset emissions reductions they achieve through some activity overseas, perhaps in a developing country which isn’t obliged to reduce emissions, so that they can claim that reduction with the Australian Government who will credit it and report that back to the UN IPCC as part of what it has achieved in reductions.
Convoluted I know, but since the Paris agreement does not proscribe how countries will achieve their emission reductions, and simply requests the countries to report how they are accounting for reductions, such a strategy may actually be OK under the Paris agreement.
The Paris Agreement does seem to have plenty of loopholes. Not that I think for a minute that Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t support emissions trading. It is in his Goldman Sachs blood!
Incidentally, I know the LNP Government is looking safe in the Polls, but I suspect it may not look so good at election time. I’m talking to a lot of Liberal supporters who are feeling let down and they are looking at other minor parties. We saw how preferences can go to unexpected places when voting for minor parties so that could hurt the LNP in an election.
Definitely making a Christmas contribution for Jo and the family. Consider the tin kicked!
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First item is to get rid of Turnbull, Hunt and Bishop. I am not sure how that could be done. I suppose that it needs a high profile alternative candidate in each of their seats come the next election. Perhaps Maxine McKew (who is she?) could have ago in Wentworth.
Which is a reason for voting below the line on the senate paper.
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New idea!
JoNova for Curtin WA.
However there is a danger of being turned to stone by the Juluie Bishop death stare. Not sure how to protect against that.
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The Julie Bishop death stare is now as powerful as a torch with a flat AAA cell. Instead, scorn stares her in the face.
After her bogan performance in the UN (complete with the latest squeeze) and in Paris, Bishop is a lame duck.
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I’d second that. I’m sure there will be plenty of people willing to write to the electorate in support
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Maybe a shield made of mirrors with a medusa head? Or a bottle of Holy Water?
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Jaymez,
That’s true. He did say that. Back in October of 2014. But at that time, it was he who came to an agreement with Abbott that an ETS would be reviewed in 2017 for possible implementation. So when he said “We” he clearly meant the then current government while, at the same time, opening the door for a reassessment after the coming elections.
And then there’s this:
So the pro CAGW ™ Climate Change Authority will review whether an ETS is warranted and we know Turnbull is for it. So . . . (connect the dots). 😮
Abe
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My electorate too: an ex-staff member (ouch!) is challenging the sitting member under the Xenophon banner.
The good news is that the sitting member (hobby – table top dancing) is quite complacent. Apparently he hasn’t heard that his nickname in certain areas is “Mr. Invisible”.
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Senator X has voted with Labor Greens most often.
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There is a problem, home address required/demanded, but in my case my address is a postal address where my bank sends statements to me. I object to giving another address, credit card details are all that are necessary by Visa Card.
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Around the CO2 area
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/12/we-dont-need-no-556.html
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The ETS or carbon cap and trade or whatever else they want to call it has little if anything to do with saving the planet, instead it is designed to line the pockets of global bankers and their investors by creating a new global currency. And where was it our PM used to work?
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Turnbull’s hubris may well be his undoing. He thinks that he’s bullet proof and that the next election is unlosable. He and his Liberal party cronies may well rue the day they put Turnbull in charge. Nothing is ever a certainty in politics.
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The North Sydney by election: The Liberals (Turnbull?) apparently spent around $600,000 defending what was a safe Liberal seat but there was no Labor candidate. The swing against them was 13% from the 2013 federal election result. Reports are that North Sydney voters were bombarded with Liberal election material for the by election.
The new PM has a much lower margin in his own seat of Wentworth.
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Turnbull keeps placating the Left, which is stupid, because the Left will never vote Liberal or National and, in the mean time, is alienating the traditional voter base. If there is some method to this madness and a deeper strategy, I haven’t been able to fathom it.
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They will vote: 1) Green; 2) Lib
on the reasonable assumption that Lord Waffle will negotiate some power-share with Di Natale
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Dennis,
for the liberals in North Sydney it was far worse than just the13% swing the 2pp tally shows. They spent $600,000 to lose close on 20,000 votes. After preference allocation the total number of votes for Liberal is down 33% on 2013.
It’s going to far, far worse for the Liberals at the next election if they don’t drop the CO2 nonsense and dump Lord Bouncy Waffle. In North Sydney they had to resort to out of area campaigners, robo-calling and paid mail-outs because they didn’t have enough local campaigners to door-knock or letter-drop. They can’t afford to do that at a general election.
Turnbull is a waffling warmulonian. 75% of normal coalition voters are AGW sceptics. Turnbull has driven off the Liberal voter base, the very people who would normally be campaign volunteers. You can’t win elections from the “centre” when you have lost your campaign base. And the Liberals can’t win their base back with a fervent AGW propagandist as leader.
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Pardon my ignorance, but who is now the member for North Sydney?
Joe Hockey wasn’t just a politician, he was a good bloke.
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The other thing about the North Sydney by-election is that the Greens candidate did not get the Labour votes. The Green vote went up by about 0.5%.
So, no Labor candidate, no bump for the Greens and the Liberal vote went down by over 13%. This is a disaster for Turnbull, not that the MSM will ever say so …
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I am proud to have done my bit at the North Sydney by-election. Consider me part of the 13% swing.
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Me too.
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Yes Dennis, the desirable outcome is that the member for Wentworth loses his seat while the Coalition gets up, a determined information campaign in Wentworth could achieve that. It’s still a tall order because electorates usually like it when their member is PM – influence you know.
PS one point, I’m not a liberal stalwart, I’m a swing voter, but while Labor is unapologetic about the greatest tax and spend binge ever (Rudd-Gillard-Rudd) and persists in trying to destroy our own economy and lower our living standards, and believes in fairies at the bottom of the garden (CAGW), I will not vote for them. Unless they find another Hawke/Keating I can’t see myself ever being able to choose them again.
00
What are the chances of ‘all’ our major trading partners entering into such a scheme?
Palmer, at the time was posturing and this concession was based on the doubt that the trading partners would ever get involved. To introduce any form of credit trading would be political suicide! Defies logic.
I raised this with Greg in early October in correspondence concerning new cities.
His reply to the question.
I have no reason to not believe such, as again…it defies logic.
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Who said Turnbull and Hunt were logical.
They will do whatever the ABC tells them will keep them in power.
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I totally agree with you, especially with your assessment of the ABC in politics:
Here we see the real problem … the word ‘we’ … meaning the Party following Captain Abbott, or the Party following Captain Turncoat?
What does ‘we’ mean coming from Australian politicians within the Aussie political system, where the leader is not elected, the party is, and the leader can be ousted without a new election being called? At least in the US the candidate has to die in office or be successfully impeached, but then a new election is put in motion.
Basically, Turnbull will show that the term ‘election mandate’ is non-existent, and that the word ‘we’ can be redefined mid-term being plausibly upheld as a legitimate election mandate override.
I have no doubt that Greg Hunt will do exactly as he is told by Captain Turncoat, and promptly act as if the Captain is in fact the embodiment of ‘we’; though Abbott was beaten and flayed for his ‘captains calls’ in duplicity, by fellow party hacks who condone the same darn thing whenever a particular issue is ABC-ready and ‘virtuous’. Oh how pure our politics is. Political Purity is right up there with Political Correctness in the greatest faults of western civilization.
Additionally and alternatively, Turnbull gives Hunt another portfolio before ETS implementation, and he doesn’t personally have to answer any charges of flip-flopping against Liberal constituents, and his replacement simply acts stupid, “hey, after COP21, we all agreed we have a problem, times change”.
At the next election we will get to vote for 3+ parties that ALL support an ETS/Tax (they’ll act as if life depended on the difference in definition), and I’m going to go to the voting booth with a big black marker and write “TONY ABBOTT” across the length of it (and take a selfie in the booth for posterity and public ridicule of our ‘democracy’).
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Politicians cannot be trusted, but going to the next election I think Scaper has it right.
What we are failing to recognise is the huge impact Ted Cruz will have on the debate, it will be a game changer.
So Hunt et al will avoid upsetting the Coalition any more than they have already.
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.
scaper…
I was wondering if the question was only in relation to new cities?
Or was it an open ended question?
Something tells me an ETS is on the way, but you’ve assured me it’s not.
Yet a local LIB candidate against Clive Palmer has not responded to my question nearly worded the same as yours?
I AM WORRIED that the plebs are not being informed
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Dave, it was an aside question. The new cities thing is something I’ve been lobbying for about nine years. It is policy now.
Not assuring anything, just the messenger and from what I know…introducing an ETS defies logic.
20
Politicians and Logic,have never met before.
10
I have asked you this question before; I may have missed it, but I don’t remember seeing an answer
What makes you think “Greg” is not lying to you ?
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He hasn’t in the past so why start now? There have been instances on this blog where I’ve said that I would enquire directly and will report back. I believe the record speaks for itself. I will desist in future if Jo desires.
Known Greg now for around seven years. He has assisted me in the lobbying for decentralisation, northern development and real environmental issues.
30
New satellite cities run completely on renewables would be practical and cost effective, especially if they were connected to a Maglev transport system.
11
And you have a money tree, or a magic pudding?
00
scaper…,
I’m not sure how you concluded “‘all’ our major trading partners”.
The extrapolation to ‘all’ may seem minor but let’s think about what they actually said and what that means in real terms.
Hunt pushes Abbott into allowing the Climate Change Authority to continue operating with the explicit mandate to ‘review the possibility of adopting an ETS based on what ‘other major trading partners’ decide to do. Clearly you don’t need all of them to adopt an ETS in order to consider the adoption of an ETS. It would depend on which ones. It would also depend on how the ETS is set up. i.e. legally binding or voluntary. Nation wide, as Palmer prefers, or selective, (only major producers). There may be other considerations.
The point is that the door is open for an ETS in 2017 or thereafter, and it’s with the agreement of the then current Abbott government. And that’s where it gets interesting.
The current government can claim to abide by their agreement with Abbott and technically they would be. At the same time, they can present ‘new circumstances’, yet to be announced, as defined by the CC Authority’s ‘rigorous examination’, that will be promoted as essential to the implementation of an ETS.
In fact, the current goverment doesn’t even have to attempt implementing an ETS until after the elections.
I could go ahead and present a more detailed explanation but I think you’ll get the picture. 😉
Abe
30
With a warm to hot spell now in S E Australia it would be useful, as it has been in previous years, to compare the maximum temperatures with past precedents at least back to 1910 by accessing the BoM webpage ‘Climate Data Online’.
However now, for interested non-specialists, the earliest dates that the maximum temperatures go back to are in the ‘50s or later, for instance Ballarat Aerodrome highest temperature only covers 1957 – 2015.
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Paul Kelly, like so many journalists, is utterly besotted with Malcolm and the Australia is a balanced newspaper with many writers who really are left of centre and that means a carbon tax. Who cares about science? There is nothing wrong with view as such but the voters of Australia, at three elections have utterly rejected any form of carbon tax.
So this is now the genius Malcolm telling us what he has always told us, that he wants a carbon tax and that this is his non negotiable demand if we want him as PM. Frankly, I do not remember electing him as PM.
It is a bit like Hitler telling the world that he wanted liebensraum, that Russia was the place he would invade but even Stalin was shocked when he did exactly what he said he would do. An ETS is Malcolm’s entire reason for being in parliament and Labor will not fight this, nor Palmer and the Greens. He will do to the Coalition what Gillard did to Labor. No one but politicians want a carbon tax and it is for their own reasons and their own benefit. This is death by politician, not a democracy. Malcolm has to go.
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He was a Kevin Rudd fan too, as I recall.
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Malcolm spends like Rudd. Now double dipping on maternity leave is fine. Plenty of money. Grand promises. Why not? Spend out way out of trouble. More Pink Batts. Cheques to dead people and people overseas. Stimulate. Innovate. Be agile. All we need is a 2030 summit! Savings everywhere, except there are none and always spending, spending, spending without restraint. He does not fear a hostile Senate because they agree with everything he is doing. Who needs a balanced budget? That was so Abbott, Malcolm’s mortal enemy and feared by journalists, partly as he used to be one. Now Malcolm today has the Head of ASIO publicly and without precedent criticizing Abbott for saying that ISIS are dangerous and a death cult, something with which even Obama finally and publicly agrees. The attempt to dance on Abbott’s grave is reminiscent of Gillard destroying Rudd’s memory, not even inviting him to a meeting of former Labor Prime Ministers and omitting him from the list when even Malcolm Fraser was honored. So now we have it, a merchant banker channeling Julia except that according to Malcolm, he is a genius. Everyone loves Malcolm and his largesse with the biggest cheque book in the country. Paul Kelly agrees. FOM. Friend of Malcolm.
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Not surprising…malcom is a socialist, as was John “living-the-socialist-dream-of-gun-control” Howard…..
Ever wondered – who actually puts up the candidates you get to “vote” for?
Find out who *those* people are, and you will find the real govt of Australia is….
80
We would need jurisdiction to investigate Cayman Islands treasure hoards. Funny how all the ‘socialists’ in this country are enamored with a man who embodies capital plundering and tax evasion. But then socialists never think about tax as something that THEY have to pay … can’t someone else just pay? It is a sickness beyond comprehension, and if non-leftists (I can’t say right-wing, because it is ‘racist’ or such…) don’t start rising up against the coalition from within to oust King Turncoat and his Bishop, then we won’t even have a semblance of freedom left on our plantation.
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Election!
If the Nats can’t figure things out to divorce the Libs and salvage their future, then ALA.
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Because my local member MP is Liberal I do not have the option to vote Nationals. I do not trust Turnbull. At the next Federal election I will be voting for an Independent in the House of Reps and making sure my preference doesn’t flow to the sitting member, a Turnbull supporter.
Will be trying to do the same in the Senate but it will depend on how cumbersome the ballot paper is. ALA could well be a option.
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What has Malcolm actually done to earn the right to be our Prime Minister? Can anyone tell me? In fact, apart from despertately wanting to bring in a carbon tax, he has spent his time undoing everything Abbott did, except the boat turnarounds and that may happen yet. First and foremost he wants his carbon tax, before the next election and then it is set in stone. If the Nats and Libs bring it in with support of PUP, independents, Labor and the Greens, who will remove it? Doesn’t the public have a say in this?
I was told Everyone Loves Raymond. I didn’t. He wasn’t funny. Nor Malcolm. Why is he presented as such a champion? More Gillard than Rudd.
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Actually you wonder when the Nats will work out that Malcolm is as good as his word. He promised everyone an ETS, which is completely against his undertaking to continue Abbott’s policies. Like the seizure of the Sudatenland, he is calculating that when the time comes, they will let him do as he wants, to guarantee the peace. Like the Labor party, they will eventually try to go back to Abbott, but leave it too late until all the seats are gone. Why should people vote again for a coalition which gives them exactly what Labor and the Greens promised.
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This is way off topic for sure but I can’t help but to stick up for the much maligned bacon. It seems that expert opinion thinks it’s better than fruits and vegetables as the USDA recommends.
I never thought I’d see such a thing in print, much less video. But there it was.
Ain’t science by the method of greenhouse gas consideration wonderful? Well, at least for bacon lovers. 🙂
And maybe it’s not so far off topic as it might appear considering the carbon ax and all…
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It’s only in the last week or two that we were being told how bad bacon is for our health!
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It’s the fat that I’ve been hearing is so bad for me. And that message has come around and around again for at least 10 or 15 years.
It’s disgusting how we get bombarded with eating guidelines that change so often as to put them in serious question. And now the environment too?
I guess no one noticed my intentional substitution of “ax” for “tax”.
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Actually Roy, it wasn’t the fat ‘they’ were warning us about recently; it was the processed meat aspect. Always something new with which to beat us around the head!
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I did notice the ‘ax’ but wasn’t entirely sure what you meant by it! We British call it an ‘axe’ btw 🙂
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About the ax — it has several legitimate spellings in U.S. dictionaries too… …which one to use? But ax is the most common by far. Sorry, perhaps I was a bit too subtle in my attempt to be subtle.
Also sorry the whole carbon tax thing is still alive in Oz or anywhere. And I wonder if we can beat it. I think the Republicans are fooling themselves to believe any of their candidates has a good chance of being elected. So beating back the theCO2 monster here isn’t looking too good either.
I do hope I’m wrong.
00
As Orwell observed language can corrupt thought and as has been pointed out here many times much of the climate hysteria is based on the corruption of language.
Greg Hunt says overseas emissions credits will probably be “allowed”.
Why would any wealth producer buy carbon credits overseas if they weren’t in effect forced to by government diktat?
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It’s reassuring that the Turnbull government still champions classical-liberal values like freedom.
I guess they will soon ‘allow’ us to pay a higher GST rate and high tax on superannuation savings.
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Annabel Crabb writes: “The outcome at Paris creates all sorts of opportunities; for business and innovation, and everything that the exhausted signatories to the deal have been spruiking for days”
didn’t take Annabel long to pick up the new meme.
Annabel obviously not concerned about whether COP21 delivers on anything to do with reducing CO2 emissions or controlling the earth’s temperature (which it doesn’t).
meanwhile, Reuters Carbon Pulse continues to provide a blueprint for trading CO2 emissions. their top story yesterday and today:
15 Dec: ReutersCarbonPulse: Mike Szabo: After Paris, UN’s new “light touch” role on markets to help spawn carbon clubs
It may take years for enough governments to ratify the new Paris Agreement for it to come into force, or to agree on the rules underpinning the new emissions trading mechanism enshrined by it, but any parties wanting to link up their carbon markets under the pact need not wait…
Articles 6.2 and 6.3, on the other hand, allow for decentralised ‘cooperative approaches’ that let countries and other jurisdictions with markets bilaterally and multilaterally link them together, in what many now refer to as ‘carbon clubs’.
These clubs will now be able to trade units, recognised under the Paris Agreement as being “Internationally Transferrable Mitigation Outcomes”, or ITMOs, that are backed by robust accounting measures and not counted more than once towards a country’s target…
Nat Keohane, VP for global climate, US-based Environmental Defense Fund (EDF): “Coalitions of countries that want to move faster and farther will start coalescing and connecting … You can’t put a halt to market activity in a decentralised world.”…
While carbon club members, with the help of other international organisations including the World Bank, are responsible for organising the actual groupings, they are also in charge of policing them…
“We are relying on the big countries with an interest in environmental integrity to be at core of these emerging coalitions,” Keohane said…
http://carbon-pulse.com/13415/
80
Paris agreement? what’s that?
15 Dec: Reuters: Japan, South Korea stick to coal despite global climate deal
Less than a week since signing the global climate deal in Paris, Japan and South Korea are pressing ahead with plans to open scores of new coal-fired power plants, casting doubt on the strength of their commitment to cutting CO2 emissions.
Even as many of the world’s rich nations seek to phase out the use of coal, Asia’s two most developed economies are burning more than ever and plan to add at least 60 new coal-fired power plants over the next 10 years.
Officials at both countries’ energy ministries said those plans were unchanged…
Japan’s Electric Power Development Co Ltd, the country’s top thermal coal user, said the Paris deal would have no impact on its coal plans…
To be sure, China uses vastly more coal and has nearly a thousand more such plants in various stages of planning and construction…
http://news.yahoo.com/japan-south-korea-stick-coal-despite-global-climate-210205981.html
and the CAGW beat goes on:
16 Dec: ClimateChangeNews: Alex Pashley: Climate calendar: With Paris over, now what?
Countries struck a landmark global warming deal in France last week. They’ve got work to do before it takes force in 2020.
Here are the key markers over the next five years before it takes effect, as decided in the 12-page treaty…ETC
2020
The UN’s climate science panel is expected to produce its sixth audit before 2020. It released its mammoth Fifth Assessment Report in two stages in 2013 and 2014, which sharpened the link between human interference and global warming. The bureau under recently-elected chair Hoesung Lee could take a change of direction, drawing more on the ***social sciences and refining its message.
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/12/15/climate-calendar-with-paris-over-now-what/
110
See what hidden agenda looks like? Australians will be hammered with this until its voted in and entrenched. It’s the reason Abbott was pushed imo
100
Yes, of course, but the agenda is not hidden – just inexorable, relentless
30
I have been perplexed by Clive Palmer’s about-face after a curious impromptu meeting with Al Gore. Clive has never really explained himself other than saying if the rest of the world conforms then we should too. I can’t see that you’d need to write that into legislation, it’s just posturing. It has the appearance of Clive being Australia’s climate Judas. On the road to crucifying Australia on the UN cross. Whilst the agreements are non-binding there’s some hope but the prognosis is not good.
100
Our only hope is a major cooling, -5+ degrees, 2 meters of snow on the ground here in Hervey Bay.
Then we can say, “Now look what you have done !”
Rather than them saying, “Look, the ETS is working, the temps have dropped .5 of a degree.
God, I hate politicians getting into office and then just doing as they please. Bugger us !
160
It only requires a trend of minus .5 for us to win the argument, that CO2 follows temperatures. Then the scam will crumble.
70
16 Dec: ClimateChangeNews: There’s no dodging carbon risk after Paris, say fund managers
Global warming deal makes low-carbon transition irreversible and investors are taking note
Investing in energy majors that build new coal mines and gas fields is a dereliction of what’s called “fiduciary duty”, says Stephanie Pfeifer of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.
“That’s one argument that can’t be used anymore… the Paris agreement settled that,” says the CEO of the European network of 120 institutional investors managing over €13 trillion in assets.
“No investors can claim now they are not aware of the issue of fiduciary duty of climate change, climate policy or the energy transition,” Pfeifer adds…
Over 80% of the world’s fossil fuel reserves need to be remain in the ground to hold warming to the 2C temperature threshold.
That means no more coal mines, and oil demand must peak in 2020, according to the Carbon Tracker think tank…
“The main impact of Paris brings this viewpoint nearer to the mainstream,” says Saker Nusseibeh, CEO at Hermes Investment Management. “It doesn’t quite make it mainstream, but it’s getting nearer.”…
Donald Macdonald, a director trustee at the BT Pension Scheme, one of the largest in the UK, says Paris could bring a more standardised approach to reporting risk.
“There are a lot of idiosyncratic ideas and great volumes of data presented in different ways,” he said.
“Investors must get information that is meaningful, but in an understandable format, then take decisions.”
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/12/16/theres-no-dodging-carbon-risk-after-paris-say-fund-managers/
40
Less generators, less power in the grid.
Makes sense to go solar, but make sure you put in battery backup ( but not Li-ion ) as eventually we will drop to 3rd world conditions, in glorious new Austrlian Soviet , Comrade….
10
I wonder if Australia’s possible carbon tax can be represented as a tax on fuel. Much of the fuel is produced from oil which already has a heavy tax/levy so it represents a tax on a tax which I thought might contravene some constitutional element.
There is no way of using fuel oil without producing CO2, it’s implied….just a thought.
50
A super tax on alcohol would have a better outcome.
40
Why? Australia already has some of the highest taxed alcohol in the world! I am overseas right now and it is refreshing to be able to buy alcohol anywhere and it is not taxed any more than soft drink and I don’t see any abuse. I am sick of all the Nanny State taxes we have in Australia!
80
Alright, how about a lottery.
Save the grandchildren and win some money along the way.
50
David, I spend half the year at my other home in Newtown, PA. Here in Hervey Bay, I pay $15.50 for my favourite bottle of Lindeman’s Red. In Newtown, I pay $4.95.
OH, and just before I came back to Australia, I filled up the Honda Civic and paid $US 1.17 a US gallon !
And my last electricity bill, I paid 9c a KW/H.
What is going on here ??
100
Well its simple – anything nice or classifed as “luxury” the gummint hits you with taxes liek crazy. Case in point, i know one bloke who brougt in some high end hifi, cost $3K or there abouts.
Then he was he hit with import duty of 5% , but ALSO GST of 10%…
Hang on…2 taxes?
Its just a form of economic fuedalism – Australia started as a penal colony, and has continued as a fuedal mercantile colony ever since.
Life here is good, but its getting very expensive ( by design ) so people have to become dependent on govt handouts – its all about keeping the peasants ( convicts ) in line…….
That said, I think making your home energy independent is a good step
so that you can run stand alone if you have to.
30
It’s official – Australia is the second best country to live in the world, beating the United Kingdom and the U.S.
‘A UN report found the land Down Under was also a better place to live than Switzerland, Canada and New Zealand.
‘Australia is second only to Norway, according to the annual UN Human Development Report which assessed economic, education and life-expectancy data.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3364886/Australia-second-best-country-world-live-beating-U-S-Britain-report-found.html#ixzz3uelLVBX6
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
00
the hypocritical enablers:
16 Dec: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: Kumi Naidoo: We are in an age of civil disobedience
Outgoing boss of Greenpeace International says he’ll stay in environmental movement to challenge injustice and target top coal funders
‘We are going after the financial components of bad polluting carbon projects, like Greenpeace in Australia which went after all the banks lending to the Carmichael-Adani coal mine,” he says.
The $16.5 billion Carmichael project is now struggling for funding with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, HSBC, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank among those to rule out support…
Stopping Carmichael would be a start, says Naidoo, but he argues there are now “too many bad projects” and as a result, radical action at the top of the financial world is needed.
Central banks are in his crosshairs…
(BUT NOT BoE?)Naidoo said he has been spurred by Bank of England chief Mark Carney, an unlikely climate champion but a man who has consistently warned in the past year of the potential risks climate change poses the financial sector…
For years excluded or lobbying against change, now groups like the B Team and We Mean Business are joining a progressive coalition demanding action.
In what would have been see a radical move only a few years ago, Naidoo even appeared at a press conference with an airline boss – Virgin Atlantic’s Richard Branson – to demand more progress at the Paris talks.
He grins when asked if that was a little odd, given Branson’s many high-carbon interests…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/12/16/kumi-naidoo-we-are-in-an-age-of-civil-disobedience/
70
Who will speak for the skeptics?
Comments from ABC The Drum website;
Dennis:
15 Dec 2015 12:47:44pm
At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Is there any point arguing about climate change?
Alert moderator
Reinhard:
15 Dec 2015 2:47:39pm
Ms Figueres was arguing that we have to move away from the model of unsustainable growth, burning fossil fuels for energy, towards a model of more sustainable growth using renewable energy
Are you saying you honestly don’t comprehend what Ms Figueres was saying or are you, like the fossil fuel lobby, just trying to confuse the argument?
Alert moderator
RealityCheck:
15 Dec 2015 2:58:18pm
Hi Dennis. 🙂
Beware ‘confirmation bias’ when reading statements. The lady merely made an observation that the processes which transition us away from fossil/nuclear and towards green renewable energy/industries are basically as revolutionary in effect as the Industrial Revolution was to the pre-existing economic development models of the past.
See? She merely made the obvious connection between the total reorganizing effect which the Industrial Revolution brought about as a matter of course if things were going to change for the better at that stage in our economic development model; just as the same will in effect happen at THIS stage of our economic development model if we are to avoid some of the unintended consequences of the changes that happened last time. It’s not a ‘conspiracy’, but an observation of effectively what will be happening as a result of global action re AGW. Take it easy and don’t make innocent observations into conspiracy, hey? And its small ‘s’ socilaistic secular democracy that is evolving as the only sustainable model for govt/society/economy to develop into the future without the past chaos that superstitionism, religionism, comminism, capitalism and all sorts of greed/insanity-isms has brought throughout millennia. Time to start trying science, humanity, reason and compassion informing small ‘s’ secular democracy govt/economy model for a few centuries, hey?
101
wow realitycheck really cut you to pieces. Why did you even make such a bizarre comment?
223
This is what I call a reality check Gee Aye
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/16/energy-carbon-dioxide-and-the-pause/
Look at fig 1 –see that little thin line on the right !!
As for reality checks comments –he/she is confirming Dennis’s point by quoting Figurers ie. Big government with a BIG “B” coming soon if they get their way.
131
I don’t believe CO2 causes any warming, keeping in mind that human emissions amount to 8 gigatons annually, while natural flux is roughly 210 gigatons.
‘It is ten times as likely that atmospheric CO2 is coming from natural sources, namely the warming ocean surface, as it is likely that it is coming from anthropogenic sources. The changes in CO2 track ocean surface temperature, not global carbon emissions. Burning fossil fuels is not increasing atmospheric CO2. Recovery from the Little Ice Age, driven by the sun, is causing the oceans to release CO2. It is temperature driving CO2 release, not the other way around. Just as it has always been.
‘As the sun gets quiet in the next few years, sea surface temperature will begin to fall, and the rise in CO2 will cease. If the sun stays quiet for 30 or 40 years, ocean surface temperatures will fall far enough to reverse the CO2 rise, the globe will enter a new little ice age, and things will get really interesting.’
– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2013/03/02/most-of-the-rise-in-co2-likely-comes-from-natural-sources/#sthash.dwpByKry.dpuf
82
Remember in the graph that the Greens are against more dams, so against hydro. They are against Nuclear. So you may as well aggregate everything against so called renewables, which aren’t. Randoms might be better. They are rarely more than 1/4 of their badged power, so you can make that 1/4 of the size.
50
“And its small ‘s’ socilaistic secular democracy that is evolving as the only sustainable model for govt/society/economy to develop into the future without the past chaos that superstitionism, religionism, comminism, capitalism and all sorts of greed/insanity-isms has brought throughout millennia.”
So, Gee Aye, Reality Check actually confirms Dennis’ comment.
Go on, get back under your bridge, troll.
111
‘Time to start trying science, humanity, reason and compassion informing small ‘s’ secular democracy govt/economy model for a few centuries, hey?’
RC is reading from the red/green mantra and doesn’t give a hoot about the pause… sigh.
50
Alarmists serially misuse and abuse science, show a conspicuous lack of respect for the greater portion of humanity, eschew reason, display minimal compassion, have an overtly religious belief system (therefore not secular by any reasonable definition), hate democracy with a passion ( and are constantly calling for a suspension of it, in fact), and are hell bent on destroying the economy.
So aside from that, Gee Aye, I’d say reality check was spot on. Is his name meant to be some kind of half-assed attempt at comedy? Or is that nuance and irony in alarmist land?
60
OT: The 97% of climate scientists myth getting busted in the UK Parliament this week.
1:54 http://youtu.be/wYxy9AVVZAQ
121
He has given this speech before. The opposition do the usual. 95% of scientists. Royal Society. Skepticism is admirable but does stop people from taking urgent action on the biggest problem facing humanity. You have to think Labor are reading from a script, as they answer no simple questions at all. There is no debate. Man made global warming is a political tool of the left. It never was science but like a lot of the other issues, another excuse to shut down debate, silence your opposition and take offence. To question Man Made Global Warming is offensive, apparently, even in parliament.
121
Eddie,
Thank you ! a great post 😀
Clarke TC Davies is proving to be a great speaker for us skeptics.
He is demanding answers to questions concerning AGW , but no one in Parliament is able to provide them.
60
Thankyou ScotsmaninUtah. I believe it’s David though, if you felt like dropping a line to congratulate him https://twitter.com/davidtcdavies/status/677163260819464192
20
Time will show people have short memories, or perhaps more accurately people’s attention is being diverted to other issues, such as the war with terrorism. This will probably allow the ETS scam to be implemented. George Orwell should be mandatory reading at all schools, but of course that would not be allowed to happen. It would make all of the people aware of the various tricks used by the scam artists, such as never let facts get in the way using any means possible, legal or otherwise.
70
Isn’t it enough that we’ve fed two entire states to Green Blob?
Adelaide used to be called flatteringly the Athens of the South. Now it’s still called the Athens of the South – but not flatteringly.
150
Too many lefty greens on both sides of politics.
Yes they are going to push hard for carbon tax and ETS.
With your help Jo we will just have to keep fighting them!
I believe in my heart that he truth will prevail.
Regards
Geoff W Sydney
110
PARTY SPLIT?
Will this split Liberal Party, if it is not split already?
Just as well I kept my banner against the Gillard ETS, fearing the worst.
90
If half the world did not curtail,
Their ‘carbon’ emissions and fail,
To pay heavy fines,
For what warmists call crimes,
Would the other half send them to jail?
130
Keep up the great work Jo. I have ordered some Christmas chocs via the tips jar for your enjoyment. Be merry!
50
Ask yourself this one question.
Why is there the need for an ETS?
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the lowering of CO2 emissions, and anybody who thinks that has a huge green scotoma.
They need to have an ETS because there is so much money to be made from it, and it all depends on the very thing they tell us they want to stop, mainly the emissions of CO2 from coal fired power plants in the main.
China has now been using these USC or HELE plants for nearly ten years.
They work, in every sense of that word.
Now they are proven, other Countries are also constructing them hand over fist, with perhaps thousands of them planned for the next few years.
Why am I so confident this is the way of the future?
Now ask the next and perhaps most important question , in direct reference to these new tech power plants.
If wind and solar power worked on the scale required, do you seriously think that China (and now all those other Countries) would be bothering to construct these coal fired plants.
From that questions comes others.
Do you seriously think Governments will look at their large cities with populations of more than a million and relegate them to dead zones, because those cities require monstrously huge amounts of power for 24 hours of every day.
Do you seriously think that Governments are going to forego the Billions in mining royalties.
Do you seriously think Governments are going to put up with the huge unemployment numbers if mining is killed off.
Do you seriously think those huge engineering plants working flat out designing and constructing new equipment for the coal fired plants will be allowed to just go under.
Do you seriously think that those same huge companies would be bothering with that new equipment if coal fired power was supposedly at its death knell.
Do you seriously think that if wind and solar power were so cheap, then why are they even bothering to construct these new coal fired power plants.
Do you seriously think that still developing Countries will cancel plans to bring themselves to our level.
Do you seriously think that our already developed Countries will be allowed to go back to the dark ages.
NO, and a resounding NO, is the answer to all of those questions.
New tech coal fired power is the coming thing. As so many Countries gain access to them, you’ll see developed countries, (all of US, me and you reading this right now) looking on and asking the obvious question.
Why do they get it and we don’t.
Pretty soon now, we’ll also see plans for them in OUR Countries.
There will be so many of them.
The UN is utterly powerless to stop what is already happening, will not stop those Countries now seeking to build them, and will have no power to stop us also building them.
When you have some companies working on single generators capable of generating 1600MW Plus, and other Countries building turbines to drive them, and then plants to support them, the UN can say what it wants to, and the Greens can lap it all up.
User pays.
The only way they CAN make money from it, astronomically humungous amounts of money, is to impose an ETS, set at whatever cost they like and because emissions are so huge, there’s literally trillions to be made from it, all of passed directly down to all of us in the form of increased costs for the electricity we all consume, that we all REQUIRE for the life we have.
USER PAYS.
Ask the next question.
Where does that money raised from any ETS go?
CO2 causing CAGW is just the excuse, because even just China blows every emissions reduction target for every other Country out of the water before three years are gone, and then there’s India still to come, about where China was ten years ago.
They cannot stop it.
All they want is the money.
Tony.
301
Of course it’s about the desperate need by all Western governments to extract more money in any way they can. They know the debt bubble is growing too fast and there is no way it can be stopped let alone reduced with just budget cuts. It has nothing to do with man-made run-away global warming, which is why the facts are irrelevant to them. Even if we could scientifically prove beyond any doubt that the it’s a hoax, it still wouldn’t change their minds about implementing their schemes to extract the money. What they don’t realize yet is it will backfire, and actually make matters worse. The system is broken and no matter how much they try and tune it, it will explode. The system needs replacing, and it will be once it collapses.
81
Good work. All quite logical. No, there is no Science in Man Made Global Warming. How can you have a twenty year pause in dangerous run away warming? At what point does even the language become contradictory? How can anyone argue now that CO2 is somehow exclusively heating the ocean instead of heating the ocean increasing CO2? Phrases like ‘the Science is in’ and even ‘The Science’ are not from scientists. No scientist talks like this. These are political slogans created by propaganda people. So all the good work and obvious reasoning is wasted. The people who want the money and power just call everyone else deniers and sceptics and go back to business as usual, raking in the cash and counting the votes of the frightened.
Both sides of politics are now in the hunt, if we are to believe Malcolm’s backers in both the Liberals and National Party. Of course he is partnered with Bishop and Morrison, who know that if Abbott gets back, they will be relegated. That is why McFarlane had to be beaten and even the head of the secret service ASIO has been pushed to publicly criticize Abbott. Malcolm is now protected by his desperate friends. Even on the backbench, Tony Abbott is a threat, if only because he makes sense and speaks the truth. Both are anaethema to the windmill and ETS people. No one really cares how many coal fired plants China builds. The windmills are ready. Useless things.
81
an ETS still requires plenty of scary stories in the MSM, & ABC always obliges:
17 Dec: ABC: ‘Climate change at work’ as Adelaide swelters through another hot night
Adelaide’s ongoing severe heatwave is a first for this time of year and the “sort of signal you will see with climate change”, a Bureau of Meteorology head says.
South Australia acting regional director John Nairn said Adelaide had never experienced a sequence of four 40 degree Celsius days during December…
16 Dec: ABC: Rachel Sullivan: Rising temperatures could put saltwater crocodiles in hot water
The finding, published today in Conservation Physiology, indicated increasing temperatures could have a profound effect on the iconic reptile’s daily life in Australia’s north…
To assess the reptile’s capacity to withstand heat, Ms Rodgers and her colleagues assessed the temperature sensitivity and ‘fright dive’ response of 11 juvenile salties that had been exposed to one of three temperature regimes: current summer, 28 degrees C; moderate climate warming, 31.5 degrees C; and high climate warming, up to 35 degrees C.
They found while all study animals dived to the same depth and at the same frequency, those diving in 28-degree water spent an average of 36.8 minutes underwater, while crocs diving in 31.5 and 35-degree waters spent an average of only 23.5 and 21.3 minutes submerged respectively…
When the crocs were exposed to a frightening noise — a plastic lid being banged on the back of the dive tank — submergence times halved with every 3.5-degree water temperature increase.
Those in the 28-degree tanks stayed down for eight minutes, while the high-temperature crocs surfaced after only 2.3 minutes…
“They may be able to seek refuge in deep, cool water pockets or shift their geographical range to cooler, southerly waters.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-16/saltwater-crocodiles-unable-to-adapt-as-water-temperatures-rise/7029780
14 Dec: ABC: Fiona Pepper: Study finds climate change triggers mental health problems for farmers
Over a two-year period, Murdoch University post doctorate associate Neville Ellis interviewed 22 farmers from the Wheatbelt town of Newdegate, in Western Australia’s Great Southern, about how they were responding emotionally and psychologically to climate change…
“So what you see in these dry seasons is that farmers will be checking forecast 10, 20, 30 times a day. They just don’t know what’s coming on the horizon, so there’s a degree of anxiety about what is coming their way.”…
“You see in times of wind erosion that farmers will actively shut themselves inside, close all the curtains in an attempt to remove themselves from an environment that is too painful to watch,” Mr Ellis said.
“One woman even told me about putting herself to bed and pulling the doona over her face because she just couldn’t stand watching the land blow, and she couldn’t stand watching the land degrade like that.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-14/climate-change-impacts-farmers-mental-health/7026804
70
pat mentions this:
So, then, with a State so reliant on wind power, how did that go then?
Hmm!
Here’s the link to yesterday’s wind power totals. When you open the link, click on ….. MW at the top right of the image. Then ….. uncheck every State except South Australia, and then ….. uncheck the box labelled Total.
The black line is the sub total for all South Australia’s wind plants.
Now, look at the total power delivered between around 7.30AM and 7.30PM.
That average is around 150MW, which is around 10% of the total nameplate for the State. So, only one tower in ten with the blades rotating,
So, while wind is delivering around that 150MW, the State is sweltering, and probably consuming it’s maximum, around 3000MW.
So, wind is supplying around 5% of the power needed.
And at Midday, probably the hottest time of the day. 40MW from wind power, 2.7% of Nameplate and 1.3% of what the State is actually consuming. Only one tower in every 40 with the blades rotating.
Okay, then, now take this link to the AEMO power costs. Look at yesterday for South Australia, and note the cost of electricity for the Peak period 7AM till 10PM, that figure of (the hourly average for those 15 hours) of $161.50/MWH, way more than every other State.
Why it is so costly is because wind power is not delivering. All those minnows which are designed to deliver for perhaps three or four hours a day, had to deliver for the whole day, hence their costs rise astronomically, as they now have to source Natural Gas at the going rate, and not their set in stone cheaper contracted price as per normal operation.
This is a DIRECT consequence of the failure to deliver from wind power.
With any ETS the costs will rise even further, as each of those smaller plants will now blow any prospective CO2 emissions target budget, based on normal operation, based on just a few hot days a year.
I suppose South Australia can thank Victoria for the availability of their brown coal fired power via the two Interchanges, both probably drawing from Victoria the maximum they are rated at, supplying most of South Australia’s power.
The introduction of an ETS will probably drive those minnows to the wall.
If wind power is the answer, someone is asking the wrong question.
Tony.
200
Hi Tony
Another useful link is to the Nem Watch site which has a live generation site……lags by about an hour
http://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch
Can someone please tell me what the ‘liquid fuel’ source relates to…..surely not diesel generators.[sarc]
At 15.35 it is generating 86MW, compared with wind 147MW.
50
Tony,
as always, you are “bang on the money”. This is not a real attempt at prohibition, this is an attempt at increasing excise. but carelessly they are creating an energy prohibition.
Currently 33% of federal revenue is dependant on energy taxation. The sprungers are hoping to increase this, believing demand is inelastic. Big mistake. Demand may be largely inelastic, but energy sources are about to become (using the words of Lord Bouncy Waffle), “agile”. An ancient saying – “The more you tighten your fist, the more slips through your fingers.”
Just as Uber is winning, so too will black market bio-diesel. Hell, “mining companies” are going to set up operations that buy copious quantities of untaxed diesel that “they” apparently consume. Forget drugs, Lord Bouncy Waffle is about to create a black market energy boom.
The Waffling Warmulonian talks tripe. It is not governments who are “agile”, it is “Prominent Sydney Businessmen”, “ Colourful Melbourne Racing Identities” and “Notorious Newtown Substance Enthusiasts” who are truly “agile”. Build it and they will come.
Drugs are for recreation, energy is for life. Prohibition of drugs caused an army with more fire-power than the entire Chicago police force to spring intro existence. Even the formation of the FBI couldn’t stop it. Only government surrendering on prohibition worked. Wanna see what prohibition of energy results in?
80
Another look a South Australia’s power
You can change it to look at previous days.
50
Peter,
thanks so much for this link. I have been looking for something exactly like this for the last, well, a long time now. I’ve lost count of the number of parameters I’ve entered into search engines, and the number of pages of links at those search engines I’ve followed.
Link saved.
Again, thanks.
Tony.
40
The croc study simulates a 7 degree warming scenario. Thankfully the Paris agreement has restricted the temperature rise to only 2 degrees. Whew, that was just in the nick if time.
Which brings me a brilliant comment from Mark Steyn,
“some reflections on the big climate beano in Paris, starting with this absurd line from CNN:
The accord achieved one major goal. It limits average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures.
This is the hubris of fools. King Canute gave his demonstration at the water’s edge to teach his courtiers the limits of kingly power. King Barack, Queen Angela, Prince Justin and the rest have neither the irony nor humility to understand the stupidity of an agreement to set the planet’s temperature.”
150
We need Someone like Mark Steyn running the show here ,instead of big banker’s lackeys and lefty appeasers as we currently are infested with !
We have become a nation of ‘Turn the other Cheekers’ to any and all ratbags and extremists !
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TonyfromOz – great response re SA.
16 Dec: NYT: Thomas L. Friedman: Paris Climate Accord Is a Big, Big Deal
I had low expectations for the U.N. climate meeting here and it met all of them — beautifully. I say that without cynicism…
But the fact that the lowest common denominator is now so high — a willingness by 188 countries to offer plans to steadily and verifiably reduce their carbon emissions — means we still have a chance to meet what scientists say is our key challenge: to avoid the worst impacts of global warming…
Many leaders had a hand in it, but it would not have happened without the diplomacy of President Obama and John Kerry.
Hat’s off, because this keeps alive the hope of capping the earth’s warming to 2 degrees…
The only important holdout in the world to this deal is the U.S. Republican Party…
With the earth on pace to add two billion more people by 2050, who will all want cars and homes, and with scientists saying the only way to stay below the 2 degrees C redline is to phase out all fossil fuels by roughly the same date, there is only one force big enough to do that — to take on Mother Nature at scale — and that’s Father Greed, a.k.a., the market…
***Indeed, Jose Manuel Entrecanales, chairman of Acciona, the giant Spanish renewables company, told me that he used to be sprinting alone in the race to install renewables “with the wind in my face.” But now
he finds the wind is at his back, and some of the biggest oil companies are trying to muscle into the race…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/opinion/paris-climate-accord-is-a-big-big-deal.html?ref=international&_r=0
***guess Abengoa wouldn’t have spoken to Friedman had he requested an interview, see end of next excerpt! btw it’s “banks ready” according to anonymous sources:
16 Dec: Daily Mail: Reuters: Julien Toyer/Carlos Ruano: Banks ready to extend short-term lifeline to Spain’s Abengoa
The banks’ are prepared to offer the company 210 million euros ($229 million) so it can pay salaries and maintain current operations…to ensure that Abengoa stays afloat.
Abengoa declined to comment, as did a steering committee representing its roughly 200 creditor banks worldwide…
Its market value, which had risen rapidly to top 4 billion euros last year, has since plunged by more than 90 percent – with investors fearing the firm could collapse under its debt, and unsettled by its opaque and tightly-controlled financial structure, still in the hands of the Benjumea founding family…
The banking sources say the way forward is for them to take a deep haircut on their debt in exchange for a controlling stake in the company so that they can refloat it and sell it at a better price later on in a bid to minimise their losses…
The creditor banks were also holding talks on Tuesday with international investment funds about a potential participation, although the funds are unlikely to agree, the sources said…
There was also further evidence of Abengoa’s shaky finances in the latest annual accounts of its majority shareholder, according to a document seen by Reuters on Tuesday.
Inversion Corporativa (IC), the vehicle through which Abengoa’s Benjumea founding family and its business partners control the company, put up part of its controlling stake as collateral for a 100 million euro loan last year, the document showed.
***Despite repeated attempts, Reuters has not been able to reach the founding family, and Abengoa has declined to provide a contact…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3362038/Banks-ready-extend-short-term-lifeline-Spains-Abengoa.html
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OFF TOPIC: Lots of engineering defects in North Sea windmills. http://www.windpoweroffshore.com/article/1217165/prepared-new-technology-defects
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16 Dec: Desert Sun: Sammy Roth: Abengoa to sell Palen solar farm near Joshua Tree
A new hope
But on Tuesday, Abengoa filed a petition with the California Energy Commission to transfer ownership of Palen to Maverick Solar, a Delaware limited liability company.
Abengoa listed Maverick’s contact person as Cliff Graham, a vice president of development at EDF, and said mail should be directed to Graham via EDF’s San Diego headquarters…
If EDF intends to refashion Palen as a traditional solar farm, it will need to submit new designs for the commission to approve. In its filing with the commission Tuesday, Abengoa again asked for the construction start deadline to be delayed to December 2016.
Without that extension, EDF might need to start the permitting process from scratch, prompting a new environmental impact analysis.
That analysis wouldn’t be trivial. Even after Abengoa said it would no longer build solar towers, environmental groups balked at the project, saying they were still concerned about its potential impacts on desert wildlife and habitats, including a sand transport habitat critical for Mojave fringe-toed lizards.
http://www.desertsun.com/story/tech/science/energy/2015/12/16/abengoa-sell-palen-solar-farm-near-joshua-tree/77431322/
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guess CNN didn’t get the meme that CAGW is a national security issue!
15 Dec: Politico: Nolan D. McCaskill: Climate change never comes up at GOP debate
But not once did the historic climate agreement come up in Tuesday’s main Republican debate, which focused heavily on national security…
http://www.politico.com/blogs/live-from-the-venetian/2015/12/climate-deal-gop-debate-216831
16 Dec: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: NOAA Officials FINALLY Surrender Staff Emails To Lawmakers
Now NOAA has handed over the first tranche of emails to Smith’s staff, except for emails from agency scientists responsible for June’s study…
http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/16/noaa-officials-finally-surrender-staff-emails-to-lawmakers/
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as for Paul Kelly/Australian – never forget who he works for &
keep in mind Sky is long-time member of Prince Charlie’s Corporate Leaders Group (CLG), aka the We Mean Business mob, which includes:
CLG members are: 3M, Acciona, Anglian Water Group, BT, Coca-Cola Enterprises, EDF Energy, GlaxoSmithKline, Heathrow, Iberdrola, Jaguar Land Rover, Lloyds Banking Group, Philips, Sky, Tesco, Thames Water, Unilever, United Technologies, etc. They employ 2 million people across 170 countries, with combined revenues of over $170 billion.
CISL works with some of the above plus Shell, Tata, Nestle, GE, Arup, etc.
still prominent on their homepage is the following report, dated July, alongside all the business/investor news from COP21:
July 2015: Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group: 10 years of Carbon Pricing in Europe – A business perspective
The University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership’s longest standing business platform, The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group (CLG) is a select club of European business leaders working together, under the patronage of The Prince of Wales, to advocate solutions to climate change to policymakers and business peers at the highest level, both within the EU and globally.
The CLG has commissioned this report with the support and engagement of the We Mean Business Coalition and the ***World Bank Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition.
DOWNLOAD THE REPORT (PDF 16 pages)
p5: As an energy company, EDF Energy have experienced a much more direct impact from the carbon price.
Denis Linford recalls: “I don’t think we could have got [nuclear] back on the agenda unless climate change was important. It may not have been economically justified without that, therefore the carbon price
was a very important signal.”…
Shell has a clear position in support of carbon trading. David Hone elaborates: “The simple concept of a finite and declining pool of allowances being allocated, traded and then surrendered as carbon dioxide is emitted has remained. Despite various other issues the EU ETS has done this consistently and ***almost faultlessly year in and year out; the mechanics of the system have never been a problem.”
p10: Matt Wilson at GSK has concerns about customers and consumers acknowledging the issues: ***“The biggest thing we want at the moment is some recognition from our payers, customers, consumers, sending us the right indicators that they want products with a lower environmental impact.”
http://www.corporateleadersgroup.com/
Matt Wilson/GSK should get inundated with calls/emails from CAGW sceptic customers, telling him they want nothing of the sort.
About the author Jill Duggan:
CISL bio: Jill Duggan
Jill is a former Director of Policy for Doosan Babcock and Doosan Power Systems, and remains their Senior Advisor on Policy and their Special Representative. She is currently a Board member of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, the European Power Plant Suppliers Association and of Sandbag. Jill is also a Director and Founder of Carbon Policy Associates Ltd.
She has extensive experience of carbon pricing policy having headed the UK government’s early UK Emissions Trading System before becoming the UK policy lead on the 2008-2012 Phase of the EU Emissions Trading
System and then headed their International Emissions Trading team. She has been an advisor to the Western Climate Initiative in the United States, has worked at the European Commission on Carbon Markets and was a Senior Visiting Fellow on International Carbon Markets with the World Resources Institute in Washington DC.
30
Surprise , Surprise !
Mr Goldman And Sachs apprentice ‘TurnTrueB’lverBull’ wants to sneako his Great Big Carbon Tax aka Ripoff Trading Scheme back in to please his true superiors ….Big Banks !
He along with that thing Bishop and True B’lver Hunt need the Bum’s Rush Out !
There is no simpler way to put it !
What were they even doing at that Paris CON21 thieves Cartel to begin with , with more than half the Australian population not wanting a bar of this garbage ,much less pay for it .
When are these elected mongrels going to start doing what we want instead of handing billions to international criminals for the greatest scam in our history to satisfy their own glorification?
One hundred years ago these so called leaders would have been left ‘swingin in the breeze’ from a tree for a fraction of what they now do and have done .
Makes one want to wish for the past for some well deserved ‘drumhead’ justice !
Notice the timing also , when most are preoccupied with Xmas and holidays .
Our Agile and Excited Thief in Chief is Scheming how to take more of our money from us while the general dumb public think that they have our best interests in mind.
They want to make cuts to pathology and scrutinize welfare to the same tune as handing one thousand million dollars to the 1mm per year Sea Level Rise Gangsters .
Does anybody else see ruthless hypocrisy and a mad methodology here , or is it just me ?
http://rickwells.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/289-australian-pm-turnbull-2-940.png
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Test.
30
O/T
I missed this earlier story by Graham Lloyd, the Southern Ocean sink has picked up the tempo.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/southern-ocean-sink-turns-the-tide-on-climate-change-alarm/news-story/3e86309f1f65c80bc43a5852c7216090
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Goldman Sachs: 100
Australian Taxpayers : Nil
Well done Mal.
KK
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“Outstanding red team….you get a case of beer for that one.”
30
a couple of laughs:
15 Dec: Redd-Monitor: COP21 Paris: REDD and carbon markets
Leaving fossil fuels in the ground was not on the agenda in Paris, and the words “fossil fuels” do not appear in the Paris Agreement.
So Paris will not address climate change. But will it at least save the forests?
REDD is dealt with in the two paragraphs of Article 5 of the Paris agreement…DETAILS
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement creates a new carbon trading mechanism. It manages to do so with(out) mentioning the words “carbon” or “trading” or “markets”…
And the new carbon trading mechanism is a “mechanism to contribute to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and support sustainable development” ***(with the catchy abbreviation MCMGGESSD, as Oscar Reyes
points out)(LINK to “Seven Wrinkles in the Paris Climate Deal”, Foreign Policy in Focus)…
http://www.redd-monitor.org/2015/12/15/cop21-paris-redd-and-carbon-markets/
15 Dec: Reuters: Andrew Callus/Alister Doyle: Climate deal typo hiccup solved “in a small room,” France says
“Trust was created,” said Fabius, who has been praised for his masterly handling of the talks.
“It was this trust that got things done. The text is very complicated and very long etcetera, and in the last version of the text, the stenographers made a typing error…
He said South Africa, the leader of the G77 group of emerging countries told his colleagues after the error that they wanted the more binding word kept in.
“I had to come to a small room… I said trust me. I certify that it is just a typing error. Let’s not block this deal for the human race for that. They told me, Mr. Fabius, we trust you.”
http://news.yahoo.com/climate-deal-typo-hiccup-solved-small-room-france-113715153.html
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so many “prestigious” institutions have lost all their credibility on account of CAGW:
16 Dec: UK Telegraph: Emily Gosden: Lettuce ‘three times worse than bacon’ for the environment, scientists claim
The study, by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, compared the greenhouse gas emissions from the production of 1,000 calories of different foods.
“Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon,” Professor Paul Fischbeck, one of the report’s authors, concluded…
Antony Froggatt, senior research fellow at Chatham House, which recently recommended a meat tax to help tackle global warming, said: “The study confirms that meat, poultry and egg food groups as a whole are relatively high sources of greenhouse gases compared to vegetable, grains, pulses and sugars.
“Therefore reducing consumption of the former food groups, which is also recommended from a health perspective, in this, and other studies, can be an important opportunity of greenhouse gas emissions
savings.”…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/12052711/Lettuce-worse-than-bacon-for-the-environment-scientists-claim.html
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Professor Ian Plimer “The volcanic eruption in Iceland negated in just four days every savings to control CO2 emissions for the past five years “.”When the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991 it released more CO2 into the atmosphere, in one year than the entire human race in its history .”Unless our Climate scientist can control Volcanoes Bushfires and Mother nature which are responsible for 97%of CO2 emissions ,it is futile to control emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels that contribute less than 3% .
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Very neat and concise summary of reality
KK
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Nope, Pinatubo and Eyjafjallajoekull each released not even half of what the European Aviation Industry releases every year, let alone all of human history.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F0_tZAcFC-bmPrYb5gL5GOlUP0_CeTN0n_PiZ81Nql0/edit?hl=en_GB&pref=2&pli=1
“Peter S” has counted half the fluxes and mistakenly believes he has the total, but he has not subtracted the annual industry absorption (almost nothing) and the annual natural absorption (huge NH spring regrowth) to gauge the relative year-on-year net contributions.
KK you’re an ex geologist, you’re supposed to quantify these things instead of just believing nonsense.
But even without knowing the numbers why would anyone think that volcanoes would be anywhere near industry for CO2 output? Compare the two phenomena.
Volcanoes: Rare and random events exposing deep origin CO2 at mixing ratios found in the mantle far below any sedimentary rock.
Industry: A machine deliberately designed to find only hydrocarbon rich deposits from shallow depths and extract them as quickly as possible and burn them.
Just on the face of it, at first glance, volcanoes have no chance. Then you check the numbers and find that’s true by a factor of 150, far larger than any error on global volcanic extrapolations could explain.
And on those two eruptions specifically the eruption ejecta were sampled and so there is not even any hand-waving or global extrapolation involved.
That’s how pants-on-head Plimer was on this issue. This was exposed 5 years ago, so I am surprised anyone still falls for it.
34
Andrew Mc Rae you are the one who is talking nonsense. First the blog was not from Peter S who is a regular contributor ,but from Peter Styles .You say Volcanoes are “Rare and random events “Crap .You do not Question the fact that Human emissions of CO2 are 3% ,and natural emissions like Volcanoes ,Bushfires and Good old Mother Nature 97% .So the Question remains it is futile to control emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel,3% if we cannot control emissions from nature 97%.
10
If he is reading I wish to apologise to “Peter S” for tarring him with the brush intended for “Peter Styles”, it was my mistake to assume they were the same person.
And Mr Styles you are still talking nonsense because your final sentence does not logically follow from your second last sentence.
By your logic it would be futile to control the 0% absorption by industry since we cannot control the 50% absorption by nature, so CO2 may suddenly decrease at an ever accelerating rate regardless of our actions. Oh…err… hang on… in fact CO2 is going up, so your logic does not work. You can’t compare only half the fluxes involved and get the full picture.
Without subtracting the incoming fluxes from the outgoing fluxes you have no clue whatsoever as to what net contribution each of the two candidates made towards driving up CO2 over the last 60 years. Do the natural absorptions cancel out the natural emissions? You will never know because you have not even tried to quantify the situation.
More than that, CO2 is still going up even during the Pause, and the mass balance principle proves nature has not been a net source of CO2 for the last 40 years. ( If we had added no new CO2 to the atmosphere last century, based on ice core studies the CO2 level would still have gone up due to the natural temperature increase… by maybe 10ppm, but nowhere near 100ppm. )
It is indeed futile to try to limit our emissions of CO2, but that’s because CO2 increases are currently beneficial for us, not because of the innumerate argument you supplied.
00
Mr McRAE where do you get 0% absorption by industry and 50% absorption by nature .CO2 does not hover around fossil fuel emissions and absorb 0%of 3% , and then absorb 50% of 97% .Clearly you are the one with the innumerate argument as that is a mathematical impossibility .No one doubts that CO2 is going up at around 2PPM each year and is now over 400PPM .But NASSA claims it cannot be measured accurately ,and records are very new .ERR–why is this having little effect on Global warming .We should be cooking up like hell .?
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Congratulations, you are now asking the right questions.
ftp://cdiac.ornl.gov/pub/Global_Carbon_Project/
01
The argument with respect to volcanoes and other natural releases of CO2 is made more problematic by the fact that the science of measuring out-gassing is in its infancy. The spreadsheets Andrew McRae is linking to below, are about as useful as a western government’s ‘unemployment’ rate measurement or projection (ie, bunk). Labels can be powerful distortions of language and logic.
http://www.livescience.com/40451-volcanic-co2-levels-are-staggering.html
The biggest problem with the CAGW scientific crowd (which A.McRae is not part of thankfully), is actually their reticence to state the obvious truth that they are not experts, because they’ve only been on the scene long enough to give a mild appraisal of the problems of data collection.
Cr*p in = Cr*p out, and using spreadsheets to compare human emissions to natural emissions at this point in time is a futile attempt in preaching to whatever choir one prefers. CAGW preachers can’t admit that they are data collection babies, because this would undermine their funding which relies on the Saint-Simon paradigm:
Predictions trump proof; estimates are as good as hard data; oh how the ‘enlightened’ thinkers (he was a socialist) are more valuable than the dirty little dumb peasant. Thus, Priests were replaced by Scientists, and the French Revolution (and others) proved that religious faith was not to blame, but rather human pig headedness and arrogance was to blame all along. From priests frock to lab coat, nothing changes under the sun. Such incomplete data is worthless.
How many virgins should we throw into a volcano to assuage the sins of the people and calm the rage of the fire God’s? How many poor people and middle-class carbon pigs should we eradicate to please a bureaucratic UN spreadsheet exercise? This argument is about as nonsensical as spending billions of dollars to even attempt at measuring all the CO2 out-gassing from volcanoes and fissures, which is highly variable throughout geological history anyway, just like solar minimums etc…
The statement about Mt Pinatubo emissions falls dead all by itself, because I have every confidence that emissions ESTIMATES are completely wrong to begin with: How does one measure CO2 from a single eruption? Where to start and finish? Where does the geographic border of the volcano start and end (CO2 doesn’t just come from the main vent)? Time and space are simply variables – to be manipulated by bias where required.
MY POINT: ### Surely, stating that ‘industry absorbs 0%’ and ‘nature absorbs 50%’, when talking about volcanic activity is totally absurd and irrelevant. ###
Grouping volcanoes and forests (etc..) into an arbitrary stand alone label of ‘Nature’, is a creation of the human mind. How many forest, grassland, or peat fires were deliberately/accidentally lit over the last 10,000 years by primitive humans who had discovered the simple spark from flint? Were humans considered part of ‘nature’ right up until the early-mid 1800’s when we suddenly became carbon pigs?
There are too many problems with assessing where CO2 comes-and-goes. I will admit however, that modern industry is quite effective at finding and releasing CO2, and hallelujah that we are greening the planet – now if only the commie/socialist/kleptocrat (?whatever?) Chinese could find the spare change to use scrubbers.
What does a ton of C02 absorbed in a rainforest have to do with the source of the CO2 (whether it be artificial or natural) when atm.mixing of CO2 is so quick? Forests (etc…) don’t care about the source of the CO2, they’re not discriminatory and don’t separate qty’s based on government agency spreadsheets that are worth as much as AAA rated CDO’s.
10
EWO,
That’s just a whole load of fallacies and FUD that is self-contradictory.
You are trapped in your own lie.
If nobody has actually empirically quantified how much CO2 comes out of volcanism, this implies you have not quantified it either, so you have no objective basis for concluding the amount produced by volcanism is greater than human activity.
If people have actually empirically quantified the volcanic output, then you have to accept their figure or else go out and sample the volcanoes yourself. In the very article you cite, the only empirically based estimate they give is 0.6Gt CO2 per year, which is dwarfed by the 36Gt CO2 per year output by human activity. Everything else is conjecture. No, your conjecture is not superior to the conjecture of actual volcanologists, and those people are the source of any “hard data” you will ever see.
So either you are wrong or you are wrong.
You chastise these scientists for not having “hard data” on volcanic output, but you begrudge spending the money required to test your claim according to your standard of accuracy. The world spends about 2 trillion dollars annually on research and development, so 5 billion dollars is just 0.25% of annual R&D expenses. It would not even cost 5 billion per year to do what you ask. As the expense is trivial, your distaste at gathering CO2 measurements is more likely because you don’t want your hand-waving to be disproven.
Red herring. Deep geological history is completely irrelevant to the task at hand, which is figuring out what the main driver of the modern CO2 rise has been.
Plimer’s statement indeed falls dead with a comparison of field vulcanology to industrial emissions.
If you mean to imply that the 1991 Pinatubo eruption did make more CO2 than all of the industrial revolution… then where did all that extra CO2 go?
If Pinatubo’s CO2 was all absorbed locally by the ocean due to volcanic aerosol cooling then it will be re-emitted from the ocean in the 2 years after the dust has settled. We should still have seen it appear in the MLO measurements as a gigantic spike bigger than decades of industrial output. But we don’t. That’s the hard data. In fact the rate of increase in CO2 was less after Pinatubo than before, in spite of ocean temperatures being average, possibly due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Pinatubo made no significant increase in the CO2 trend, so the output of Pinatubo must have been far smaller than 4 years of industry. There is no chance that Plimer’s statement is correct.
You use your imagination rather than see with your eyes. The estimates of volanologists are based on actual measurements. Your estimates are based on your imagination. Volcanologists have produced a number. You have produced hot air and poetry.
According to vulcanologists there are uncertainties of about 300% on the estimate of global volcanic CO2 output. For your conjecture about global volcanism to have any hope of being true their estimate error would have to be over 6000%, possibly 15000%. You have to show professional volcanologists that your conjecture about the world’s unsampled volcanoes is more accurate than their conjecture, yet by your own logic there is no measurement data to support you.
You are asking this rhetorically because it has never entered your head that you may be able to find out. Look on the USGS site [ volcanoes.usgs.gov/activity/methods/gas/index.php ] Again, you would rather imagine and throw your hands in the air than do even the merest smidgen of research.
Your subsequent statement comes from nowhere, and here in your use of “surely” you betray the fact that your source of confidence is faith and imagination, not measurement.
If it were irrelevant it would not matter if it was absurd. If its absurdity was important then it would have to be relevant. You don’t even know what argument you are putting forward. That is not surprising because you have started with your desired conclusion and tried to work backwards.
Furthermore, that is a strawman as my statement was not about volcanic CO2, it was about how much anthropogenic CO2 is absorbed by both industry and nature. Similarly, your later statement about sinks discriminating between natural CO2 and anthropogenic CO2 is another strawman because I have never said anything of the sort, and neither does the mass balance argument.
If you cannot argue against the mass balance principle you should just admit its conclusion is correct instead of substituting a strawman argument in its place.
Indeed. So is 1+1=2. Abstractions may still be useful and true statements about reality.
I suspect you are very bad at math. Perhaps even simple arithmetic is beyond you. That would explain why you have so much difficulty with applying conservation of mass to the task.
When 10GtC is the known net annual output of industry, but 5GtC is the known net annual increase in the atmosphere, the missing 5GtC must be the net absorption of the rest of the natural world. As simple as 10-5=5. The mass balance argument is reliable because it does not rely upon the unmeasured output of the world’s undiscovered volcanoes. You should try to understand arguments before criticising them.
Based on the total lack of contrary evidence in your response, you appear to believe that your imagination trumps any data whatsoever.
EyesTightlyShut would be more apt.
00
Peter
It is interesting that some people think there are two types of carbon dioxide; one from human activity and one, the green type, from natural activity.
Only the “green” type can be involved in natural sequestration (previously known as plant, animal and microbial growth).
The dirty “human origin” CO2 just hangs about like a bad fart.
I have had long exchanges with the Dutch fellow, Ferdinand, who also has the same distorted view of atmospheric CO2 activity.
As far as volcanic quantification I would much rather trust Ian Plimer than other sources on this matter.
As an ex metallurgist my qualifications in geology are basic but I have stood up close to Volcanic activity in the pacific in two locations , Hawaii and Vanuatu and felt the ground shake at the latter.
Vulcanism is constant, massive and often hidden under the oceans.
Even ignoring the gas content of the molten lava on the big Island, there is another aspect of the process.
Molten lava flows into the ocean , boils it off and liberates CO2 from the ocean.
There is a constant cloud of steam at the waters edge and no doubt much of that invisible CO2.
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EWO
Good comment.
One of Andrew McCrae’s comments suggests that he may not be aware that nature is always in arrears when it comes to creating new sequestration capacity, but it does get there after about 4 years.
All we are dealing with in the sequestration of both human origin and natural origin CO2 is a small time lag and whether it is 3 years or 7 is basically irrelevant.
I’m sure Malco2m would not like your comment about AAA CDOs; that’s his bread and butter, and coincidentally our super accounts being ravaged by same.
KK
00
Burundi – another tragedy unfolding under the watchful eye of the UN
people are actually dying and ethnic slaughter is being conducted with impunity and why are the UN not trying to do something about it ?
The UN is engaged in fighting a more deadly threat and that is Carbon Dioxide
The UN – United in doing Nothing
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Jo
Wouldn’t the blunt headline here be something like
“Turnbull doing a Gillard?” ?
60
VINDICATED for SHIELDING EARTH and HUMANKIND!!!
Scientists discovered that very low frequency radio transmissions from Earth may help to create an “impenetrable barrier” at the inner edge of the outer Van Allen radiation belt that keeps the belt’s “killer electrons” away from Earth.
https://eos.org/articles/human-radio-transmissions-create-barrier-to-killer-electrons 12-2015
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ETS – inevitable
During the late 80’s I had the great pleasure to work for Reuters. As an Engineer I connected Banks front office systems to their back office systems.
In those days anyone who could come up with a new instrument to trade was rewarded with a great deal of money.
The carbon trading system is an inevitable consequence of major Banks desire to trade and make profit.
As for saving the planet , the Banking Industry CEOs have absolutely no interest in this.
50
The global poll for myworld (http://data.myworld2015.org/ – Use drop down on chart to select Australia/NZ) is showing that Australians want climate change action more than “reliable energy at home” and four other topics.
01
Wow, how’s that for spin.
People don’t want what they already have, they want for what they don’t have. Australians already have “reliable energy at home” thanks to coal and natural gas. Action on climate change must be low on the priority list if it rates barely above things we already have, such as Political Freedom and Internet access.
Australians even wanted Climate Action less than things they already have in droves, like gender equality and clean water.
Try asking people if they would give up “reliable energy at home” to get “action on climate change”!
20
Plastic In the Ocean Is Hard To Find
Here is what is apparently happening. As the bits of plastic get reduced in size below the threshold of 1 mm or so, the surface area vs.volume ratio becomes favorable for the microbes to eat the bit up entirely. This is similar to the way crushed ice is more quickly melted than large cubes – and why big icebergs last a long time, but an ice cube in the same ocean, at the same water temperature, disappears very quickly.
Plastic does disappear
Don’t be surprised. In my travels at sea (1/2 of my adult lifetime on the briny deep – well, at least actually living aboard a ship or boat), my experience is that seeing something floating in the open ocean is rare – rare enough that it always calls for at least an investigation through binoculars, and if the item looks interesting, we might make a course change, if possible, to check it out. The most common items are things that have fallen off fishing boats – buckets – gallon jugs – buoys and floats of different types (which are recovered if possible for their usefulness). I have never come across any tangles of floats and nets which can be dangerous, especially if under motor power, as they can wrap around shafts and props, in our 13,000 miles of voyaging in the Golden Dawn. There are pictures of these tangles on the web – and I have seen a small one caught on the sea side of a barrier reef, but have never seen one in the open ocean.
And on land is ever rarer
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He’s been well schooled by Abbott who sold the voters down the drain on the following –
He said he’d spend a week a year in an Indigenous community – best he’s done was four days.
He promised he’s sending a Customs vessel to the Southern Ocean to monitor whaling – didn’t happen – there were a few surveillance flights
He promised that all $100m-plus infrastructure projects would have a cost-benefit analysis – didn’t happen
He promised no unexpected adverse changes to superannuation but increases to the superannuation guarantee were delayed until 2021
There was no mention of suspending the dole to school leavers prior to the election – fortunately it was stymied in the senate
There was no mention of cuts to benefits for returned service personnel – these have been substantial
Then, of course, the duke got a gong – I don’t remember hearing anything about giving honours to members of the royal family prior to the election.
Comparing Turnbull’s record on broken promises with Abbott’s is not a good look.
Mind you, he’s only been leader for a short time.
17
The monk is an ignorant lukewarmer and if he was in power now he would be doing the same as Talkbull, that is apart from the promise to purchase junk carbon credits which require the skill of a banker.
14
I think El Gordo is describing himself.
30
You must have me confused with somebody else.
Tony was one of us, the science is crap, then within a year for reasons of political expediency he recanted.
Shows a complete lack of integrity.
01
I will not stand for socialism masquerading as environmentalism – Tony Abbott
His government repealed the carbon tax, stopped funding Tom Foolery’s climate change office, proposed closure of the Climate Change Commission but lost the vote in Cabinet, had the RET capped, forced Bishop to take her $200 million UN donation from her foreign aid budget.
Tony Abbott’s level of integrity is much higher than his replacement or the two Labor PMs who preceded him in office.
60
That’s true.
10
Tony Abbott spent a week of his time every year for decades with indigenous communities assisting disadvantaged children. To nit pick over days while he had many important prime ministerial responsibilities is pathetic.
I recall the left demanding that a Cuctoms Vessel be sent, I do not recall the Coalition promising to send one. And as the Japanese are in international waters, claimed by Australia but not accepted as Australian territory, the argument is hollow.
That is not true, most infrastructure projects are state government projects with Commonwealth funding grant assistance. To make this claim that cost-benefit analysis was not carried out so loosely makes you claim suspect. How about naming the projects you refer to?
You Superannuation Guarantee Levy claim does not make sense.
With a welfare bill amounting to 37% of total budget spending cuts to welfare must be made.
What are the cuts relating to service pensions? Like the Labor claimed cuts to the age pension that didn’t happen.
Many Commonwealth of Nations member countries nominated Prince Phillip for a knighthood in recognition of his services to the Commonwealth, it was for Australia a once-off nomination. Why do people like you use petty things to score points with?
Since when have governments been restricted to election campaign policy announcements, are they not able to govern, just carry out election commitments?
Now what about Rudd, Gillard and Rudd 2007-2013 years of chaotic, dysfunctional and incompetent Union controlled Labor Greens in government …….?
51
Because you asked, since the Coalition came to power, the following benefits have been flensed –
1. Reduction in pensions of 10000 part service pensioners and elimination of the payments entirely in the case of 2800 others.
2. Federal government withdrawal of $223 share of an agreement with the states to fund service pensioners’ concessions for travel, electricity and council rates.
3. The intention to axe the three month backdating of veteran’s disability pension claims. Because of short staffing in DVA these claims can take as long as twelve months to be processed.
4. Axing of the senior’s supplement ($876.20 per annum) for gold card holders not receiving income support.
5. Cancellation of clean energy supplement added to veterans affairs pensions and payments.
6. Military superannuation now counted as income when applying for a commonwealth seniors health card.
7. Some regional DVA centres closing.
8. Some regional Vietnam Veterans Counselling Services offices closing and others reducing staff.
9. The Coalition government tried unsuccessfully to downgrade the indexation of TPI, general rate pensions, invalidity service pensions, age service pension, war widows pension, income support supplement and wholly dependant partner payment. Whilst the senate thwarted the attempt this time, will it be passed next time?
10. Downgrading of the quality of hearing aids available under the SRCA.
Politicians, especially Abbott, are invariably front and centre when service personnel can be used for their own shabby purposes, but are dropped like hot potatoes when they are not useful. Remember – this push to dud ex-service personnel was headed up by Tony Abbott in last year’s budget. Turnbull has done nothing to reverse any of it.
03
Please provide a link to where you obtained those deceptive numbered items from, I guess it came from the Labor how to speak to a Liberal mate website where facts are twisted to suit the purposes.
12
There are not deceptive – all true. You can check each policy on DVA’s website.
The cuts are listed in a letter that VVAA wrote to Hon Michael Ronaldson, then Minister for Veterans’ Affairs – vvaaqueensland.asn.au/…/VVFA-Letter-to-Minister-criticising-Budget.docx in June 2014.
01
Except that his office and PR machine made a big deal of it. Remember how he was going to be the PM for indigenous communities? His remark about living in a remote community being a “lifestyle choice” kind of let the cat out of the bag.
Better check your recall. In February 2013 after a confrontation between the anti-whaling activist group Sea Shepherd and Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru, then Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said: The Coalition is committed to sending a Customs vessel to the Southern Ocean to act as an independent monitor and if necessary search and rescue vessel. We do not want to see a repeat of the confrontation which has occurred between the whaling fleet and protesters which risks lives and the environment from a potentially fatal collision and oil spill in the Antarctic waters.
The East-West Link is an example. What makes it interesting is that it was one of the few where a cost-benefit analysis was used, but when it showed that the thing was going to be a colossal waste of taxpayers dollars, the Victorian Liberal government pushed ahead anyway. It was a dog: according to the government’s own numbers, the project involved a loss-making return of just 45 cents for every $1 spent.
The previous ALP government legislated a gradual increase in the Superannuation Guarantee rate, starting with a 0.25% increase (from 9% to 9.25%) which took effect from July 2013. The SG rate was then to steadily increase over a 7-year period, to 12% by July 2019. Abbott’s government changed all this and legislated for the SG rate will remain at 9.5% for 7 years, increasing to 10% from July 2021, and eventually to 12% from July 2025. If you were going to be a beneficiary, this is obviously adverse.
Interesting use of “must”. This government is OK with attacking the most vulnerable groups (people with disabilities, unemployed people, pensioners and war veterans) whilst at the same time allowing one third of corporations to get away tax free. Think about that the next time the Tele and the Sun Herald (owned by a corporation that paid no tax on revenue of $2.8 billion) run a story about dole bludgers.
As a proud Australian I don’t see the need to kowtow to British royalty.
What about the plight of the yellow beaked puddle skipper? It’s about as relevant.
02
”Comparing Turnbull’s record on broken promises with Abbott’s is not a good look.”
Numbers, Lord Waffle’s “record” includes crossing the floor to vote for an ETS, calling AGW sceptics “Hitler appeasers” and six long years of undermining, white-anting and leaking against Tony Abbott. Across the Internet, the only voices in the “Yay Malcolm!” fan club are voices from the left like yours Bob.
Lord Bouncy Waffle is a man so inane he thinks adding radiative gases to our radiatively cooled atmosphere will reduce its radiative cooling ability as well as its ability to cool the solar heated surface of our planet.
In contrast, Tony Abbott called the AGW religion “crap” and said we shouldn’t tolerate any more “socialism masquerading as environmentalism”.
75% of normal coalition voters are AGW sceptics. Talkbull and his 54 quislings are going to be trashed at the next election. Even with the support of former Labor voters, in North Sydney the Liberals still managed to lose 33% of the votes they had in 2013. Leftists singing Lord Bouncy Waffle’s praises while bagging Tony Abbott won’t change a thing. Centre right voters know you can’t pick up a Turnbull by the clean end.
55
That’s not what the polls or the betting markets are saying……….
11
Sorry Bob,
those “polls” didn’t predict the Liberals losing 20,000 votes in North Sydney. Even after preferences they are 33% down on 2013. “2pp” is a fiction.
Now Bob, care to explain why the only voices on the web supporting the Waffling Warmulonian are, like yours, of the left?
02
OT: is Greenland considering opting out of the Paris agreement already ?
Who may be next, before time for signing comes in April ?
50
What is an ETS? The whole AGW is a political game uses faux science to cripple Western democracies. Christiana Figueres is an anthropologist daughter of the President of Costa Rica who openly wants to model the world on China and destroy the power of the ballot box.
Why else is AGW exclusively a political tenet of the extreme left of politics? They do not argue.
The only figure ever quotes is the 97% of scientists fantasy. The IPCC is a political body and their reports are written by politicians.
So why let them create a fake tax too? Why let Malcolm Turnbull pretend it is real trading.
Trading is not trading if it is worthless and compulsory, so
ETS = External Taxation System.
Invented by Marxists, run by invisible cartels and rich merchant bankers, this is surrendering our sovereign right of taxation to a external unelected bodies to extract moral reparations exclusively from successful Western democracies to spend on their rich friends for failing to do anything to improve their countries. Amazingly even China gets carbon credits, largely for building dams and hydro and even nuclear we are not allowed build. They also want ‘historic’ reparations. No External Taxation System for Australia.
60
never trust a politician!
16 Dec: The Hill: Devin Henry: Funds for Obama climate deal survive in spending bill
The bill, greens and Democrats say, doesn’t explicitly appropriate funding for President Obama’s pledged contribution to the Green Climate Fund (GCF). But since the legislation doesn’t formally block money for the GCF either, Obama is expected to be able to use current discretionary funding streams to send American money to it.
“Based on what we have reviewed so far, there are no restrictions on our ability to make good on the president’s pledge to contribute to the Green Climate Fund,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said
on Wednesday…
During negotiations over an international climate deal, the GOP said it would work to block GFC money in any omnibus bill unless the Senate got a chance to vote on ratifying the climate agreement.
“Congress will weigh in on whatever comes out of the Paris climate talks, and the money that the president has requested as part of his budget,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in November. “Congress will have a say.”
Democrats were able to include an amendment allowing the funding in a Senate spending bill…
“This is a rebuke to those congressional extremists who tried to play politics with desperately needed money to help the world’s poor take climate action,” Friends of the Earth senior analyst Karen Orenstein
said in a statement Wednesday. “Morality and reason, rather than science-denying isolationism, prevailed in this case.”
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/263447-spending-bill-wont-stop-funds-for-obama-climate-deal
30
Science denying isolationism? The people who want the cash say they are on the side of something they call “the Science”. 103% of scientists agree with them.
20
The ETS or carbon dioxide cap and trade or whatever else they want to call it has nothing to do ‘saving the planet’. They have demonstrated no credible link between CO2 and temperature other than that temperature controls CO2. The ETS is designed, solely, to enrich Merchant Bankers, and their investors. In effect they are creating a new global currency which they can control. Turnbull is right in there, fingering the loot already.
70
You all miss the point, the aim of the UN is to simply funnel money through their accounts so they can skim the till to cover costs without needing to ask sovereign governments for a grant, and it’s working. There is little transparency about this slush fund. They don’t care about the poor or they’d be building coal power stations in poor countries and they don’t care that it’s Australia’s aid budget they are going to skim. I do, I’d rather it went to the poor rather than the UN.
This tax-by-treaty revenue stream can set the UN apart from the sovereigns as an unaccountable pseudo world government that is not accountable to member nations. This is a very bad thing and must never be allowed to happen.
Interesting ploy though, by diverting the UN slush fund from the aid budget, the government has placated the greenies (which will work for a few milliseconds before they come asking for more) but set up the poor countries against the UN, since those countries won’t like being skimmed of their aid. If all developed nations took the same approach then the plan might backfire spectacularly. At the very least our government must insist that the UN be transparent about what use they put it to before they get a cent.
30
”This tax-by-treaty revenue stream can set the UN apart from the sovereigns as an unaccountable pseudo world government that is not accountable to member nations.” This is a very bad thing and must never be allowed to happen.”
This is correct. The UN kleptocrats have been angling for a guaranteed income via extra-sovereign taxation for a long time. They first tried levying taxation against all goods transported by sea, but this failed (LOS Treaty). They are now trying again via the CO2 hoax.
Sadly as regards –
”This is a very bad thing and must never be allowed to happen.”
– it did happen. During the Gillardio-Kruddulence era (which Lord Bouncy Waffle is trying to return to), near 2 billion AUD was in extra-sovereign taxation was paid to the UN sprungers. By my reckoning, Australia now owns this, and the UN scum should hand it over immediately. We need something for our 2 billion. The IPCC should immediately vacate the premises and hand the deeds over to the Australian taxpayer.
12
Off topic, but from the media-produced hysteria steps forward a voice of reason:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/we-need-publicly-funded-sceptics-to-challenge-this-co2-witchhunt/news-story/37981928db2b302e01f0ca7a5f32e684
Now, does this National have the hormones to divorce from his government?
20
Nope
00
The Australian
IMF Chief To Stand Trial
Christine Lagarde has been ordered to stand trial over her handling of a massive state payout to a French tycoon.
20
June 30, 2011, Treasurer Wayne Swan:
“Treasury reference modelling showed that without a carbon tax, manufacturing was expected to grow more slowly than the rest of the economy, by about half a per cent annually to 2020 in real terms.”
. . .
Now I get it.
The way to get manufacturing businesses going is to tax them more heavily.
If the carbon tax does that then why not double it?
~ ~ ~
December 9, 2011: Carbon Tax Legislation Becomes Law
January 2, 2015, theage:
Australian manufacturing activity fell for the 10th consecutive month in December amid continued weakness in the global economy, a private survey shows.
10
Note Mistake:
Last link date is 2013. (The Angry Summer)
10
behold the ETS architecture:
17 Dec: ReutersCarbonPulse: COMMENT: Carbon markets in the Paris Agreement – an early holiday gift
(The below blog was originally published on the World Bank’s website) By Vikram Widge, Head of Climate and Carbon Finance at the World Bank Group)
While many of us were hoping for a hook that would support the use of markets, we were happily surprised to see the extent and detail on carbon markets that was ultimately included in the Paris Agreement…
It paves the way for a renewed international carbon market that will look and be different. Carbon Markets 2.0, if you will.
The World Bank Group’s consistent engagement in the past few years positions it as a desirable partner in the discussions on the design of a future market architecture, as well as a partner of choice to help client countries implement market-based carbon pricing approaches and deliver on their nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
Among other aspects, the agreement and accompanying decision include…DETAILS
In addition to the nearly $3 billion managed in various carbon funds since 2000, we have the Partnership for Market Readiness that supports countries to establish market-based carbon pricing mechanisms as best suits their economic circumstances…
The recently launched Transformative Carbon Asset Facility, which was announced on the first day of COP21, will help create and monetize the next generation of carbon credits, including those achieved through policy actions.
And the Networked Carbon Markets initiative is working in partnership with many to help make the voluntary cooperation approaches workable, by establishing the basis to make them comparable and fungible…
these efforts will need to be scaled up and mainstreamed so they fully leverage the World Bank Group’s policy and investment-related financial products…
http://carbon-pulse.com/13506/
About the author:
Vikram Widge is Head of Climate and Carbon Finance at the World Bank Group. He leads the external engagement on climate finance and the deployment of innovative market-based solutions to mobilize private capital for low carbon development in emerging markets. He also manages the WBG’s carbon finance business with several funds under management and development, innovative results-based financing instruments like the Pilot Auction Facility, the Partnership for Market Readiness supporting countries wanting to put a price on carbon, and the initiative on the next generation of Networked Carbon Markets.
30
17 Dec: Bloomberg: Tom Randall: What Just Happened in Solar Is a Bigger Deal Than Oil Exports
The impact: $73 billion in new investment in the U.S.
The extension will add an extra 20 gigawatts of solar power—more than every panel ever installed in the U.S. prior to 2015, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
The wind credit will contribute another 19 gigawatts over five years. Combined, the extensions will spur more than $73 billion of investment and supply enough electricity to power 8 million U.S. homes, according to BNEF.
“This is massive,” said Ethan Zindler, head of U.S. policy analysis at BNEF. In the short term, the deal will speed up the shift from fossil fuels more than the global climate deal struck this month in Paris and more than Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan that regulates coal plants, Zindler said…
The tax credits, valued at about $25 billion over five years, will drive $38 billion of investment in solar and $35 billion in wind through 2021, according to BNEF…
Stocks soared. SolarCity, the biggest rooftop installer, surged 34 percent yesterday. SunEdison, the largest renewable-energy developer, climbed 25 percent, and panelmaker SunPower increased 14 percent…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-17/what-just-happened-to-solar-and-wind-is-a-really-big-deal
17 Dec: Bloomberg: Serene Chong: The Irony of Ending the U.S. Oil Export Ban Is Imports May Rise
By allowing American oil to compete globally, the price for U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude is inching closer to the international marker Brent, which has traded at a premium for most of the past five years. As the two prices converge, U.S. refiners may seek overseas cargoes priced off Brent if they can buy them cheaper than oil linked to WTI, according to JBC Energy GmbH…
The narrowing of the gap between WTI and Brent makes it unlikely that U.S. exports would rise substantially more than now, Julius Walker, a senior energy consultant for JBC said in an e-mail. The current differential between the two benchmarks is more likely to lure Atlantic Basin oils to the U.S., particularly from West Africa, he said…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-17/the-irony-of-ending-the-u-s-oil-export-ban-is-imports-may-rise
20
17 Dec: Vox: Brad Plumer: Congress will lift the oil export ban, boost wind/solar subsidies. Is that a good trade?
From a global warming standpoint, this looks fairly helpful in the near term. The wind and solar credits will reduce US greenhouse gas emissions moderately (around 0.3 percent per year, by one estimate) for the next half-decade, at least until the EPA’s Clean Power Plan kicks in.
Conversely, few analysts expect the repeal of the export ban to matter much for the next few years, since market conditions aren’t currently favorable for exports anyway…
(Note, though, that this ban was always a bit porous. The Commerce Department had leeway to grant exceptions: Crude from Alaska’s Cook Inlet got a pass. So did oil that went through the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline. So did any oil shipped to Canada for consumption there. So did heavy oil from certain fields in California. There were also exceptions for re-exporting foreign oil and for small swaps with Mexico.)…
So in the next few years, analysts say, it’s unlikely we’ll see very many oil exports at all if the ban is lifted. At best, companies that currently have allowances to ship to Canada or Mexico might ship elsewhere instead. But the provision is likely to have little impact on US oil production, global oil prices, or carbon-dioxide emissions…
Environmentalists argue that allowing oil exports could also lead to more crude shipments by train — a problem given that oil trains have a nasty tendency to blow up…
And, greens say, enacting a provision to boost the oil industry would send a terrible message right after the world just ramp down fossil-fuel use in Paris…
And, despite the fact that President Obama has opposed repealing the oil-export ban in the past, he’s widely expected to sign this bill.
http://www.vox.com/2015/12/17/10442030/oil-export-ban-solar-wind
20
17 Dec: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: US primed to deliver first $500m to Green Climate Fund
Budget bill agreed by Congress opens door for funds to help world’s poorest cope with future climate impacts and invest in clean energy
News of the change was buried in a 2000-page congressional bill named the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016. $10 million was also set aside for the UN’s climate body and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The bill also scrapped a 40-year-ban on US oil exports, a move campaign group Oil Change International branded a “dirty deal” by executive director Steve Kretzmann.
“Congress’ response to an historic climate deal in Paris? Incentivize further oil production. It’s hard to imagine a clearer example of how far politics still has to go on climate in order to catch up with the science,” he said.
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/12/17/us-primed-to-deliver-first-500m-to-green-climate-fund/
20
17 Dec: Guardian: Naomi Oreskes: There is a new form of climate denialism to look out for – so don’t celebrate yet
At the exact moment in which we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel, we’re being told that renewable sources can’t meet our energy needs
Oddly, some of these voices include ***climate scientists, who insist that we must now turn to wholesale expansion of nuclear power. Just this past week, as negotiators were closing in on the Paris agreement, four climate scientists held an off-site session insisting that the only way we can solve the coupled climate/energy problem is with a massive and immediate expansion of nuclear power. More than that, they are blaming environmentalists, suggesting that the opposition to nuclear power stands between all of us and a two-degree world…
Numerous high quality studies, including one recently published by Mark Jacobson of Stanford University, show that this isn’t so. We can transition to a decarbonized economy without expanded nuclear power, by focusing on wind, water and solar, coupled with grid integration, energy efficiency and demand management. In fact, our best studies show that we can do it faster, and more cheaply…
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/16/new-form-climate-denialism-dont-celebrate-yet-cop-21
above links to:
MEDIA ALERT
Top Climate Scientists Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel to Issue Stark Challenge at Paris COP21 Climate Conference.
November 12, 2015, Paris, France — Four of the world’s leading climate scientists, Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel, will issue a stark challenge to world leaders and environmental campaigners attending the COP21 climate summit at a scheduled press conference in Paris on December 3.
Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel will present research showing the increasing urgency of fully decarbonizing the world economy. However, they will also show that renewables alone cannot realistically meet the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C, and that a major expansion of nuclear power is essential to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system this century. ***(1)…
The scientists will outline the latest research on sea level rise, ocean acidification and ice sheet collapse supporting their conclusions about the increased urgency of tackling carbon emissions…
***(1) Nearly every serious look at the energy technology required over the next several decades to supply the world’s growing energy appetite while effectively mitigating climate change has concluded that there is likely to be a need for large amounts of nuclear energy. In 2014 alone, reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, the UN Sustainable Solutions Network and the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate argued for a doubling or trebling of nuclear energy – requiring as many as 1,000 new reactors or more in view of scheduled retirements – to stabilize carbon emissions…
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/372493/c25ebfa5d2/1603503199/be41125912/
20
100% psyops now:
WileyOnlineLibrary: Cli-fi on the screen(s): patterns in the representations of climate change in fictional films
Author: Michael Svoboda, Columbia College of Arts and Sciences, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Edited by Timothy R. Carter, Domain Editor, and Mike Hulme, Editor-in-Chief
Article first published online: 16 DEC 2015
Fictional works about climate change, or cli-fi, have been hailed as a new genre. As a complement to previous WIREs studies of novels and plays, this article focuses on cli-fi films, providing an overview of some ***60 films, including major theatrical releases, smaller festival films, and made-for-TV movies. Of the many possible impacts of climate change predicted by scientists, this study finds that filmmakers have focused on extreme weather events and the possibility of Earth slipping into a new ice age. These choices reflect filmmakers’ predispositions more than any scientific consensus and thus demonstrate the challenge that cli-fi films pose to climate change communicators. Finally, noting the recent emergence of films that parody concerns about climate change or that depict attempts to mitigate its causes or ameliorate its effects as possibly more disastrous than climate change itself, this study recommends that researchers in the humanities and social sciences look beyond The Day After Tomorrow, which has received far more attention than any other film
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.381/abstract?utm_source=Daily+Carbon+Briefing&utm_campaign=42161077a2-cb_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_876aab4fd7-42161077a2-303449629
1 Dec: Homeland Security: Social sciences are best hope for ending debates over climate change
By Andrew J. Hoffman
In the words of Tony Leiserowitz from Yale University, “the proper model for thinking about the climate debate is not a boxing match, but a jury trial. We can never convince the die-hard skeptics, just like a prosecutor will never convince the defense lawyer, and doesn’t try. Rather, we should focus on convincing the silent jury of the mass public.”…
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20151201-social-sciences-are-best-hope-for-ending-debates-over-climate-change
from ClimateChangeNews link posted at comment #15 above:
The UN’s climate science panel is expected to produce its sixth audit before 2020. It released its mammoth Fifth Assessment Report in two stages in 2013 and 2014, which sharpened the link between human interference and global warming. The bureau under recently-elected chair Hoesung Lee could take a change of direction, drawing more on the ***social sciences and refining its message.
20
Climatescience has failed it is necessary to elect a new Socialscience.
10
In the four week lead up to the Paris conference, (for just the Month of November) China added 4,200MW of new coal fired power.
This will add an extra 30 Million tonnes of CO2 each year.
Australia currently emits (around) 450 million tonnes of CO2. (and CO2 equivalent GHG) Australia has plans to reduce its GHG total by 26% by 2030, umm, 15 YEARS away, so that 26% reduction is around 120 million tonnes LESS CO2.
Sooooo, let’s see now.
In the last, umm, EIGHT TO TEN WEEKS, that Australian reduction for 15 YEARS has been cancelled out by this increase from China.
Now, some readers here think that this current Government plan is low ball and places us at the back of the pack in respect of emissions reduction targets.
The Labor Party plan called for a much larger reduction rate, so perhaps we should have gone with their plan, eh!
Well, if we wait ONE MORE MONTH, their reduction percentage will also have been cancelled out.
Oh, and The Greens plan to be totally carbon free (sic) by, well, whenever. Wait FOUR MORE MONTHS and that also will be totally cancelled out as well.
In fact just this year alone, up till the end of November, China has added a NEW nameplate for coal fired power of just under 48,000MW, which adds 360 Million tonnes of new CO2 to the World total, and that’s 80% of Australia’s TOTAL emissions, and that’s just from the electricity generating sector in China alone.
You might think from my saying all this that I’m a supporter of what is happening in China. There are some things I do support, and others in China that I don’t support, but I do all this to highlight the sheer and utter futility of what we are doing here in Oz, and in the wider already Developed World, when you use what is happening in China for the sake of comparison.
Hardly anyone even mentions this at all, because frankly, no one really cares, and hey, you surely don’t expect journalists to actually check anything like this eh!
Tony.
40
But … but …they said human induced CO2 had stalled.
10
17 Dec: EnergyLiveNews: Jacqueline Echevarria: EDF’s five nuclear reactors out of service in the UK
One went offline in October, four this month with three unplanned closures.
Torness Unit 2, Heysham 1 and Hartlepool are designed to safely shutdown in response to any issue affecting key systems, the company explained.
Earlier this week, Edinburgh-based demand response provider Flexitricity was called to secure power supply as a consequence of the Torness 2 reactor shutdown.
The reactors will return to service in the next coming days, EDF stated…
Hunterston B and Hartlepool unit 1 are closed for planned maintenance outages.
The company doesn’t know when they will be re-activated…
http://www.energylivenews.com/2015/12/17/edfs-five-nuclear-reactors-out-of-service-in-the-uk/
no MSM to be found except this:
Third of UK’s reactors shut down at once
The Times (subscription)-16 Dec.,2015
A third of Britain’s nuclear reactors were offline last night, prompting questions about the reliability of ageing power stations needed to avoid …
10
16 Dec: Cornish Guardian: C.G. Graham: Locals missed out on promised cash from Wadebridge solar farm
A huge solar farm near Wadebridge looks set to remain in place until at least the year 2041 – despite never delivering the promised £25,000-a-year benefit to the local community.
In 2011 the California-based Sunpower Corporation fought a controversial planning battle with residents of Hawksland, near Winnards Perch, off the A39 to the south of Wadebridge. Cornwall Council eventually approved a deal which locals thought would contribute £750,000 cash directly to the local economy over the lifetime of the project.
But the council’s formal decision notice, approving the planning application, never asked for the money.
The 22-acre site is highly visible to motorists, it is only 125 metres from the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and at the time of the planning application local residents dubbed it “a blot on the landscape.”
Once planning consent was obtained, Sunpower sold the site to the China-based solar power company Sun Green Energy. But it turned out that the promised £25,000-a-year for local projects, which local parish councillors thought at the time was legally binding, did not extend to the new owners – and probably did not bind the original developers either…
http://www.cornishguardian.co.uk/Locals-missed-promised-cash-Wadebridge-solar-farm/story-28376957-detail/story.html
16 Dec: Leicester Mercury: Former Mark Group employees to take legal action
Leicester-based Mark Group, once a leading installer of solar panels and home insulation, went into administration on October 7, with the loss of 939 UK jobs – 577 of which were based at its headquarters in Boston Road, Beaumont Leys.
Now, 420 former Mark Group staff – including more than 150 from Leicestershire – have instructed employment law specialists Nualaw, based in Stourton, Warwickshire, to act on their behalf…
Mark Group blamed its woes on cuts in Government subsidies for green energy initiatives, as well as the decision of its parent, SunEdison, to withdraw support for the company less than three months after buying it in July this year…
http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Mark-Group-employees-legal-action/story-28380616-detail/story.html
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17 Dec: Reuters: Robert Smith: CORRECTED-UPDATE 1-Abengoa Yield’s dividend in the spotlight
Abengoa Yield’s later-than-expected payment of its quarterly dividend has rattled some investors and put under scrutiny the sustainability of the company’s distributions to shareholders…
Market sources said that the dividend was not actually paid on Tuesday December 15, however. Sources at the company confirmed to Reuters that the dividend had been paid on Wednesday.
But while this particular dividend payment appears safe, the energy company’s ability to keep returning large amounts of cash to shareholders in future may not be, given that the company could need to conserve funds due to its substantial corporate debt…
A credit analyst at an asset manager said that the firm’s lenders must be getting “very nervous”.
“The market has figured out by now that their dividend isn’t sustainable. I think at this point, investors would appreciate if they actually paid down some debt instead of paying it all out to shareholders,” he added…
In the event of an Abengoa default, the US Department of Energy can also restrict cash distributions from its Solana and Mojave solar projects.
These two projects alone account for more than a quarter of Abengoa Yield’s expected cashflows available for distribution next year…
***Abengoa urgently needs $100m to pay salaries and keep operating, which it is negotiating with its creditors for…
http://www.reuters.com/article/abengoa-bonds-idUSL8N14640B20151217
***just yesterday we were informed banks were ready to give them 210 million euros ($229 million). Spanish press, meanwhile, state Abengoa has given up on finding a “White Knight” bank to cough up the millions.
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Revkin on the FACTIONS.
of course, if the war on coal was ended, and we continued with oil, gas and hydro, there’d be no need to waste trillions on either option (nuclear vs. renewables), much less allow CO2 emission trading:
4 Dec: NYT Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin: In Paris, Negotiators Trim a Draft Climate Agreement, Climate Scientists Press for Nuclear Energy, Activists Prepare for Failure
In the meantime, factions of all kinds have been using side events to press for action. On Thursday, four veteran climate scientists drew a crowd at a news conference focused on one of many daunting paths to a low-carbon energy future — boosted use of nuclear power (video)…
The scientists — Kenneth Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, James E. Hansen of Columbia University and Tom Wigley of the University of Adelaide — used a news conference to build on an argument they first made as a group in a 2013 open letter to environmentalists…
My view is that nuclear, particularly new generations of plants, has to be part of the global energy mix, but don’t count on its deployment at a scale and pace relevant to global warming being any easier than that for solar or wind or the like…
Finally, there’s the far left. I hope you enjoy the opening lines in “Preparing for Failure in Paris,”
a piece by Jonathan M. Katz in The New Republic, as much as I did:
“PARIS, France—A group of radicals gathered on the periphery of the Paris climate talks Wednesday to issue a manifesto. “A transformation of the world’s entire economic system is essential,” their missive began in typically grandiose fashion. “Our economies are hard-wired to fossil fuels. To overcome this carbon entanglement, countries need to implement strong climate policies, including strengthening carbon pricing and … .”
“Wait a second, I mixed up my notes. That was today’s joint press release from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Energy Agency, the Nuclear Energy Agency, and the International Transport Forum, four of the stodgiest policy groups around.”…
The radicals were at another event, far outside the well-guarded hangar walls of the Le Bourget airport complex. With them were moderates, labor leaders, community advocates, progressive politicians…
Like the OECD and its partners, the group at the Salle Olympe de Gouges…called for total transformation to stop climate change from wiping out much of the habitable world…
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/in-paris-negotiators-trim-a-draft-climate-agreement-climate-scientists-press-for-nuclear-energy-activists-prepare-for-failure/?_r=1
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Abolish the U.N. and Abolish the Criminal Central Banks ……99% of the world’s problems solved right there
Instead of this fiasco about a few ppmv of co2.
But it will keep festering because the same criminal organisations will keep making money out of it !
Does it come as any surprise that always the big solutions are always for normal people to pay yet more great big new taxes to the the self proclaimed ruling class .
The only solution is a revolution to round up these criminals and BSers or nothing will change .
Why should they change when we are so collectively weak against these pathetic ratbags .
These ‘things’ need to be man-handled out of authoritative positions before we end up even deeper into taxed slavery !
We now have an unelected Banker holding the highest office in Australia by Coup and back room manipulation while many cheer !
And back in is being sneaked A global Carbon Tax aka Emission Trading Rort .
Why would they not bring in this nonsense ?
When so many of us say nothing or worse cheer for the lies told to us .
While we remain loyal to these mongrels (our Esteemed Leaders) we will continue to be treated with contempt and total lack of respect.
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