Get ready for the startling news that Australians have been great corporate “green” citizens — on a per capita basis, all of us are so much more carbon-efficient (sic) than we were 25 years ago. Back then, in those dark days, people frivolously heated and cooled their homes without a thought to how many sinful cyclones they were creating in the Philippines. They drove recklessly in fossil fueled cars, and windmills were used to pump water a mere 10 metres, not to stop floods in Pakistan.
The amazing thing is that Australia’s population has grown by a whopping 38% since 1990. And our emission have grown with that, but the emissions per person has declined by 28% per person. Why aren’t the Greens more excited?
As with all these statistics, watch the pea for the real story. Most of that decline is not due to solar panels, pink batts, bird blending wind towers, energy efficiency, or even economic trends — it is predominantly due to cutting down fewer trees. The “improvements” are in the “land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF)” sector, of which the “LUCF” basically means deforestation, afforestation and reforestation. The decline is mostly thanks to farmers like Peter Spencer, who was not allowed to cut down trees on his land (and who, by the way, will be back to finish his case against the Commonwealth in February).
Without accounting for regrowth of trees since 1990, our per capita emissions would only have declined by 8%.
(Click to enlarge)
Unfortunately the graph in the report does not go back to 1990 when per capita emissions were 33.4 t.*
The details for the Quarterly update:
- In 2013-14, national inventory emissions per capita (excluding LULUCF) were 23.2 t CO2-e per person, compared to 25.2 t CO2-e in 1989-90, representing a 7.8% decline.
- When LULUCF activities are included, the 2013-14 estimate is 24.1 t CO2-e per person, compared to 33.4 t CO2-e in 1989-90, representing a 27.9% decline.
- Australia’s population grew strongly over this period, from 17.1 million in June 1990 to over 23.5 million in June 2014 (growth of 37.8%).
LULUCF is a nice euphemism for letting farms and native bush go to pot, largely unmanaged, and reach a state of high-fire-risk bonanza fuel loads. They hold a lot of carbon, but it’s only until the next blaze releases it all back to the sky. We live in a land of eucalyptus that love fires.
This week, as fires threatened outer suburbs of Perth, West Australian Firefighters are calling crown land fire laws absurd.
Vice President of the Association of Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades, Dave Gossage, said holes in the law have allowed governments to get away with neglecting to adequately manage bush land that presents fire risks without accountability.
“Under the Bushfires Act in WA; that Act does not bind the Crown,” Mr Gossage said.
About 93 per cent of WA’s land area is classified as Crown and include areas that were fire-ravaged.
The Bullsbrook fire affected land managed by local, state and federal governments as well as private property.
As the governments are not bound by the legislation, the land can be neglected by the relevant agency and that agency will not be held accountable.
“So you’ve got this situation, as has been previously reported, a private landowner can get fined for not doing their fire breaks but yet on the other side of the fence, on Crown land, they don’t have to do anything,” Mr Gossage said.
“And yet that will be more of a risk than what is on the private property.
“It’s bit like with the Bullsbrook fires.
“You’ve got federal land, there’s no legal requirement for them to do anything and it’s absurd.”
Remember, in Australia if you personally try to clear a firebreak on your land to protect you from Crown mismanagement, you could go to jail
That’s what happened to Maxwell Szulc.
[Jan 2013] “…one man tried to reduce the risk of fires and cleared firebreaks on his property in WA in 2011 and is currently in jail for it, serving a 15 month sentence. Most of the cleared land had been cleared before in 1970 or 1983. This was mere scrubby regrowth. He was trying to separate his property from DEC (Dept of Environment and Conservation) managed land with a 20m wide fire-break
Some will say that Maxwell Szulc is technically not in jail for clearing his land, but for contempt of court. He deliberately went against a court injunction that forbid him from clearing more land. Many will write him off as a nutter who should have filled in the management plan that the DEC asked him too.
But this is the key. Szulc is a conscientious objector, and cleared the land as a protest against laws he sees as completely unjust.
Szulc believes that his land is his land, and that he should be able to manage it without asking permission from anyone. Those “management plans” sound innocent, but as other farmers (like Matt and Janet Thompson and Sid Livesey) have found out, the management plan is an insidious form of creeping fascism.”
REFERENCE
Quarterly Update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: Australia’s National Greenhouse Accounts, Department of Environment. June 2014 PDF
*Corrected typo “Mt” to “t”
Isn’t there a law or principle that declares unmanaged land owner free after some number of years of neglect?
60
Depends on the state
Leases in QLD do
But majority of States don’t gives a stuff about fire management
Greens in the local councils rule the roost now
101
Yep, you are right. As James Delingpole said in this article:
170
And America isn’t far behind.
60
Slight error:
“Unfortunately the graph in the report does not go back to 1990 when per capita emissions were 33.4 Mt.”
The M from Mt needs to go.
20
Bulldust, it’s the cows that did it!
In about 1990 the CSIRO told us that cows were Australia’s biggest source of greenhouse gases.
Agriculture, which includes cows, is now a long way down the list. Obviously, the cows have stopped burping!
30
Maybe farmers could cut back a lot of the trees, not actually clear them, then you could argue the growth is reduced, but not removed ( i.e. not cleared ) . As such it can grow back.
It just means having to trim trees and growth regularly but that would still maintain a firebreak of sorts…beter than nothing……
00
I do not have any knowledge of the legal requirements re clearing, but if a fire comes from a neighbour’s property and destroys you property surely you have a right to compensation.
If you live in the bush common sense dictates that you keep it clean as well as have a fire plan and, more importantly, a fire pump and a good supply of water. The main factors affecting fire behaviour are the amount of fuel to burn, its moisture content, and the general weather conditions, temperature, humidity and wind speed. If there is little to burn, then the fire intensity is pretty low.
If you recall the fires in Dunalley, S. Tas., farmers complained that they were not allowed to undertake control burning when they wanted to and there was a considerable build-up of fuel with disastrous results.
230
There is a requirement to make provisions to limit the spread of fire. Ploughed fire breaks was the common model, giving a strip of bare ground. However ploughed fire breaks are very prone to serious erosion. I always opted instead for targeted grazing to reduce the volume of inflammable material over a wider area, and farm roads which give ready access for trucks to if necessary burn back from those roads.
Had there ever been an argument which went to court, my policy would not have been recognised against the word of a certified “expert”. In the past very rarely did such disputes get to court. Only rarely was damage quantifiable and liability determinable.
There is a dramatic new development with the rise of AGW “science”. The new “science” makes it possible to put a dollar value on every fire, whatever the cause of the fire and whatever the location. There are now officially recognised formulae for measuring “carbon content” of vegetation, and “carbon markets”, which already exist, put a dollar value on that carbon.
Watch the lawyers queueing!
I warned our local politicians that this new development will have serious consequences. They assured me that my concerns are unfounded. They are not very bright.
40
Trees are a crop. If you don’t take care of them, mother nature will!
30
But if your crop is trees, the government controls them.
00
The biggest threat to democracy is the gradual removal of freehold rights. If the government or the Greens want to control our vegetation they should buy it.
As for your comment about the pollies wanting to put a price on carbon it seems another case of unintended consequences. I would shut up about it until the fools paint themselves into a corner. When Bullshit Bill regains power he will “put a price on carbon” and then you will be able to sue.
10
Some laws are darn stupid. I was even charged by our local authority for even putting a fire out on a large vacant block in town. I won of course, but it cost the council many thousands.
160
I think there are more fire-bugs in Australia per head of population than anywhere.
110
And these fire-bugs, if identified, should be micro-chipped & monitored 24/7 after a first offence. This micro-chipping should also apply to known serial criminals, especially those with terrorist tendencies. I believe in WA arsonists can be jailed for life under recently introduced WA State Laws. These measures should apply to protect the majority of law abiding citizens in our fine country – of course the do-gooders, civil libertarians etc will object vehemently.
140
Chip the do-gooders and civil libertarians, too! If you’ve chipped the tails of the population, the center will know where the problems are.
40
We live in a small country town that is in a bushfire prone area and the only places that are at risk are those on non-private land. Despite numerous exhortations to council, nothing has changed in half a decade, since volunteers gave up trying to keep things in order.
140
So the short version is that these fires you have been having aren’t due to climate change, they are due to government mismanagement of the land?
This would be the same government that plans to save the planet right?
Now the thinking person would ask “If they can’t properly manage the land on their own continent why would I expect them to do any better with the rest of the world?”
Too bad there are so many out there who don’t think but are willing to support inept governments. At least yours doesn’t seem to be quite as screwed up as ours here in the US. I suppose if we really look at it there are things that are worse there and things that are worse here. The next elections will be interesting for both our countries.
350
But if we give lots and lots of money to the UN and similar, then everything will be good. Isn’t that how it’s always worked?
120
Not a lot different to flash flooding in the CBD of many coiuntry towns now. The storm water systems can handle the downpour but they’ve been neglected and allowed to silt up and choke with rubbish.
Councils once had maintenance programs for storm water, blackberries, slashing overgrowth, tree lopping etc, etc.
Not anymore.
160
“The storm water systems can handle the downpour but they’ve been neglected and allowed to silt up”
Welcome to Newcastle NSW Neglect City – but we do have a “youth refuge” called the Loft and street theatre on the waterfront every weekend and public holiday courtesy of the ratepayers.
130
KK,
Never mind the quality just feel the width…
40
The Taree City Council has 213 employees of which about 20 are outdoor staff. The remainder are worried about dog registration, environmental problems, monitoring your weeds and septic tanks. Lots to do to seek approval to build anything bugger all to help start a business. The problem is councils are the ultimate and most intimate of the nanny staters. They are heavily into self administration and in our case have a General Manager on $330,000, 3 deputies on $260,000 and 13 third tier managers on $130,000 and then there are the multitude of paper shufflers. The garbage is collected by a contractor and much of the road works are contracted out so the two key responsibilities of a local council are taken care of by others. The latest threat to services are the Wingham library and the swimming pool both of which could be funded by sacking one deputy. This is the result of big government.
10
Councils are too busy tying up money funding programs to teach the Unemployed to weave baskets under water. THAT’S what’s important, rather than cleaning up some dirt no one can see at election time.
40
Not to mention lunches!
20
Several large steel making plants earlier and more recently several big electricity users in the form of Aluminium smelters have been taken off the grid.
Emission transfer to “other countries” where the price of carbon is possibly lower.
KK
150
Yes KK we are exporters!
We export our industries and our jobs. Labour and the Unions still cannot see this.
170
The green rules of both state governments and local councils, have caused much death and destruction of property, the intense fires in badly managed forests also virtually destroy the forest for a century.
I have been in or near many nasty fires in my life but I always prepared for years as a normal part of living in or near the bush.
I have been ordered by police to leave my property, my question to them was are we at war, they said no and I said check the rules you can not make me leave.
That was Ash wednesday in Vic all my neighbours houses were lost but not mine. The local rules were any tree closer than two metres from your house you could cut down. After the fire I sent a letter to council stating that I had all their names and I would personally press charges of manslaughter if anyone died because of these rules anytime in my life time. Instant change of heart and bulldozers spent about six months doing some serious future fire protection.
The upshot is it is not impossible to change the rules if it is their neck in the noose in the future, it is their fault if some one dies because of their rules. They made the rules endangering people.
301
Fantastic story but unfortunately, as you are apparently aware, not very common.
At this moment TV news talks about fire in WA raging out of control with orders to evacuate.
Proper planning for fire control is not a mystery and it is just so sad to see unnecessary loss of homes businesses and lives.
KK
110
Yeah but heres the thing – you know all those “Landcare” projects you see aroudn the place? All linked to the UN.
Its my undeerstandingthe UN now controls, via gummint policy and Landcare programs, all out waterways. As such we can at the flick of a pen, be denied to water.
I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
Landcare is just the local version of UN Agenda 21.
40
In the black Saturday fire in 2009 173 people lost their lives and more than 400 were injured. The weather conditions were horrendous. If one doesn’t take appropriate precautions it is negligent, but if one is prevented from doing so by government and council regulation then a lot of the blame lies with the authorities.
There is a history of extreme weather conditions over the Summer months in southern Australia and one only has to refer to the 1939 fire in Vic., the 1934 and 1967 fires in S. Tas. for some idea of the devastation and loss of life.
We know this; it is not rocket science, and we also know that control burning under benign conditions will reduce the fuel loads to something manageable, but the trendy law makers think differently, and I agree should be held culpable for their stupidity.
It’s not climate change just the normal weather events from time to time.
160
Robert,
It’s not stupidity.
Stupidity might be involved if the people doing this were lacking in some capacity; these people don’t lack capacity, they just refuse to inform themselves about the actual situation because it is politically unacceptable to them.
They insist that their “method” be followed and therefore must be held accountable for their decisions made for and on behalf of the voters who elected them.
The facts must be outed and they must be held accountable, if not in the courts then at least in the court of public opinion.
But how is this possible when the media is caught up in the “dream”?
KK
120
I have been noticing the emergence of Nazism in many forms through the powers that be , world wide now.
The UN is Socialist ( Communist ) organisation, and all our green “laws” are driven by UN agenda 21.
As such, I’m not surprised to seeing people and farmers being brutalized by punative laws that protect their mythical “Gaia”.
It was intersting – I was watching a History channel doco on the theology of the Nazis. It seems at its heart, nazi Himmler tried to establish a pagan Arayan religion, with the murderous SS as its “knights”, and paganism as its theology.
The Arayanism ( white supremacy if you wish ) may also explain the deliberate neglect of Africa as its full of dark skinned peoples.
We need to name the green theology for what it is – a pagan occult religion devoted to population reduction.
20
Perhaps if they were to be held personally responsible for damages incurred by their said stupidity, and/or forced to do their stint as members of the local firies, they might, just might, change their attitudes.
30
Wayne, just would to add to your story about common sense. I had an old friend, Eric Littl,e who lived at Ferntree at the back of Mt. Wellington. He was the chemist at the Cascade Brewery. The house was made of wooden shingles with a wooden shingle roof sitting in a large garden of mainly Rhododrendrons under a canopy of Mt. Ash regrowth (probably from the 1934 fire). Anyhow he survived the 1967 fire simply because he had a fire hose,with water from the adjoining gravity pipeline, and a very green garden, though all the eucalypt regrowth, about 60 trees, was killed due to a crown-fire. His neighbours houses didn’t survive as did most of Ferntree, even lost their pub.
60
Good for you. WE now have a ten fifty rule in NSW. You can cut down everything within 10 metres without reference to anyone and you can clear underbrush and rubbish up to fifty metres away from your residence. The Greens have gone ape but then it is hard to clear cobblestones and litter bins from your inner city sustainable slum.
In addition a landowner can clear a six metre wide strip on his side of a boundary fence for construction and repair. He can also clear three metres both sides of internal fencing. I know a lady who is subdividing her bush block into lots of small paddocks.
PS Please insert her for his where appropriate. I don’t want Julia calling me a misogynist.
00
“Why aren’t the Greens more excited?”
The Greens only get excited when they get more direct power. That’s what Tony Burke meant when he said that with the Greens it’s “never enough”. You give them one thing, and they just move on and want another, like spoilt children.
It’s been long since it was a party about ‘the environment’, it’s much more about control of ‘the environment’. And because ‘the environment’ is in reality such a loose term, it’s really about ‘control’, and that means, power.
Moral causes once again being used as a masquerade for power. It’s funny how humans never seem to learn.
200
Hitler had exactly the same negotiating process – get what he wanted the demand more.
“Green” is about eventual forced population reduction through war, legislation or biological means. In many ways, the greens are pretty much just covert National Socialists…..same ideology, same hatred of anyone who opposes them, same need to control, same wish to thin the population of “useless eaters”, same paganism.
00
I just honestly wonder about the meaning of all this. Meaningless figures, statistics and dam lies. The population has grown and probably coal fired power stations have produced more electricity, but we have exported a hell of a lot coal to India and China for power generation; should we not include this too? With population increase more CO2 is produced by the people when they breathe out, and the extra cows to produce meat and milk to feed them also exhale CO2 and that horrible methane (which we also export as Coal Seam Gas). The people also drive around in more cars.
As to the LULUCF sector, pretty meaningless in the real world. Most old-growth forest would be neutral in terms of carbon, with growth being offset by internal decay. Plantation foresty, i.e. well managed, and not Ponzi schemes, would sequestrate about 5 tonnes of carbon per ha. per an.
I suppose it keeps the bureaucracy happy, but it costs us a lot of money, and for what purpose since carbon dioxide doesn’t seem make much difference to the climate anyhow.
160
I had a piece here some time ago that looked at this. I started a PhD on the matter about 20 years ago, but got bored with it. I enjoyed teaching but research bored me to tears, plus the interwebz came along 😀
Here’s the old link:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/06/australia%E2%80%99s-invisible-energy-trade-better-than-most-and-getting-even-better/
Yes, Australia is a net energy exporter, but it is also a net exporter of energy embodied in other goods (significantly products like aluminium). The latter will start to diminish as we close our value-adding smelting and refining industry. The latter is probably inevitable as China has swamped many of the mineral industries with excessive smelting and refining capacity, and their installations are newer. Sure they have some older installations, but it would be naive to think they don’t use efficient technologies in their newer installations.
I fully expect that another emerging country (India, Brazil, Indonesia?) will eventually take over the smelting and refining role from China to a large degree. It is a natural part of the development cycle. Malenbaum developed the “Intensity of Use” concept and there has been much research in that area since.
Intensity of use is the unit of mineral to GDP ratio which typically follows a predictable cycle over time for a given economy. CO2-e emissions to GDP is a similar measure and was recently used by China when they stated it would peak at a given year in the future, as if that meant they were doing something about CO2 emissions. No, that is just the natural cycle their economy was going to follow anyway.
Anywho … starting to ramble…
50
Interesting
10
Don’t count the dollars, count the Joules.
Those who apply the most Joules to what they produce, are economically better off.
10
Anything looks good on a log-log graph, but yes: Gapminder link
00
BTW we are hiding behind Belguim in case anyone is wondering…
00
10 Jan: SMH: Peter Hannam: Renewable investment dives in Australia, bucking global trend
Investments in renewable energy rose to record levels globally in 2014 but fell sharply in Australia because of uncertainty triggered by the Abbott government’s review of the industry, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said…
9 Jan: Bloomberg: Louise Downing: Clean Energy Investment Jumps 16%, Shaking Off Oil’s Drop
Clean energy investment rose for the first time in three years in 2014, overcoming a slump in oil prices that unsettled the outlook for the industry.
New funds for wind, solar, biofuels and other low-carbon energy technologies gained 16 percent to $310 billion last year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. It was the first growth since 2011…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-09/clean-energy-investment-jumps-16-on-china-s-support-for-solar.html
will do a second comment to discuss further, but note the 2013 figure below of $214 billion. the $310 billion above is obviously not 16% higher than $214 billion:
PDF: 16 pages: GLOBAL TRENDS IN RENEWABLE ENERGY INVESTMENT 2014
This report is the result of a joint analysis by the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
Supported by the Federal Republic of Germany
Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation & Nuclear Safety
***Key Findings: Total investment in renewable power and fuels (excluding large hydro-electric projects) fell for the second year running in 2013, reaching $214 billion worldwide, some 14% lower than in 2012 and 23% below the 2011 record…
http://www.unep.org/pdf/Green_energy_2013-Key_findings.pdf
20
Most answers to questions on governmental/local authorities decision making are outlined here made over 15 years ago in UN Agenda 21 Australia-Sustainable Development-Natural Resource Aspects of Sustainable Development in Australia.
A quick read will highlight many A-21 words within the language but one thing stands out glaringly in relation to the ideas surrounding ‘bush management’….there aren’t any, there is lots of lovely talk of community groups (read Landcare) working together with the preempted, established bureaucracy to achieve ‘sustainable development’ including handing over ‘fragile ecosystems’ to traditional land owners (let’s see the traditional contracts first) but never any mention or clue to how best to be even ‘socially responsible land owners’.
15 years later and most people are scratching their heads as to how these Departments cropped up wielding such power over their lives for unexplained reasons or merit, I say to anyone dropping by that’s reading this please take the time to read my link and understand your questions are answered by the very perpetrators of this ‘system’ you now find yourself in, it even explains how it was funded!, Agenda 21 was never about the environment, it’s about you and whether you’re judged fit to exist in it.
120
“Landcare” is what farmers used to do before government policies slashed their capital supply. Government sponsored “landcare” was instituted to take its place.
The Whitlam government forced us to pay tax at our highest marginal rate on 98% of our landcare expenditure. This brought landcare activity to a grinding halt, maintenance only if you could afford it.
The Fraser government, hobbled by the economic mess that Whitlam’s Marxists had created, waited 5 years to remove that tax. The Hawke government reinstated that tax, again shutting down investment in landcare. Government managed landcare was brought in after they noticed the need that their policies had created.
20
Who cares about Maxwell Szulc!
I care about Maxwell Szulc.
That is a terrible story. It is an indictment against all of us that he is still serving a sentence for standing up for THE RIGHHT THING. And nobody cared to protest.
170
How much of the reduction in CO2 production is due to shutting down manufacturing industries, particularly aluminium smelting?
90
You would think any Carbon reduction the Australian Government is trying to achieve from LULUCF should have to take into consideration the release of Carbon when these areas burn.
50
I suppose when a country goes from being a prosperous society in which people
could once afford the energy required to maintain a comfortable home environment, which once had the reliable cheap power required to sustain a prosperous manufacturing industry – to a nation where many people can no longer afford to heat of cool their homes, where there is little remaining manufacturing and where basket weaving, coffee brewing and personal training are the most energy intensive industries remaining, then why would anyone be surprised that our per capita emissions have declined?
Likewise our Green unlearning of successful fire management methods learned during more than five generations of European settlement, and millennia of aboriginal occupation is without peer when it comes to sheer stupidity. When it comes to heavy handed Green police action, numerous examples vie for the supreme stupid crown. One example which must go close is an instance which saw a land owner fined $50,000 for clearing land around his house for fire safety. When the bad fires came in 2009, as inevitably they do in the Australian bush, Liam Sheahan’s was one of a few houses to survive in his Reedy Creek, Victoria neighbourhood.
It some times seems that our nation really has to work hard at perfecting stupidity.
250
Bob, I remember a story about changes in forest management in the Otways due to green pressures in Melbourne town. Essentially, the locals were putting in barb-b-que facilities at camping facilities, even providing wood for them, knowing full well that there would be some escapes when they could saunter down later and put the fires out when it had achieved the desired objective simply because they were not allowed to do any control burning anymore.
30
A little cutting there Bob.
Even Incisive!
40
this is part 2 of a comment still in moderation on Bloomberg clean energy investment figures. if this goes thru before the other comment comes out of moderation, please bear this in mind.
note ***”revised $268.1bn in 2013″. that is some revision. i have found nothing online to show when this figure was revised upwards by $54bn. how reliable are any of these figures?
best to read ALL the following (calling TonyfromOz) to work out how much ACTUAL ENERGY has been or is likely to be generated from all these billions & how much is likely to be more wasted $$$billions in the name of CAGW:
9 Jan: Bloomberg New Energy Finance: Rebound in clean energy investment in 2014 beats expectations
Surges in investment in offshore wind in Europe, and solar in China and the US, helped to drive the 2014 global clean energy total up 16% to $310bn…
***Authoritative annual data, published today by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, show that global investment in clean energy was $310bn last year. This was up 16% from a ***revised $268.1bn in 2013, and more than five times the figure of $60.2bn attained a decade earlier, in 2004, albeit still 2% below the all-time record of $317.5bn reached in 2011…
http://about.bnef.com/press-releases/rebound-clean-energy-investment-2014-beats-expectations/?hootPostID=fcda196b9a00743578f2ad2ef07b9bc2
50
Interesting.
Off topic but you guys have a 38% population increase since 1990?!
I guess it’s no longer us Poms emigrating so what’s the demographic?
50
Mass immigration is imperative if we are to survive, no doubt you have heard the expression ‘populate or perish’.
‘Climate change experts have released maps of the world revealing how prepared different countries are to cope with the effects of climate change.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2908213/How-country-cope-climate-change-Map-reveals-best-worst-places-live-planet-warms-up.html#ixzz3OjkvBZMv
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
20
Ah, ‘Populate or Perish’ and ‘Develop the North’, those familiar mantras from the 1960s!
The demographic of the recent population increase is broad, not favouring any particular source country. A succession of governments, seeking cheap labour and new consumers to appease the business lobby, have sourced immigrants from wherever they could.
20
Muslims refugees. [and other refugees and family reunion migrants, skilled and business migrants, students who then work for two years after graduating can apply to stay, and we get in average about 40,000 Kiwis come to our shores each year. – Mod]
21
40,000 kiwis per year!
How long until the population of New Zealand falls to zero?
30
…..and that’s why it’s hard to get a ” home”match when the Bledilsloe is on!!
40
Don’t worry Peter C the tide has turned , emigration figures to Australia are now dramatically lower than your figure. In fact the NZ Govt. wallys have been over your way last year encouraging people to return –esp. skilled construction workers, to join the Christchurch rebuild.
10
The majority of immigrants are from Britain and NZ, with China and India making inroads. We have clearly been taking your skilled workers.
——–
As of the end of September 2012, the Australian population growth rate was 1.7%. This rate was based on estimates of:
one birth every 1 minute and 44 seconds,
one death every 3 minutes and 32 seconds,
a net gain of one international migrant every 2 minutes and 19 seconds leading to
an overall total population increase of one person every 1 minute and 23 seconds.
wiki
30
I’m wondering how anyone can measure carbon emissions with such accuracy as to say increased or decreased by such-and-such percent. I guess they have models that know every tree, bush and blade of grass all the way from west to east and north to south across Australia.
Watch the pea for sure. But even more, watch the man with the computer.
70
Australia doesn’t have the rights to private property that the Americans have (nor do Canadians). It is a product of the British system that keeps power centrally held “for the greater good”, meaning big business or big power (political or financial).
As you know, reducing CO2 emissions per capita and on a gross level is not the goal but the tool of a centrally-controlled deindustrialization, anti-individualist, anti-capitalist ideology. It would take a social revolution to wrest power away from the governors. Such a thing looks near-to impossible in the United States where the idea has the greatest philosophical basis in the world. We need leadership not seen outside the traumatic turmoils of the past, which is, of course, why we have had traumatic turmoils in the past: that is the only way we seem to get major shifts in public thinking and behaviour going.
Ironically, this is the same argument the warmists could use to promote their own reorganization of the world.
60
“Why aren’t the Greens more excited?”
Greens label climate change the ‘overwhelming challenge of our time’ (ABC)
“Ms Milne said the Prime Minister and Premier were both bad for the environment.
“Extremism and murder are horrific and have to be dealt with in every nation and internationally but so too does global warming, it is the overwhelming challenge of our time,” Ms Milne said.
“If you want to keep Australians safe the best thing that you can do this century is respond to the climate crisis.”
~ ~ ~
Lower emissions?
Looking out the window, it’s all good news.
But not for
the turkeythe Greens:Why does Yamba keep winning tourism awards?
It could be its choice of 13 beaches, its famous surf-break at Angourie or its CSIRO nomination for having one of the world’s best climates.
The fishing’s not bad either.
news(dot)domain(dot)com(dot)au/domain/real-estate-news/yambas-best-beach-getaways-20150107-12ivjm.html
. . .
Life must suck being a miserable Green voter when everyday is the rapture that never arrives.
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Congratulations Australia!! We have done our bit to save the planet. Ms Milne, we have beaten the overwhelming challenge of our time.
Now if only every other country would cut their emissions per person by 28% the world would be a better place, right?
Er, except that Australia has exported energy intensive jobs, there would be more poverty, less jobs.
Next steps? Ms Milne, please stay in your own backyard, stop flying around the world, and turn the TV and lights off.
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Bob Brown, Ms.Milne’s former boss, actually had solar panels on his shack in the Liffey valley and wasn’t connected to the grid, though he didn’t spend much time there. So I guess he was trying to minimize his carbon footprint.
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Michael,
As far as I am aware, and David Evans could shed light on this, but carbon output from forest fires are not counted in any totaling of carbon output.
And that is the international standard!
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It would be funny if the Government had to pay the Carbon Tax on back burning and forest fires..
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That residual 8% decline in per capita emissions (if it isn’t just an accounting artefact) might be a consequence of population growth. A 38% increase in the number of people living off the same static resource base means we’ve had to become more frugal.
Young people whose grandparents owned houses on quarter-acre blocks are now lucky to have flats in medium-density suburbs. An outdoor lifestyle once meant hunting, fishing, surfing, holiday homes and boats; now it means jogging in urban parks. This slow decline in living standards is the “elephant in the room” of Australian society.
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Any environmental benefits that occur due to Green environmental policies are purely by accident as Their only concern is will said policy cause inconvenience or death to humans .
Energy policies :
They only support intermittent and expensive forms of electricity generation with awful environmental footprints on a mw to area impacted ratio . ( I won’t go into detail here as it would be pretty much a duplicate of Tony from Oz’s posts on generation density/capacity/reliability )Expensive and unreliable energy is a killer.
Fire prevention policies :
The Greens oppose any clearing or backburning despite the obvious whale in Their room that the destruction of native flora and fauna from uncontrolled bushfires is many , many orders of magnitude higher than clearing and fuel load reduction burns could ever be . No need to point out the loss of human and domestic animal lives from those policies , They’re already well documented
Forestry policies :
The Greens oppose the scientifically and environmentally sound harvesting techniques used in Tasmania’s E.Regnans forests and support “selective” logging techniques that are REALLY bad for the fire climactic E.Regnans forests . Their approved logging techniques are of course much more expensive and much more dangerous to the loggers (as if it isn’t a risky enough business as it is )
GM crops policies :
Greens are opposed to GM research/crops of course even though these promise to have less environmental impact than current crop species due to the need for less water , nutrients , pesticides and land to grow more product . Some GM crops have the potential not just to save lives by feeding starving people but by preventing /treating diseases
Game management :
Forget it . At any level . To a greeny , a wetland full of botulism toxin and dead and dying ducks and sundry other species affected by the consequent degradation of the water quality is preferable to humans getting a feed of wild duck .
To a greeny , grassland stripped to the dirt and waterholes sucked dry and kangaroos dead and dying of starvation/thirst is preferable to humans getting a feed of ‘roo .
Water management:
Reducing flood impacts and augmenting river flow during droughts is good for everything living thing near the river , this requires dams however and of course greens REALLY hate dams because humans use ’em not only to irrigate but generate cheap reliable electricity as well
They’re just a few examples but the pattern is obvious . If You’re a Green , the environment better not get in the way of You expressing Your misanthropy or it goes under the bus too .
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Byron, selective logging does not work in wet sclerophyll forest or mixed forest (Eucalypt overstorey, rainforest understorey). O.K. for the fir forests of the Pyrenees, but the greens knowledge of forestry is pretty limited, but is far exceeded by their political agenda. They realise that the votes are in the cities, not the country, and the voters think they are doing their little bit for nature whilst enjoying their cafe lattes.
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Yes , I’ve explained the fire climactic reproductive cycle and the need for an ash bed and plenty of light for the seedlings and the 400 year lifespan of e.regnans to a variety of greeny types and the response is always the same ,a slight flickering of light behind the eyes , a look of bewildered panic , followed by a “but ….but ….but” and then the dogma comes crashing down and They start foaming at the mouth about how “You can’t just cut down a forest that’s been undisturbed for thousands of years for money”
Then it’s back to the start , slowly explaining that if a E.regnans forest is not disturbed by fire it will cease to exist after about 400 years …. and round in a circle They go with the brief look of comprehension , followed panic as unused neurons fire and Their rapid retreat into comforting dogma .
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Byron, I think I referred to Max (J.M.) Gilbert’s Ph.D. thesis written in the late 1950’s on his work in the Florentine valley; perhaps they ought to read it whilst they spend time in the tree tops saving the forest.
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Factors that cause average global temperature change are called ‘forcings’. Whatever the forcing, it relates to the rate-of-change of temperature, not the temperature itself. To relate the forcing to temperature requires the time-integral of the forcing.
Because CO2 level has been called a forcing, its effect on temperature should be determined using the time-integral of the CO2 anomaly (with appropriate scale factor); the anomaly being the time-varying amount above or below a historical nominal value.
In The Inconvenient Truth, it is asserted that the ice age graph which shows that CO2 level and temperature go up and down approximately together (a closer look shows temperature changes precede CO2 changes) indicates that climate change is caused by CO2 change. Actually, with application of valid science (that the temperature depends on the time-integral of the forcing), that graph PROVES that CO2 change does NOT cause climate change.
A Google search using key words ‘time integral global warming’ returned http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com. The analysis presented there, using the time-integral of sunspot number anomalies plus a method to account for ocean cycles, calculates average global temperatures since 1895 with 95% correlation.
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The article was posted on the 15th….after the week of rainfall over nearly all of Australia, and below average temperatures…..but the NOT MY ABC keep pushing the “hottest evah” mantra.
To Quote “It’s hot enough to melt a bushman’s boots. But cranking up the air-conditioning is not the only way to stay cool.”
and
” But not all of us have access to air-con. And when you turn on an air-conditioner, it can be expensive and it releases climate-changing greenhouse gases.”
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whoops forgot link
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/01/15/3925541.htm
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This is my correct moniker! Mods please change last post and delete this.
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