You don’t need to study any numbers to know it doesn’t add up. The statistical chicanery in a patchwork tax, with a complex compo plan, and offsets, subsidies, and a$10 billion renewable energy* Christmas wish list is as complex as a climate model. But this time no one is saying “it’s settled”, and is seriously expecting to get their extra 20 cents a week.
Lost among the bedazzling array of numbers are one pair of figures that put the central dumbness of this plan on display.
Australians will pay about $10 billion* a year in carbon fees, overachieving their European competitors who only paid $2.6 billion over, wait for it, six whole years. On a per capita basis the numbers are stark. While Europeans chip in 96 cents a year, Australian’s will be told to pay $500.
The bottom line — figure this — is that we as a nation have “decided” to voluntarily^ pay somewhere from 2 – 5 times as much for our energy, and there are no cheap “technologies” on the horizon unless someone somewhere discovers them (and they’ve been looking for decades). Julia Gillard tried to compare this to other major economic moves like floating the dollar. But those big moves had selling points known as “benefits”.
Let’s list all the advantages, both of them, from this masochistic macroeconomics move:
- It will reduce global man made human emissions for the next eight years from 64,000 mt to just 63,840 mt (roughly). (I can’t see people opting to pay much for that).
- It will rocket Australia to the top spot on the IPCC’s Miss-Popularity National Rankings.
Yes, we have earned the death-defying Kamikazee-Sovereign-Economy award for 2011. (Competition closed early. There’s no point waiting til Dec 31. ) This will come in handy for some ALP personnel wishing to move onto UN unelected positions after the next election, but otherwise be generally a source of mirth for non-Australians.
The Australian share market took the news of the economic suicide gracefully, losing only $7 billion dollars in the first day. (And that tallies up only the top 25 companies which are going to cop the big carbon-speeding-ticket.)
Julie Novak explains the rise of the Carbonocrats (also known as the Green Police).
Michael Stutchbury, Economics Editor, The Australian, thinks it will be a miracle if the package survives.
Labor’s support falls again in the polls. And while I’ve generously pro rata’d the total revenue estimate to be $10b, Wong guessed $18 b, Pyne guessed $21 b and apparently, the number is really $25 billion. Who knew? Not the ALP finance minister eh?.
Don’t forget to keep reminding those Labor Marginal Seats of their new favourite piece of legislation. There are groups forming in Greenway and La Trobe, so let us know if you want to join them, or start a new group elsewhere.
Me, I just wish we were spending $25 billion on medical research instead. What would you rather have? A cure for cancer or second hand windmill made in China?
—————————————————–
* (The massive $10b renewable energy plan is now known as the Brown Bank).
** The Minerals Council calculated the tithe collected in the name of carbon would be around $11 b per annum at $25/ton, which translates to about $10 b at $23/t.
^ Voluntary: as in upon threat of incarceration.
If this is in any true:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/cast-your-vote-in-national-plebiscite-on-carbon-tax-hosted-by-news-ltd-websites/story-e6freooo-1226091387866
There is no way this tax will go through. Expect a complete demise of the whole idea in 2-3 weeks
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If this is in any way true:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/cast-your-vote-in-national-plebiscite-on-carbon-tax-hosted-by-news-ltd-websites/story-e6freooo-1226091387866
There is no way this tax will go through. Expect a complete demise of the whole idea in 2-3 weeks
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It really seems like we’ve suddenly woken up in Fantasy Land!
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&
Is this what it’s come to. The very existence of these supra-national institutions, such as the EU & the UN, spawning burgeoning of unelected sycophants, tempt our pollies to divide their loyalties.
Rather than purely serving their Nation, they are now tempted to sell their Nation, for that appointment to some made up position of importance in their retirement, when they are no longer electable.
How many failed pollies now swell the ranks of EU Commissioners, telling their still elected but increasingly powerless ex- colleagues, what they can & cannot do.
For this reason alone, of stealing loyalty from Nations, both these behemoths should be disbanded forthwith.
It is the post-democratic age. for their personal surety in retirement. surety of that personal app
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I too have wondered how you can get so many national leaders on board with the AGW idea. I decided that offering them even more money and power in return for raising taxes from their own people to make it all possible would be a real possibility.
I think this is the first time I have seen it in a blog, though. Great minds …!
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I guess the Government will have to find something else for Michael Caton to do after the property market collapses.
At least the banks will have another string to their bow.
Pity about all the “battlers” in Woolongong & Whyalla.
The undefined angst which lead to the riots around Sydney over recent years may grow.
Perhaps they could be called Julia Parties.
Go Julia!………….just go.
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‘Struth – I thought that the eco-loons in the UK were the ultimate world-class nutters.
Looks like Gillard could teach them a thing or two.
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Even at its worst, they were only estimating about $300/yr for the Yanks! You Aussies are screwed! It is a shame as you have a (or had as the case may be) a great economy.
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Maybe we should be encouraging ‘Misfortune 500’ companies to contest the carbon pollution tax in the courts, since CO2 is not a pollutant.The science is out rather than in and I would like to see the Government propaganda unmasked rather than treated as a fait accompli.If we can’t vote them out maybe we can throw them out.
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I have withdrawn all my funds from Australia until they come to their senses it has started.
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Now, first things first – the caveats: I am not an economist, so what I say should be taken with some scepticism (which is what I expect here anyway).
Also, I am not aware of all of the finer points of this proposed tax. But I do see a confluence of events that has raised my eyebrows, so I thought I would share my thoughts to see what feedback I could get.
I look at this tax as an outsider, as I do in most things. So let me take it one step at a time:
1. The carbon tax, like any other tax, is primarily to raise funding for the Government, but it will also have a secondary effect of removing liquidity from the economy. From the Governments viewpoint, the first is an advantage, and the second is a disadvantage, so what is it that makes the advantage outweigh the disadvantage?
2. The tax will be focused in some way at the “big polluters”, which seems to be a euphemism for the mining and energy companies. I would be extremely surprised if these companies volunteered to absorb the tax with their profit margins, so they will simply pass on any increased tax as part of the wholesale price of their goods and services.
3. Of course, if you are exporting in a competitive market, you can’t just put your prices up arbitrarily. At least, not if you expect to retain market share (unless you happen to be selling Lithium). This means that the exporting companies will need to “absorb” all of the tax by increasing the cost of their products on the domestic market.
So if you need those goods (like electricity from coal) you can expect to be virtually taxed twice; once by the Government, and once by proxy.
4. If you are in a low income bracket, you will be recompensed for your initial tax payments, but not nearly enough to cover all of the “hidden” costs in the domestic market. Forget the PR figures, everybody’s purchasing power will be decreased. If it didn’t, what would be the point of the tax in the first place?
5. Also, you can expect a time-lag between the tax being collected and any recompense being supplied, giving the Government a nice pool of cash, that they can use to buy US dollar bonds.
6. Why US dollar bonds? Well, there are rumours in the U.S. Money Markets that the Federal Reserve are seriously considering putting the US dollar back onto the gold standard. It was probably meant to be secret, but as one of my contacts puts it, “Anybody who has noticed gold go to US$1500/oz would have to go “Hmm?”
7. If the Fed changes the US Dollar from the fiat currency it is today, to one based on a less volatile (and limited) commodity (and they have done it a couple of times before), then one would expect the value of US currency bonds to increase significantly (as they did before).
8. So I think that the whole “carbon is pollution” thing is no more than grabbing a slush fund that the Government can use to play the markets. If they can get a windfall profit from a little bit of trading, they could probably make a big hole in the deficit, and have a lot more largesse to splash around come the next election. They could not only repeal this tax, they might also be able to afford lowering some of the tax rates to support “the battlers”.
There it is: Shoot-downs accepted in the spirit of open debate. But I have to say that these things are never as simple as they seem on the surface. As one of my colleagues is fond of saying, “There is always a back-story to the story, and a backer-story to the back-story”.
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The “brown bank”
The inference to excreta in the name says it all really.
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Nothing we say will make a skerrick of difference. The only language this government understands is opinion polling. The latest two (Newspoll and Essential Media) show the government smashing the basement low records for a ruling party in the past two weeks. What come next are polls taken after Carbon Sunday: they will show the government vote remaining at record lows or falling further. In that case, Gillard may be replaced. The question then is whether Labour acknowledges that the Greens are the poison that is killing it, dumps them and calls an election or attempts to do a patch-up job. I’d back the patch-up job, in which Labour MPs (and Bandt and the Independents) sit there for another two years like rabbits in the spotlight waiting for their execution. Meanwhile, the wellspring of this madness – the “science” – cannot convince a sceptical global population that there’s a shred of empirical, observational evidence that the human race has managed to change the earth’s climate. Good men and women in climate science have been suckered into the CAGW groupthink, perhaps not understanding that the IPCC was never set up to provide an independent, dispassionate understanding of climate. Its loaded charter was to understand “the risk of human-induced climate change”. Any university science department head knows that you’re dealing yourself out of the funding game if you start examining natural climate variability. The IPCC has spent the past 20 years building a case that human CO2 emissions are the primary driver of global temperature change, a ludicrous, illogical and anti-intuitive nonsense, even acknowledging the radiative greenhouse properties of our most defamed trace gas. The longer the IPCC continues to cling to its discredited hpothesis, the longer climate science delays its real investigation of the impacts of the rising CO2 concentration.
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[…] has produced a wonderfully comprehensive critique of the latest Labor fiasco, aptly titled “Barking Mad – a nation howling at fireflies” – love it! My favorite part is Jo’s definition of voluntary – “upon […]
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Imagine a reduction of coal consumption by 30% and rising, with no downside. It’s already being done in China, it’s proven technology requiring no fudging or subsidy to make it look good, and it provides the ultimate in baseload power.
Our Green Betters will hate it for several reasons.
Firstly, it cannot fail to vastly reduce coal consumption, and our Green Betters have shown in the debate over hydro and nuclear that they do not like immediate hard results, particularly those that might lead to general prosperity extending beyond the Fairfax reading classes.
Worse, this technology frees up funds for research/experimentation into still other energy sources which are not heaps of medieval junk. As we know, our Green Betters love feeble and antiquated technologies which impoverish, and which keep the vulgar mall-shoppers and aspirationals in their place. Their wind turbines have the added advantage of littering the landscape of an entire country, serving as an inescapable green fetish that is seldom out of sight.
The main reason our Green Betters will hate the proposition is that the name of this coal-saving technology is…coal technology!
Tony is a retired electrician with a particular interest in power generation figures. I asked him a question on his website and I feel his response is worth reading by all. It’s in the comments at the bottom of his article.
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/co2-tax-australia-julia-gillard-absolutely-clueless/
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The sinister reason behind the ‘TAX’. Agenda21, “seig heil”.
Heres NY states problem
http://www.infowars.com/agenda-21-in-new-york-state-home-rule-and-article-x/
Sinister Agenda21 put up at several conferences by the octopus system of world govt by the UN. Its about enviromental
mismanagement, developing useless alternative energy plans, killing off coal and other energy sources generation. I heard the treasurer in the 2GB interview say emphatically “its all about renewables” like the eutopoia is coming. No tresurer, have you actually seen REAL sums on the the true cost of wind-fartsfarms and decaying solar arrays like the one in Germany. Wonder how many of these pollys are going to get shares in copper mines.10
This strange argument that has popped up – worthwhile reforms of the GST, Tariff reduction and floating the dollar were all painful. The argument goes that the carbon tax looks painful, so therefore it must be a worthwhile reforms.
Not sure if there is a latin term for it, but I’d go with ‘argumentum ad incomparable um’
Pretty sure it’s the post hoc ergo hoc or whatever. I don’t pretend to know. But it’s nuts anyway.
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If permitted, I’ll repost my comment from the prior thread, as it actually fits better with this topic.
There is much talk about the tax being revenue neutral, so therefore no real damage must be being done.
However, it is not wealth neutral. Wealth is not currency – wealth is all the things we have. You can make yourself wealthier without spending a cent. Spend all day tidying up your yard and you will literally make your house worth more, and you haven’t spent a cent. A wealthy society is one which has a lot of things they want – from long lives and healthy children to warm and spacious houses to shiny new toys. If you travel to a third world nation you don’t have to look at peoples bank accounts to know they aren’t wealthy. One has to disconnect wealth from dollars in order to truly understand this.
So even if the tax is revenue neutral in terms of AUD counted, it isn’t wealth neutral. Because diverting funds and labor away from efficient sources of energy into inefficient sources of energy reduces wealth. To take it to a ridiculous extreme if we still kept the same amount of money going around but instead of coal-powered electricity we instead had donkeys walking around in circles to generate our energy, then technically, even if we paid the same amount of money to the donkey-owners it would be strictly revenue neutral. However, power would be a scarce and valuable thing. Gone would be streetlighting, gone would be power-hungry things like electric trains. Gone would be large manufacturing plants, and all the things that come out of them. Gone would be power tools for making buildings, gone would be appliances like washing machines, dryers, irons and microwaves. We would have to live in smaller homes, with dirtier clothes and would spend more of our days washing clothes and scrubbing and less time going fishing or visiting the beach, or even painting and visiting art galleries if that’s your thing. Again, if we spend all day tidying up our yard with power tools, we can improve the value of our house, but we can do it in 1/10th the time of doing it manually. If someone visited from a wealthy nation, they would conclude that the place wasn’t as wealthy. However, the exact same amount of $ would be circulating in the economy as before (not withstanding the flight of capital as people with cash left in droves). That’s because, for the amount of effort (labour) we’re getting a lot less energy back. And cheap energy is the foundation of wealth because it means you can do more stuff with less time and effort. We all know this – switching on the washing machine is infinitely more productive than slapping clothes on rocks at a river, which is why the government doesn’t subsidise washing machines to make you buy one. There is no department of washing machines because people can clearly see the benefits themselves.
The fundamental rule that governs all productivity is energy returned on energy invested. Try and break this equation at your own peril. You can’t use the labor of 5 men to create a unit of energy that gives you the equivalent of one mans labor. You can’t have teams of people looking after donkeys that scarcely replace the combined labor of all the men who endeavor to keep them fed and walking around in circles.
So while a carbon tax is technically revenue neutral if implemented competently (not possible for Gillard and Swan, of course) it isn’t wealth neutral. And we know this to be true, because we often here how ‘more people are employed in renewables than in coal fired power’. This is seen by the economically illiterate as a good thing – more jobs, better off, yes? Well, no, not really. If I pay a team of painters to paint my house I’m not going to pay them more if they do it with a toothbrush. Output is rewarded, not effort. You absolutely do not want, as a nation, to be using more labor to generate the same amount of stuff, because you will literally become less wealthy. Chasing raw job numbers is the stuff of communists and other feeble-minded economists. Idiotic politicians create jobs for 10,000 beuracrats and crow about their job creation. This is as pointless as the archetypal paying people to dig holes, and then paying someone else to fill them in. What you want is increasing numbers of productive jobs. Jobs where people are doing stuff, making stuff and creating stuff. Stuff that people want (from lattes to airliners) and don’t have to be co-erced into buying. Jobs where people are creating wealth.
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“I just wish we were spending $25 billion on medical research instead.” Me too Jo.
Think of the money we could save by getting rid of these senseless bureaucracies and countless useless climate “scientists”.
Also, I have yet to hear anything about Tim Flannery’s conflict of interest with Geodynamics. I see their share price has doubled since June.
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Something all Australian superannuation investors should look at is who is holding your investments.
There are a large amount of funds in green investments, one of the reasons I moved all of my superannuation out of BT funds and AMP.
I was lucky that my super was structured on a “get out of gaol free” basis.
There was something wrong about investment of my funds in funds that supported carbon pricing.
If this green madness hits the fan, who picks up the bills ?
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Rereke Whakaaro: there are moves afoot to try and get the USD gold linked. But these people are seen as weird nutters not worthy of debate (sound familiar?). The truth is, ever since John Law discovered the alchemy of creating currency out of thin air in the 18th century and doing a snow-job on the general public, politicians and meddlers worldwide have been refining this concept in order to try and work out the kinks and extend the period from creating money out of thin air to the inevitable collapse. The first attempt only lasted 4 years, but with subsequent revisions it looks like the latest attempts are going to last at least 50 years. If you scoff at this, tell me which currency still exists in it’s original form, with it’s original value, and is more than 50 years old? Yet if I have possession of greek or romain gold or silver coins, which would have been enough to buy a house with in ancient rome or athens, I could cash this in now and purchase a house with it. If you don’t believe me, take a trip to your local museum with ancient coins and have a friendly chat with the curator about it. Ancient coins aren’t a very hot field so curators are friendly and informative and you’ll find out a lot of historically accurate information that will blow your mind about values of money and currencies throughout the ages.
The major problem with re-linking the USD to gold is that the US doesn’t have anywhere near enough gold to do so. They would have to take a massive currency devaluation to do so, or a massive gold revaluation which would make other countries far richer. The gold window was closed by Nixon because of the ballooning receipts created by the Vietnam war. And they’ve been on this same course ever since. They have wrecked the currency and it will eventually die, replaced by something else.
What is more likely is an international value system based on a basket of precious metals, or just cross-border settlements in gold itself. China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Brazil would be only too happy with this. Or just a backdoor creation of a new type of US currency based on Gold. Arizona has already announced you can pay your taxes and government receipts in gold – this is the kind of back-door regulation that will create a quasi-gold currency.
The Federal Reserve fears Gold (which is why they devalued it and banned it in the great depresseion) because of Greshams’ law, which states that bad money drives out good money. Bad money is paper-backed currency, good money is gold or gold backed currency. The good money gets hoarded, and the bad money gets unloaded and rapidly loses approaches its real value (which, as a scrap of paper, is zero) See Zimbabwe for a modern-day example where black-market currency drove the Zim$ out.
The main thing is that the first-movers in this area will gain all the windfall benefits. Australia could do worse than create a gold-backed investment currency with a floating conversion to AUD. A lot of capital inflow would happen to take advantage of this, if it was seen to be a sound currency. Basically combining the convenience of a Gold ETF with a government-backed guarantee. Of course there was no need for a Gold ETF when the USD was gold-backed, because the USD was a gold ETF. No coincedence that the longest period of financial stability and growth in the USA coincided from when they setup a stable, solid currency after the civil war until when Nixon killed it.
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Rereke Whakaaro, the primary purpose of the CO2 tax was not to raise money for the government/s. It was to curb rampant capitalist consumption that was seen by the greens as the reason for the destruction of pristine environments and an unseemly disruption to their peaceful interaction with Mother Earth. Through some smart political postering, the proponents manoeuvred an anti-capitalist green agenda into a political, Left wing agenda. A political cause doesn’t go far without an attachment to money. And the money associated with a CO2 tax was/is HUGE and far too enticing to a politician. The association of the two was a very smart strategy. The longer this ruse goes on without supporting legislation, the greater the chance the scam will be discovered. The trouble with a politician elected with an agenda is that voters start to see through the ruse after a while. Despite the comment that an excellent politician doesn’t do what the people want, and doesn’t do what he/she wants, but instead, succeeds by convincing the voter to want what he or she wants; eventually the voter gets tired of the misrepresentation. Like all scams and con-jobs, there has to be a sense of urgency injected into the deal. The global warming scam is dragging on too long if it is to remain effective.
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Notice how the Prime Minister waffled, somewhat uncomfortably, on Q&A when Tony Jones actually picked her up about the coal fired plants being replaced in China ….. with new (lower emitting) coal fired plants.
That whole Q&A was more bovine waste expulsion than I have seen in one place in my life. I was immediately reminded of this Randy Newman song at this link.
As to removing 2000MW of ‘derdy polluuushun’ (in her words) from the grids.
A large scale coal fired plant has a life expectancy of 50 years and can be relicenced out to 60 years and also 75 years.
If a plant, er, say, Hazelwood, is to be removed, that compensation might entail the projected income from 12,500GWH of power a year for the remaining life of the plant, at the wholesale price of electricity they sell to the grid. Keep in mind that price is not what you pay per KWH of around 19/20 cents per KWH, but could be around 8 to 10 cents per KWH, and GWH is a factor 1,000,000 times higher than KWH, so 12,500GWH is around $1.25 Billion a year.
Minus the new CO2 tax of around $450 million a year, minus the cost of the coal, around $300 Million, leaving around $500 million.
The plant still has 25 years of life left on the Bracks contract of 40 years from 1996, so there’s a ballpark $12.5 Billion.
As to replacing it with renewables, add another $16 Billion (conservatively) and you still only get 9 hours of power a day as opposed to the existing 24/7/365 supply.
So, taking (derdy) Hazelwood out of the grid becomes an expensive thing to do. I hope the bottomless pit of Carbon income will stretch that far.
Also, as to renewables replacing coal fired power. the US has been ramping up construction of renewables, mainly Wind, and they now have around 42,000MW of Wind Power, around the equivalent of 21 large scale coal fired plants. In the last three years coal fired plants have indeed been closing down. However, they have all been older technology low scale (around 100MW)plants.
NOT ONE large scale coal fired plant (1500MW+) has closed down in that time.
In fact, the amount of power supplied from coal fired sources has increased by 5% in the last year. No new coal fired plants have opened and smaller plants are closing, and yet coal fired power supplied to grids is increasing. Also, Natural Gas fired power (also CO2 emitting) has increased by 7.5% in the last year.
So even though renewables are coming on line, they in fact ARE NOT replacing CO2 emitting power plants.
See the Post at this link for more detail on that.
Incidentally, that 42,000MW of wind power is roughly equal to the Nameplate Capacity of all Australian coal fired power plants. However, the actual power supplied from every one of them is just under one third of the actual consumed power here in Australia from those coal fired plants, so if you ever needed stark example of how renewables cannot deliver, then that is it, explained in the Post at this link.
Again sorry to take so much space here and sorry about the number of links, but this is just absolute madness.
You can’t blame the people because they’re just not being told.
As I’ve been trying to say all along.
This has nothing at all to do with the environment.
It’s just about the money.
You can believe all the Science you like, but until you are aware of the consequences of what that Science calls for, you’re in the dark, and in this case, if things keep going as they are, we’ll all be in the dark ….. literally.
PS. If you only take the one link here visit that Randy Newman song. It’s a pearler!
Tony.
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[…] Barking mad — a nation howling at fireflies […]
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barking mad 2(too):
9 July: SMH: Paddy Manning: Too hot to handle: can we afford a 4-degree rise?
A conference in Melbourne next week featuring a who’s who of climate scientists will explore what warming of 4 degrees or more means, including for Australia. Apocalyptic is the only word for it, and understanding the implications is equally important for policymakers, business and the community. Keynote speaker Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute and climate adviser to the German Chancellor and to the EU, has said that in a 4-degree warmer world, the population “carrying capacity estimates [are] below 1 billion people”…
Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in Britain, was quoted in The Scotsman ahead of the 2009 Copenhagen conference saying the consequences were ‘‘terrifying’’.
‘‘For humanity it’s a matter of life or death … we will not make all human beings extinct, as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive. But I think it’s extremely unlikely that we wouldn’t have mass death at 4 degrees.
‘‘If you have got a population of 9 billion by 2050 and you hit 4 degrees, 5 degrees or 6 degrees, you might have half a billion people surviving.’’
Australian climate scientist Professor David Karoly, alongside Melbourne University and CSIRO colleagues, will give a paper next week on likely changes to our climate in a 4-degree scenario…
Four degrees warming, says Karoly, is ‘‘a lot worse’’ than two. At 4 degrees, he says, there will be markedly reduced water availability in the Murray-Darling Basin, with rainfall decreasing by up to half. Coastal temperatures will increase by 3 to 5 degrees but inland temperatures will rise by 4 to 6 degrees. Drought frequency will more than double, as will the frequency of extreme bushfire conditions. Sea level rises will have a drastic effect on all coastal cities, with sea levels rising up to about 1.1 metres by 2100, increasing to more than 7metres over subsequent centuries even with no further global warming.
‘‘The Brisbane floods will bevery little compared to a 7-metre sea level rise,’’ Karoly says. Tourist attractions? The Great Barrier Reef will die. There will be no skiing industry in Australia — he says any snow will ‘‘fall and melt’’…
Three degrees may be the ‘‘tipping point’’, leaving us powerless to intervene as planetary temperatures soar and, quoting NASA climate scientist James Hansen, there will be ‘‘no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet’’. Half the world would be uninhabitable. Ocean ecosystems and food chains would collapse.
‘‘And we are talking about how we might adapt to a 4-degree warmer world,’’ Spratt (David Spratt, co-author of Climate Code Red) wrote. ‘‘Have we gone mad?’’
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/too-hot-to-handle-can-we-afford-a-4degree-rise-20110709-1h7hh.html
also published in Fairfield City Champion, Parkes Champion Post, Newcastle Herald, and more…
naturally it’s on bigsoccer.com
http://soccernews.bigsoccer.com/article/03kA2xMak39L4
even the India Times has it
http://oneclick.indiatimes.com/article/03kA2xMak39L4?q=Global+Warming
funny about the Brisbane floods, David!
6 July: Courier Mail: Michael Madigan: Wivenhoe Dam operator slammed in interim flood report
Wivenhoe’s operations, and particularly the weighty “manual” that prescribed procedures at the dam, have in many ways formed the core of the inquiry. There is little doubt the inquiry will lead to changes in the manual governing the Wivenhoe Dam.
The inquiry has been told dam operators were able to largely ignore weather forecasts when making decisions about releasing water from the dam, and that in the days before the Ipswich and Brisbane floods in January, the dam was so full that emergency releases had to made..
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/wivenhoe-dam-operator-slammed-in-interim-flood-report/story-e6freoof-1226088401559
which SMH had published only three days prior to Manning’s scare piece!
6 July: SMH: AAP: Flood report will take aim at dam operator
Many victims blame the operation of the dam for the scale of the disaster.
They say if water had been released earlier, then emergency releases at the height of January’s floods would not have been needed and the damage in Brisbane and Ipswich would have been lessened.
The manual governing the dam’s operation came under close scrutiny during the inquiry, amid claims the dam’s flood mitigation capacity was not properly utilised.
Questions have also been raised about why water levels in the dam weren’t lowered in October 2010, despite warnings then of a very wet summer ahead…
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/flood-report-will-take-aim-at-dam-operator-20110706-1h19e.html
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Rereke Whakaaro — The problem with your point 8 is that as I understand it this scheme starts on July 1 2012 , so it does not give the Govt long to build up a bulging bank account before the next election.
Mosomoso @ 15. Agree , Tony’s article is well worth a read. I linked it to a comment on the last thread , asking MattB his view as an AGW believer ( still waiting for a reply)
But assuming Tony’s figures are right then the Govt would stupid not to look at updating or replacing all the coal fired stations
( working with the private owners in some way) to get the 30% reductions instead of this crazy tax scheme. Politically it would have to be a winning compromise. Dear old Bob Brown would have a fit , but so what — how could he argue against a possible 30% reduction versus a 5% reduction.
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No excuse! here from http://www.c3headlines.com/
Shows that EVEN the IPCC is coming unstuck. Why do this dysfunctional Labor party now believe this drivel. They have no credibility in anything they have no fallback. The IPCC is falling apart with is fraudulent manipulated data and models. And its all provable. Im sure the reason for it is the post I put up earlier theres no other. Warmists you now have to suck eggs!
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More on the barking mad theme.
Imagine you live next to a complete ratbag that loves lighting fires. Well he sets fire to your place and then wanders around as the joint burns down offering to lend you a bucket for a while but only if you are nice to him.
After refusing to support the Steel Industry stay of execution package the Greens are now going to sit in determination of its immediate future. Like Caligula he will give a thumbs up or down. Actually thats unfair to Caligula as he at least appointed his horse Incitatus as consul and high priest. Brown appointed Christine Milne.
So a once great manufacturing industry of national and strategic importance is now dependent on the determination of an arse clown who has killed off every industry and job that he has put his manicured hands on. Read this and weep.
Greens leader Bob Brown suggested it could be months before a decision was made, and said he would come to Wollongong to talk to steelworkers.<em>‘‘[It’s a] difficult situation for the Greens because the steel industry has not been one of our biggest supporters,’’ he said.
‘‘But that doesn’t matter, there are jobs. We are concerned about the steel industry.
‘‘And I’m saying this to Tony Abbott – if you are going to let down that part of your constituency, I’ll go and talk to the steel industry.
‘‘I’ll go to Whyalla, I’ll go to Wollongong, to meet workers in the steel industry. We’ll look at options for the steel industry in the coming months.’’
http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/news/local/news/general/steel-industrys-future-in-bob-browns-hands/2222979.aspx
And we will be looking at some options for you and the Greens come election time as well sunshine.
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TonyfromOZ@23
Thanks for the information and the Randy Newman link. Great stuff.
By the way in a plunging share market a little ray of hope. The value of that respected scientist Timmy Flannery’s geothermal renewable energy investment portfolio has doubled in the last two weeks. His geothermal outfit has gone from 20 cents a share a fortnight ago and is now bouyant on 43 cents today. Follow the money folks
This is Flannery’s and the subsidised green millionares theme. Conflict of interest anyone? Where is ASIC when you need it???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmyzFsYEdco
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Rereke Whakaaro:
Jack Taylor:
And to think that I naively thought it was an attempt to lower our carbon dioxide emissions….
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John Brookes
Indeed you are naive. For as a policy designed reduce emissions, it’s an exceedingly poor one. Most of the abatement is money exported to people who promise not to cut down trees. Doesn’t that strike you as even a little bit naieve? What if someone offers them a really good price. Are they going to pause, chainsaw in hand and say ‘but wait! we promised the Australian taxpayers we wouldn’t!’. What, exactly, is our comeback if the tree is cut down? The best case would be our money is returned (hahahaha!) – but the ‘carbon abatement’ still hasn’t happened. And how are we going to make sure they don’t sell the promise on that tree to someone in Sweden, someone in the UK, someone in the USA? It’s not like two promises sold are going to make the tree grow twice as fast.
Auditors? I hear you say? Don’t make me laugh. Auditors have enough trouble with sheds full of non-existent inventory or companies that don’t actually exist, and that’s here in a tight regulatory environment. Next you’ll be suggesting they’ll be chopping their way through the PNG highlands counting trees. Remember that Enron had it’s accounts all signed off by Auditors just before it dissappeared for good. So did Lehman Brothers, and all the rest.
The only way to reduce emissions is to close power stations, mines and stop using petrol and diesel. As this cannot be achieved using current technology (apart from Nuclear for power generation), it is currently not possible to reduce emissions without reducing living standards. As soon as you and your fellow travellers get that through your heads, this ridiculous merry-go-round of insanity will stop.
I know you realise it is futile, but you pretend to go along with it because it fits neatly with your view of the world and you would hate, after all this argy-bargy, to agree with people here. Sooner or later you will have to, though, so why not start now?
Remember, your plan is basically this:
1 ) make people pay extra for energy
2 ) ?????
3 ) worlds temperature goes down
The only credit I’ll give you is for not using the term ‘carbon pollution’, and for admitting you are naive.
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What am I missing from all of this.
When asked last night to guarantee that the price of Carbon will not rise, she stated (quite correctly) that the price was going to rise, as already mentioned in the original release on Sunday, that price set by set by the Government.
So, no matter if the, er, fundament falls out of the price of Carbon, those derdy polluters will still pay the price that the Government
tells them tosets.However she said that compensation to consumers will be increasing as well.
Say! Wait a minute!
I thought the object of all this was to lower emissions as the derdy polluters moved away from those emissions.
That being the case, then the pool of money decreases as they lower their emissions, (yeah! Right! Lower emissions. Ha!) so there’s a smaller amount of money coming in.
If you thought the current proposed legislation was bad, wait till you see the ETS that takes over from this.
She tells us that a market based mechanism will take over and set the price of Carbon. (Dioxide Julia, Carbon Dioxide)
Year one day one, the price is set by the Government as the current price from the existing Tax.
From there, the market takes over.
As has happened everywhere, that price has sunk without trace.
No matter here. The Government sets a base price, as already flagged.
So, if the Carbon price is lower than the base price, those credits the derdy polluters have to purchase from the Govt each year will be at the base price, if the price collapses. However if the price increases, then the Government charges the going rate.
Win Win. Yeah, but for who?
Also, gee! surely a market like this won’t be manipulated.
Tony.
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barking madder…
the comments sections of the newspapers re the takeover of Australian-owned Macarthur Coal by America’s Peabody Energy are beyond hilarious.
the pro-CAGW crowd and the PM are hailing it as the greatest thing since sliced bread, proving coal is here to stay and no problem that it’s a foreign takeover! Duh! well, why are we having a carbon (dioxide) tax?
12 July: ABC: Jeremy Thompson: Takeover proves coal’s safe with me: Gillard
The bid appears to show investor confidence in the coal industry and looks set to blunt Opposition leader Tony Abbott’s attack on the carbon price, which he said yesterday would “destroy” the coal industry.
Ms Gillard welcomed the news this morning, saying: “You couldn’t get a better indication that business people see a good future in coal mining in this country.
“It does pay when you are looking at businesses to track where the money’s going – and where’s the money going today?” she asked on AM.
“Well, it’s going into buying an Australian mining business. People would only do that if they thought it had a great future.”…
The Greens have said the ultimate fate for coal is that the industry will be phased out in favour of renewable energy, but Ms Gillard forecast jobs growth.
“We’ll be working with the coal mining industry. We’ve got $1.3 billion in the package to work with gassy mines and we will continue to see employment in coal mining grow.”…
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) says the takeover bid makes a mockery of the industry’s “scare campaign” over the carbon tax.
“The coal industry tells one story to the public with their scare campaign and another story to the markets,” CFMEU president Tony Maher said.
“We know what’s happening and the workers know what’s happening. They listen to these scare campaigns and they see their mine is doubling in capacity, the ports are doubling in capacity. So it’s all a nonsense.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/07/12/3267115.htm?section=business
again i ask – why are we having a carbon (dioxide) tax?
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The Prime Minister (Christine Milne) said the announcement of the carbon tax had no significant effect on the Australian market.
It dropped 7 billion dollars in 1 day!
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John Brookes
Try shallower breathing. That should lower yours..
Me, I’m all for big deep breaths. Fill the lungs with air. It makes you feel good about yourself and the environment.
10
There are groups forming in Greenway and La Trobe, so let us know if you want to join them, or start a new group elsewhere.
Let who know? I’m in LaTrobe. Laura Smyth is the member here, and so far she has failed to answer any of the questions I’ve sent her, but she bombards my letterbox with taxpayer funded propaganda. I would love to join a group here.
REPLY: I’ll email you Jaytee!
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The announcement of the Macarthur coal takeover is probably because of the tax, not in spite of it.
The values of the Australian mining companies have taken a beating since the first salvo of mining-fighting started last year with the MRRT. The announcement on the weekend has further dented their value to the point where a takeover has been announced.
Rather than saying ‘these people have confidence in the coal industry’ it should really be read as ‘we’ve damaged an Australian business badly enough it’s about to get bought by a foreign competitor’.
Sadly I don’t think any offers will be forthcoming for the Australian beef producers, though I wouldn’t put it past teh Chinese government to start buying up some of the affected grazing properties.
10
@jaytee : start sending Laura Smyth the job section on a weekly basis, with a note saying ‘which one will you pick?’ That should start to get her attention.
10
There are 1 billion people in China and nearly 1 billion in India. We should tell them to stop breathing during Earth Hour. That should decrease the global temperature some.
10
Ms Gillard welcomed the news this morning, saying: “You couldn’t get a better indication that overseas business people see a good future in buying up all the coal mining in this country.
There fixed that one for you Julia.
Doesn’t a statement like that just make well up with pride. /sarc off
Oh by the way Julia, auctioning offsets to banksters so they can flog their Collateralised Carbon Obligations (CCO) internationally doesn’t really fit within the definition of a “tax”. Price/market mechanisms that mitigate risk are “derivatives” aka banking product.
Now how did those derivatives go in the the 2008 GFC? If I can think of 50 billion reasons to suggest not so well, then what’s up with Wayne’s memory and for that matter Ross too.
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brc: #21
Yes, I agree. But, we need to consider that the US$ started life around 1790 linked to two standards: gold and silver. It was the only basis for any currency, and was in fact referred to as “coinage”. By around 1850, all of the gold reserves had been centralised, and silver as a financial “standard” was on the way out. The modern dollar, as the single U.S. currency came into existence in 1863, in the National Banking Act. This value of the dollar was then backed by the U.S. Treasury, on behalf of the people. It was one of the worlds first mandated collectives.
The fiat dollar (which had green ink on the reverse side, leading to the name “greenback”) only lasted until 1880, when the downward value of the dollar against other currencies required it again to be pegged against the U.S. gold reserves.
The thirty-five years, from 1880 until 1915, are the most stable in U.S. History in terms of currency value. But the U.S. had to come off the gold standard in order to raise funds to fight the First World War, which though inflationary in comparison to the value of gold, the purchasing power of the dollar was not quite so bad, since as all of America’s trading partners were suffering from inflation as well.
In 1926, the U.S. Dollar was once more pegged to a gold standard, and another period of stability. In fact the stability was so profound that it morphed into the period known as The Great Depression, which was essentially caused by a series of rumours that the U.S. Treasury did not actually have sufficient gold to support the number of dollars in circulation. No amount of assurances from the Government were enough, and there was a run on gold that saw Roosevelt signing an Executive Order that confiscated gold coin, bullion, and gold certificates.
At this point, the dollar once again reverted to a fiat currency, which did nothing to lessen the Depression in the U.S., and in fact exacerbated the inequities in Europe created at the end of the First World War. In a lot of ways, the Second World War was probably the only way for the World to shake itself out of these financial difficulties. As an aside, the gathering of popular support for America entering the war, was one of the first known applications of propaganda, by any Government, targeting its own civilian population.
The Bretton Woods Accord was signed in 1944, during the war years, that reestablished the dollar on a gold standard that lasted for 26 years until it was scrapped by Richard Nixon in 1970, to create yet another fiat dollar that would form the basis for all of the other fiat currencies in the world. This is like trying to find a white spot in a white room, and only lasted for a couple of years. The current trading system in which currency values are linked to GDP by complex formulae was thrashed out in the Basel Accord in 1973.
The current system of currency trading has taken on its own mystique, and has a lot of similarity with the attitudinal aspects of climate change. The way currency is traded is the way currency is traded, and there is no other way, because the traders are taught no other way. And certainly very few of them seem to understand the above history. Hence the strongly held belief that it is impossible for the United States (or even the World Bank) to relink the dollar (or a new global currency) to the gold standard.
Yet it is being considered by the the World Bank, with Robert Zoellick, the President of the World Bank, and a former U.S. Treasury official, calling for a world currency that is based on global gold reserves.
So I agree with you there as well. 🙂
So perhaps that is the end-game; the glittering prize that Julia can see. Somebody is buying gold, for the price to be force up the way it is. It would be nice if it were Australia, but I am not sure that anybody in Canberra has those sorts of smarts.
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Jack Taylor: #22
Well, yes, I accept that it was a deal with the Greens to remain in power after the last election.
But that argument implies that they know that climate change is not real. And since most of the electorate are coming to the same conclusion. It could so easily become a dead issue. So why persist?
It could be that the arrangement is all that is keeping them in power, but the current trend is going to kill the independents at the next election, and the independents know it.
Why do they not bail out from supporting Labour now, and force a series of by-elections that may well return them, and reduce the power of the Greens?
The current behaviour of this batch of pollies does not really make much sense.
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Ross: #25
Good spot. I had not thought about the short window of opportunity.
However, that may not be a problem since the Government can borrow in expectation of the taxation revenue. In fact, that is what Governments do most of the time. We are all living on our great-grandchildren’s taxes.
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John Brookes: #29
Well, thank you John. It takes a real man to admit he is wrong.
10
RW in post 11,
Do you know what happened the last time a President tried to get rid of the Federal Reserve Bank by going back to the gold standard? He was last seen driving past a book depository in Texas. The US manipulators (read Israel) have improved since then so rather than shooting Ron Paul they just manipulate the voting process to keep him out of the white house plus a healthy splash of PR (Ron Paul is a nut job etc).
Apart from this little bit i agree with you nothing is ever as it seems and this TAX will do nothing to achieve what Dullard and Brown claim it will and is what we need to do to stop AGW (remember the 2C guard rail analogy). So the question is why are they doing it? What is their ulterior motive?………………..Power?
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Rereke @ 40 – I think we could take this a lot further given points of agreement and disagreement but probably shouldn’t as it would wander far, far off topic.
My take on the depression is one of over-leverage, and misapplication of Keynesian theories to make a bad situation worse, coupled with protectionism and breakdown of trust between debtor nations. That should worry anyone with a grasp of current events. The run on gold halted by the Fed was a loss of confidence in the currency and the government, as it should with the amount of idiotic spending in the name of ‘job creation’ (sound familiar?) it was doing.
It’s true I glossed over the USD history but tried to hit the high points for the sake of brevity. My take would be that the Federal Reserve caused most of the pain, and gold is a rational response by savers against their actions. Indeed the run-up in gold doesn’t necessarily have to be caused by a lot of buying, but indeed by a lot of selling of the thing they are exchanging it for. Everyone sees Gold and Oil as going up, rather than the USD going down. But in reality they are two sides of the same coin. Indeed Gold/AUD hasn’t really gone as well. The US economy since 2000 has been a series of asset-bubbles propped up by ever-looser credit policies, of which, gold buying is a perfectly rational response for those worried about the inflationary effects of same. We’re nowhere near the end game at the moment – you can sell Gold in shopping centres, but you can’t yet buy it. When that happens and everyone at bbq’s is talking about Gold, then you’ll know we’re getting closer.
Your history shows one important thing (for anyone still reading) – gold and wars don’t co-exist nicely, but currency stability and growth do. Wage war, lose gold, unless the nation you defeat has gold you can help yourself to by forcing the losers to purchase goods from you in exchange for their gold (hello, Bretton Woods!). In these days of UN touchy-feely victories are hollow and don’t involve raiding the treasury or resources. So you don’t wage war unless you want to destroy your currency.
As for who is buying – like everything else, I believe it is the chinese, both at the government and private levels. I’m pretty sure investigations would reveal they are swapping their risky US bonds for non-risky gold. Australia, like most dozy central banks, sold off lots of gold at the bottom of the market.
I would doubt anyone with a fairly basic grasp of the world like Gillard would be setting up Australia for entering a new paradigm of world currencies. No, she’s just a plain old dishonest politician wanting power and doing any amount of backroom deals to get it and keep it.
Anyway, I won’t post any more on this thread as it is frightfully off-topic. Though it would be an interesting exchange.
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If the entire nation were to ask the PM one question, and were she to answer it honestly – this entire house of cards could be repacked, and put away!
I don’t want doublespeak Prime Minister – I would like a straightforward answer to a straightforward question. I believe if the people of Australia heard their Prime Minister address them on public television, or even if you added your comment here at this blog, there would be a collective sigh of relief.
http://justmeint.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/prime-minister-please-answer-a-simple-question/
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[…] Barking mad — a nation howling at fireflies […]
10
John Brooks @ 30. Well you are just as infantile on Wattsupwiththat website as you are here. You must be paid to blog, eh. Well I’m not.
THIS CARBON TAX WILL NOT LOWER CO2 OR CARBON EMISSIONS. IT HAS FAILED OVERSEAS ALONG WITH THEIR INCOME. I’D LIKE TO KNOW WHAT THE MPCCC CONCOCTED YESTERDAY THEY WERE MEETING AGAIN TO TIE UP LOOSE ENDS. LIKE WHAT?
THANKS TO THIS NORTHERN NSW MAY LOSE SOME OF THE AIR FLIGHTS.
AND AS ONE LABOUR POLLIE REMARKED ‘I THINK I WILL SEEK ASYLUM
IN MALAYSIA RATHER THAN WALK AROUND MY ELECTORATE’.
All this carbon tax will do is increase bureaucrat jobs, but clean energy jobs. See what has happened overseas.
For 2.2 jobs lost in conventional energy there will be 1 in green. It’s a disgrace and an international embarrassment for this government.
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Here MR Wayne Treasurer Sir “all about renewables”..I wonder if he caught up with this from http://antigreen.blogspot.com/
Maybe the Brits are getting more aware of these scams.
10
Well said JustMEIt: But did you see the disclaimer on p2 of the CC Report ‘The Critical Decade’ I don’t think any of the
members of the MPCCC bothered the read it. And the alternative science around that proves that Michael Mann hockey stick was wrong. I’ve given up with Tony Windsor I have been corresponding for years and showing him evidence that the IPCC was wrong etc. No avail, he still went ahead.
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And the blowouts are being revealed and the “Carbon” tax hasn’t even started yet:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/carbon-plan/foreign-takeover-bid-for-macarthur-boosts-gillards-carbon-sales-pitch-miner-bets-5bn-on-future-of-coal/story-fn99tjf2-1226093124890
Impressive stuff that!
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Rereke
AKA as a Ponzip scheme
10
Wow,
So they continue to push on with the next big scam and they haven’t even finished sorting out the mess from their last tinkering with the free market system.
HAW HAW HAW…
good time to be a lawyer with this govt methinks
10
Graham Richardson, icon of the ALP, says some startling things in the Oz today:
OK, to be fair the context was renewables for baseload power gen. He’s fairly positive about the tax package itself (seems that you’ve got to back the old side) but some of those comments look like windows to a decidedly un-warmist view on things.
If Mr Richardson is saying stuff like this, with the catastrophic Newspoll number I’d love to be a fly on the wall of Caucus when Ms Gillard and Mr Swan are out of the room.
10
Here’s another ‘follow the money’ story.
‘Like most protests, the one against oil tankers has all the look and feel of a Canadian grassroots movement. The campaign against Alberta’s oil sands also seems to rise out of the people, but the interesting thing is that there are very few roots under that grass. Money comes in from a small core of U.S. charitable groups. One of those groups — the U.S. Tides Foundation of California (Tides U.S.) and its Canadian counterpart have paid millions to at least 36 campaign organizations.’ ……
‘Many of the grants for the “Tar Sands Campaign” are far larger than grants for other important causes. For example, a rape intervention project in Sub-Saharan Africa got US$9,000 and a project to support people with HIV in Indonesia got US$9,998. In comparison, Greenpeace got US$186,000 and the World Wildlife Fund got US$160,000 to campaign against Alberta oil.’
This is from an article written by Canadian Vivian Krause. You can read the rest here
There’s a lot of money swimming around this issue.
10
Off Topic:
Maybe MattB and Brooksie can take some time out and attend this conference
More fodder for red headed vampire. All the usual doomsayers are there.
10
quick another carbon tax poll ….
10
copy of an e mail I received today:
Lord Monckton currently has no supporters booked
Please anyone in the vicinity book to support Monckton
10
If you are on Facebook … LIKE this page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Bet-We-Can-Get-10000-People-Who-Think-Get-Up-are-Wankers/202123376506964
10
I’m not sure why the warmist case is being put by this RIchard Dennis chap? I hope he gets briefed by Lambert.
10
“The National Press club would like a balanced crowd and its currently 120 – 0”
That is just about right if they wanted a scientifically balanced crowd.
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Gbees@58,
it looks like the catastrafarians have made an early run on that poll. I sure hope average joe hasn’t gotten tired if these things allready.
clickety click click click
thispoll closes in 5 hours
10
Hi Bob Malloy at 57.
Posted this at that site:
“Notice not one bona fide scientist amongst that gaggle of soothsayers and witch doctors. The best that one could wish for is that a few of you may remember that your astrology like musings were responsible for the wastefully, expensive, white elephant desalination plants in Qld and Victoria for which those not blessed with your prophetic insights will be paying through the nose for many years to come.
How about a little less soothsaying and more evidence based science.”
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brc: #46
I agree we are getting dreadfully off-topic, but I am sure the nice moderators will let us know if we cross the invisible line. 😉
So, only one last comment from me:
I am essentially an Asia watcher. And I am aware that the Chinese are buying a lot of gold. But they always have. The chinese have an inbuilt fear of money, because money is issued by the regime du jour, and there is a long history of regimes being changed by the next wave of revolutionaries moving east from within the interior.
But there was more gold being traded on the world markets than the Chinese would normally demand, so I started asking around to see what was going on. My original comment was based on what I already knew, what I was told, and what I read. As I said, I am no economist, although obviously you are – well more so than I.
But there are patterns here, but not the usual patterns, and I can’t shake the feeling that something is hiding in plain sight, and we are all missing it.
The CAGW meme is as much about economics and politics, as it is about science.
Joanne is also knowledgeable about the science of monetary systems, financial history, and the gold market [quote from the blog blurb], so perhaps she will grace us with an article that we could then have a real debate over? 😉
Nice moderator: could you please pass the idea along?
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Andrew Bolt has this to say:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
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Madjak@37
That’s the Age MJ which intelligent people read only for its sports coverage so that’s a pretty bad score for Gillard’s dummies given the average low intelligence of its faithful readers. Who it is very likely still ticked an unintended box.
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My answer to what this tax will cost the average household. Its infinite. http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/07/why-why-why
10
THE THINGS THAT PEOPLE WILL SAY:
Julia Gillard is Australia’s own Nancy Pelosi, arm-twisting her caucus into voting for something which is likely to cost many of her members, and probably Gillard herself, their jobs when the next election comes around. Nevertheless, she, like Madame Defarge, keeps on knitting the seeds of economic destruction into the fabric of the Australian economy.
http://justmeint.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/carbon-tax-australias-economic-suicide/
10
Morning all.
Just chatting to Mrs. Speedy (the financially aware member of the marriage) – she notes that the Aussie stock market tanked about 2% today.
Anybody got any Super? You’ve just been slugged by the carbon tax – and it’s 12 months away!
Cheers,
Speedy.
10
ETS in 2015 after the AU economy has been strip-mined clean.
Meanwhile the world is in crises.
In 3 years there could be some events that may happen
1. Collapse of the US economy (default).
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Financial_Tsunami/financial_tsunami.html
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25531
2. Impeachment of President Obama.
a) Birth certificate http://www.wnd.com/
b) Breach of the (US)warpowers act
3. World war III
http://tarpley.net/
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25589
4. Massive extended wars in the middle east.
http://tarpley.net/
http://colorrevolutionsandgeopolitics.blogspot.com/
5. Collapse of more EU states.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25586
Sound like doom and gloom? Well it probably is. Too much to be ignored. Wheres the MSM? Missing in action.
And to top it off nature isnt being too kind lately. Looks like the Pacific plate is pretty unstable in recent months http://www.iris.edu/seismon/
So where DOES this leave the CO2 tax in proportion? beside Australia being dead meat.
Have a nice day.
10
so why did it tank a month or so ago? Hmm European debt concerns maybe?
10
Off Topic:
7.00 pm project is a Julia love in.
Just had Anna-maria Arabia on spruking about death threats, And had to include the science is in, the earth is warming and we nasties are causing it.
It makes you puke.
Bet they’r not so kind to Tony tomorrow.
10
Interesting to note that “carbon pollution” got mentioned 52 times in last night’s Q@A. The dreaded words “carbon tax” were only uttered twice by Julia Gillard (well coached no doubt), but 13 times by others. The count for “carbon dioxide” was nil. It’s always the language that goes first…
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Ellen –
i put the Krause link up at WUWT cos it fitted the latest thread “Keystone XL: Liberal activists plan civil disobedience outside White House” over the Alberta Tar Sands, a protest being promoted by Bill McKibben:
i was checking on Krause and found the following re Tides Foundation and the Endswell Foundation:
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/page-open-letter-to-joel-solomon.html
10
anyone read the World Economic and Social Survey 2011
The Great Green Technological TransformationThe world faces important decisions on how we generate energy and manage our natural
assets—choices with implications that will reverberate for generations to come. Against a
backdrop of a rising global population and unceasing pressure on the natural environment,
this 2011 edition of the World Economic and Social Survey can guide our collective
efforts to achieve a much-needed technological transformation to a greener, cleaner global
economy.
The past two decades have seen considerable economic growth, particularly
in the emerging economies. Hundreds of millions of people have risen from poverty—in
Asia, Latin America and, increasingly, in Africa.
But with global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, we need to
accelerate the pace of productive economic expansion. At the same time, this growth must
be balanced with respect for the human and natural capital that is its foundation, lest
we risk profound and potentially irreversible changes in the planet’s ability to sustain
progress.
Rather than viewing growth and sustainability as competing goals on a collision
course, we must see them as complementary and mutually supportive imperatives. This
becomes possible when we embrace a low-carbon, resource-efficient, pro-poor economic
model.
A comprehensive global energy transition is critical to this process.
THIS SOUNDs LIKE WHAT THEY ARE TRYING TO PUSH THRU HERE IN OZ
(warning 251 pages)
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/wess_current/2011wess.pdf
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MattB @ 71
You are quite correct and I apologise. Two events occurred. One was the announcement of the carbon (sic) tax by our glorious leader. The other was the tanking of the stock market the next day. I have no proof that the two are related and I apologise for my sloppy logic. It’s possible, but not proven, and you have a right to be sceptical.
Now. About that global warming since the end of the Little Ice Age. Perhaps you can give us an apology for using that same flimsy logic linking two events (the end of the little ice age) and a measured temperature rise? Perhaps you might (logically) claim that the end of the little ice age gave rise to the industrial revolution. Or perhaps you can give us physical proof that global warming is actually man-made???
Cheers,
Speedy
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[…] Gillard Is Barking Mad… I just love this figure of speech…. Barking mad — a nation howling at fireflies. It reminds me of my Mum’s favorite…laughing like a drain! Terry McCran’s 20c analysis sums up the Gillard Government. Twenty cents in the dollar equates to 20% of the primary vote, exactly where I suggest Labor will be come the next Newspoll! There is something Lemming like about all this and barking mad is precisely the right description. Australia would have to be barking mad to accept this lunacy. paying 2-5 times more for our energy for starters. Paying 500 times more than Europe in Carbon fees is insanity! And all this to cut the expected temperature of the world in 2020 by one 4000th of a degree, at the very most and if and only if it can be proven that CO2 drives global temperatures up! http://joannenova.com.au/2011/07/barking-mad-australian-economic-carbon-tax-doom/#comments […]
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Me @ 71
That should be “end of little ice age and beginning of global warming”. Of course.
Cheers,
Speedy
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Geez did anyone watch Lateline? Who was that old German guy they dragged out? That was one scary looking dude, made Christopher Monckton look and sound positively upbeat and normal in comparison. And that’s no mean feat.
All I could think of was ‘ve haf vays of making you pay carbon tax!’. Too many bad movies and tv shows, my bad.
Basically his point was the 5% reduction isn’t enough because we’re going to get 4 degrees by 2100 anyway. Given that 11% of the century is already gone, it is going to have to start getting a lot warmer very soon if that is going to happen. 4 degrees in 100 years is .4 degree per decade, which is a *very* steep climb. I don’t have my references handy, but this much more than the IPCC forecasts, is it not? .4 degrees per decade is a steep slope compared to what we’ve seen – .4 degrees goes back about 30 years or more depending on how you want to start and end your slope. So that is warming 3 times as much as we have seen since the mid 1970’s. Only now because 2000-2010 is virtually zero, it’s now .44 degrees per decade. Like getting behind on your credit card payments, each passing cool year ramps up the amount of predicted warming required to maintain the pace. If we’re still flat by 2020 do we get to cancel the carbon taxes?
Herr Alarmist also mentioned the german about-face on Nuclear, but he failed to mention the planned replacement is coal-fired power. Somehow I don’t think all those automobiles and wind turbines they export get made in solar powered factories. I think that’s what he said, because his lacklustre delivery and squinty eyes meant he got dealt the Tivo FF treatment after a couple of soft questions.
Again also this reference to the ‘2 degrees’ limit from Cancun and Copenhagen, as if any country in the world uses that piece of paper for anything else than waving and nodding at UN busybodies. I wonder why they stopped talking about PPM values and switched to 2 degrees? Is it because it gives more wiggle room should the equations be wrong, or is it because they wanted to simplify for the masses? You decide. If we’re talking co2, then we should be talking co2 ppm. ‘The target is 450 ppm (or whatever)’. I guess this way they can claim victory even if the co2 PPM goes to 900 and the temperature stubbornly refuses to shift.
It also seems very imprecise – ‘2 degrees’ – as though they’ve carefully calculated boreal forest lines, insect density numbers and gulfstream flow and worked backwards to get a figure. However, I’m thinking they used the ‘holy handgrenade’ technique of ‘2 is the number we will use, and the number we will use is 2. We shall not limit to 1, unless we then proceed to 2. 3 is right out!’
Still, at least they didn’t drag out Karoly for another spin. He must have been annoyed that some visiting Deutschlander got the gig instead of him. And we haven’t seen Flannery for a while. Probably on a beach somewhere monitoring sea levels from a convenient banana lounge, sipping cocktails paid for by mug taxpayers.
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brc @ 79
Your “scary old German guy” is Professor Schellnhuber, and yes, he is German, and yes, he is scary. He has a “Master Plan” for the earth (what could go wrong with a German having a global master plan).
You can read more about him here:
http://notrickszone.com/2011/07/05/schellnhuber-2%C2%B0c-target-is-now-recognized-by-international-law/
Search around on the site, you will find lots more. He makes JuLIAR look good in comparison.
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Speedy in 77… when you look at all the other stock markets in the world that suffered similar losses to the ASX over the past few days, then you’d conclude that they didn’t all crash because of Gillards carbon tax, and that the ASX drop is most likely related to the factors that caused all the other markets to crash.
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RW re gold,
The only thing hiding in plain sight is all that fake gold in fort Knox maybe that has something to do with what you are seeing ))
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MattB @ 81
And in the same vein, you will see that climate has got warmer and colder, independently of the atmospheric composition. You will understand that CO2 exerts an exponentially reducing impact on infra-red absorption of it’s fingerprint wavelengths – so this effect is in total concordance with known science.
Why then, would you cling to this delusion that CO2 in our modern atmosphere has a significant and potentially catastrophic effect on the environment? Excuse me, but your argument is broken.
Cheers,
Speedy.
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Rereke @ 41:
Much like any other Ponzi scheme, I have heard that the total gold traded in world markets exceeds actual gold metal reserves by a substantial amount. So we have a new worthless currency the “paper gold”.
I agree, Jo should explore this in a future post.
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Yes, I hear your calls for a gold- financial thread… 🙂
Yes the LBMA paper gold market is even more corrupt than the average thermometer. At least 11% of the thermometers are recording something genuine. Only 1% of paper certs in gold are connected to the real deal.
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Al Gore is so barking mad that he has decided to redefine reality.
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Ha ha ha … you are conned! I suppose that since Australia now has taken on the leadership concerning saving the planet we in Sweden can cut down on our CO2 taxes? I’ll immediately send a letter to our government, and to our EU authorities, that they may relax on this problem. Earth is saved!
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Be very careful about saying it will never happen. That’s how we in the US ended up with the passage of the 16 Amendment and the income tax in 1917. Bad ideas have a long history of being put into law. Sadly, the worse the idea, the better chance for passage. Cheers –
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Tomorrow must not belong to such people as “GetUp” !
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/tomorrow_must_not_belong_to_such_people/
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Jo: #86
Thank you Joanne.
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POLL : Will the carbon tax change your energy consumption
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/julia-gillard-set-to-front-peoples-forum-in-brisbane-to-explain-carbon-tax/story-e6freoof-1226093416572
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Wow – 96 responses …
Rereke Whakaaro said: ” … first things first – the caveats: I am not an economist … ”
Neither am I – just a BA in Law/Economics. But it seems both of us know more than Ross Garnaut. Maybe we should put in for his job after he takes off?
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Arguing about whether the earth is warming or cooling, CO2, environmentalism, etc., is just the bait to entice the gullible. The ones on the ‘ trawler’ above us ‘little fish’ are the U.N., the IMF and the World bank. Their ‘net’ that is stealthily encircling governments and the public is Agenda 21 and its seemingly innocuous ICLEI ( now introduced by stealth into local councils).
The public MUST be made aware of the sinister driving force behind the carbon tax debate, i.e., Agenda 21 and ICLEI, the plan for world government.
Politicians must be badgered into explaining Agenda 21 and ICLEI to the public. It is alarming that so many politicians have no idea what Agenda 21 is even though Australia signed to it at the U.N.’s Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
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Damian #94
This is one of my biggest frustrations with enviromentalism and it seems no one in journalism is prepared to challenge our pollies on Agenda 21 ICLEI etc.
How do we get the facts about this out to everyday Aussies? Wish I knew
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POLL: How the carbon tax affect your vote at the next election
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/julia-gillard-set-to-front-peoples-forum-in-brisbane-to-explain-carbon-tax/story-e6freoof-1226093416572
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Here we go again with another Arctic scare!!
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/here_we_go_again_with_another_arctic_scare/
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A few good reads………..
A couple of billions Julia hadn’t exactly counted
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/a_couple_of_billions_julia_hadnt_exactly_counted/
carbon DIOXIDE(PLANT FOOD) TAX Costing you billions already
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/costing_you_billions_already/
Poll: all pain, no gain. And an early election, please
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/poll_all_pain_no_gain_and_an_early_election_please/
Greens bought off with $10 billion and a licence for blackouts
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/greens_bought_off_with_10_billion_and_a_licence_for_blackouts/
Howard rejects what Gillard says he’d back
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_howard_rejects_what_gillard_says_hed_back/
Green cure is deadlier than the disease
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/green_cure_is_deadlier_than_the_disease/
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Seriously what is so wrong with ICLEI? Even Agenda 21 is a great document. Seriously you guys are getting worked up over nothing here.
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Hi Team!
Please bookmark this thread as the moment when MattB discovered the difference between coincidence and causation. Very correctly, he called me when he said that the stock market tank had no certain link to the previous day’s announcement of the Carbon Tax by one G. Jillard.
And he was totally right. It is possible, but not proven, and he has a right to be sceptical…
But somehow, I think, somewhere in that 2 top inches that is MattB, he is now wondering:
Please feel free to remind him of it sometime.
Cheers,
Speedy.
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Matt B #
Seriously what is so wrong with ICLEI? Even Agenda 21 is a great document.
How about we start with a more logical approach Matt B and reverse the burden of proof. What is so right with ICLEI and what is so great about Agenda 21 ?
Please do tell.
Depriving future generations the right to own private property and transport perhaps?
Depriving future generations of the right to vote for an unelectable, unaccountable unsackable government perhaps?
Why should future generations born to this planet expect that people like you have already made all the decisions about exactly what there life will be from the cradle to the grave?
Or maybe human beings should be granted the inalienable rights they were born with to choose for themselves? Obviously not according to you, why give them opportunities you were born with, right Matt B?
power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, except when it comes to “saving the planet”, that’s different!
It’s not about the policies Matt B, it’s about the principles of the dignity of choice. Something long forgotten in the minds of too many like you. Otherwise why would you have asked such a dumb question, ar$E backwards?
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Do Australians have the impeachment process to rid themselves of the Gillard problem once and for all
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ABC poll – should an election be called
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Brent @ 102:
We have a Governer-General who can dismiss a govt for much the same set of reasons as US impeachment. However, it is unlikely that the GG will dismiss their friends and relatives.
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Jo, could you please write an article answering this question:
How are CO2 emissions from power stations measured?
How do power stations measure their emissions (I understand many brown coal fired power stations do not even measure the weight or mass of the coal they burn?)
Can we trade a substance you cannot measure accurately?
Here is a little background info I understand:
1. Australia has no CO2 measurement system in place. The cost would be high to establish such as system, and maintain it.
2. The EU estimates its CO2 emissions from power stations using models but the estimates do not allow for the higher emissions when a power stations is being forced to power up and down to fill in for the fluctuations in wind and solar power supply. This is how Ireland explains about how it estimates its emissions from electricity generators (the estimates are inaccurate): http://www.eirgrid.com/operations/systemperformancedata/co2emissions/
3. The USA has the most demanding and costly system. It attempts to measure CO2 emissions from power stations. However, it also has significant issues with accuracy, maintenance and cost. Here are two documents from the EPA that give some idea of the complexity involved in measuring the emissions from electricity generation (if its this difficult for electricity, imagine how much more difficult it would be to get accurate emissions data from other sources).
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/business/ecmps/docs/ECMPSEMRI2009Q2.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkt/emissions/docs/plain_english_guide_par75_final_rule.pdf
Points to note:
1. Complying with these requirements is a high cost to each generator unit – for the equipment, maintenance, calibration, monitoring, reporting and addressing the follow up demands from the EPA.
2. The EPA requirements have been changing every few years since all this started (in the 1980s I think from memory)
3. The cost of each of those changes is enormous to industry and enormous to the bureaucracy – not just to the EPA but to all the follow on organisations that use the data and have to change their systems to handle the new data and change the legacy systems and data.
4. We know the emissions measurement being made already have significant problems and uncertainties. The data is unreliable (see comments by, for example Kent Hawkins, on this thread: http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/21/co2-avoidance-cost-wind/ )
5. The linked EPA papers cover electricity generation only. Electricity generation is probably about the easiest sector to measure the CO2 emissions. If it is this hard and costly to measure CO2 emissions for electricity generation, imagine how much more difficult and costly it will be to measure CO2 emissions from the other industries and sectors in the economy.
6. GHG emissions cannot be measured accurately. When a substance cannot be measured accurately, then trade in it will be open to gross fraud. We’ve already seen enormous amounts of fraud in emissions trading in the EU. If the EU can’t prevent the fraud, how can we expect even less developed countries to control fraud. Clearly, carbon trading will involve massive fraud.
7. The EU does not measure CO2 emissions. It estimates them from calculators. The data is even more unreliable than the USA EPA data. Australia doesn’t have any systems whatsoever to measure CO2 emissions. In fact, we don’t even measure the mass of coal being used in many of our power stations.
8. All the costs of measuring CO2 emission must be passed through to the customer. Higher energy costs means a damaged economy. Energy is one of the primary inputs to the economy and, therefore, to society’s wellbeing and progress. If you raise the cost of energy you reduce the standard of living of the society impacted. You reduce its health, education, life expectancy and nearly all the measures of human well being.
9. None of these costs would be incurred if we simply removed the impediments to low cost, clean electricity generation (e.g. nuclear) so it could be lower LCOE than electricity generated by coal.
Summary: A massive increase in bureaucracy will be required to administer all aspects of the climate pricing scheme. And a massive increase in the monitoring, reporting and administration costs for business and industry. And more lawyers, accountants and court time handling the disputes. And Carbon Cops and fraud squad. The additional costs go on and on. All this extra administration is a dead weight on the economy. This is very bad policy. Once implemented it will be a dead hand on Australia’s economy for ever.
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David @36
The right time is now. This is the tiem the polls are low and Labor is deeply concerned. Now is the time to drive it home so they dump this dreadful polcy.
I received an email from a Ken O’Dowd, MP today in reply to my email where I sent comment #105 ( the last comment on this thread): http://joannenova.com.au/2011/07/barking-mad-australian-economic-carbon-tax-doom/
Ken O’Dowd’s email says:
That signals the type of help the Coalition MPs would like from us.
Our activism stopped the CPRS in late 2009.
It’s time to do it again.
Drive the stake in NOW!
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It looks like Australia is mobilising against it’s Carbon Tax,
with the: “Convoy of no confidence”.
http://justgroundsonline.com/events/convoy-of-no-confidence-in
PASS THE WORD NOW
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rather than post O/T in a more recent thread, thought I’d pop this interesting comment here
“If State owned generators of electricity are to be significant payers of the carbon tax, then the Commonwealth could be in for an unwelcome surprise. Relevantly s. 114 of the Constitution provides that the Commonwealth shall not… ‘impose any tax on any property of any kind belonging to a State’. In short, these emissions belong to the States and hence are not liable to be taxed by the Commonwealth.
To illustrate from page 17 of its 2010 Annual Report, Macquarie Generation would on my reckoning have emitted 23.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Taxed at $23 per tonne this would create a liability of $536 million, (Bayswater at $324 million and Liddell at $212 million). Equal to roughly half of its revenue of $1.2 billion and turn its profit before tax of $269 million into a loss of $267 million.
Happily for Macquarie and other state owned electricity generators, s.114 of the Constitution would seem to exempt them from this proposed tax.”
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mullumhillbilly @1o8,
Interesting point. It would be interesting to see the responses from those with legal expertise.
My first reaction to this was that the Commonwealth overode state powers to ban the hydro schemes in Tasmania. To do so it used its constitutional powers to manage international agreements regarding the environment to overide state rights. I know very little about all this so I hope others who do will jump in and inform us.
This leads to more thoughts. Kyoto ends in 2013 or 2014 (I think). If there is no replacement agreemend, and this seems unlikely, then what international agreement will the Commonewalth use to justify overriding state rights?
I expect they will find some reason. Which then brings us to the concern. Where does all this stop. Pat Swords, from Ireland, has written some very interesting comments about the illegality of the environmental programs in the EU and the control the unelected EU bureaucracy has ben able to gain to implement them. He has managed to get the UN ombudsmen to take the EU environment departmesnt to court over the illegality. This has relevance for Australia. If you waould like to read more on this here is a link to one of his comments:
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Hi Peter; Section 51 (xxix) will enable the Gillard government to fight any such resistance; this was the section employed by the then Hawke government to stop the Franklin dam.
Alternatively, the carbon tax could be rebadged as not being an impost brought under Section 114.
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cohenite,
Thank you for that info. Does that mean there is no possibiliyt of the States blocking the Commonwealth’s legislation of a carbon proicing scheme? I admit I haven’t seen anyone raise this issue before so it would seem there is not much hope to block it from this avenue.
Therefore, the best opportunity is to continue to persuade and convince the public that it will damage our economy for no gain – no reduction in world emissions and no effect on the climate.
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Well Peter, O’Farrell’s government is going to lose a packet through Macquarie generation’s tax hit of about $580 million per year; I don’t think they will take that on the chin; but from past experience MacGen will take a narrow focus in any legal stoush and look for a particular loophole which suits their circumstances rather than take on the tax concept generally.
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cohenite,
Thank you again.
I am concerned. There is so much wrong with the proposed carbon pricing scheme. I fear it will not be practicable to undo it once it is legislated. So we need to persuade people before it is legislated that they need to convince the Labor Party to not proceed with it. How can we help?
I’ve received emails back from several Coaltion politicians encouraging me to keep explaining the issues. I am sure siimilar emails are sent to others. We’ve been told that the huge number of emails sent in late 2009 opposing the CPRS was a major reason for it being dumped. We need to do the same again. But how can we motivate people to do what they can to explain to average people just how damaging the proposed carbon tax and ETS would be for Australia?
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Peter, everything is undoable; the carbon tax will be easier to undo than an ETS because there will be less international involvement.
What opposition to this government generally and the AGW scam in particular needs is a central organisation and quids; right now there are dozens of organisations and small groups of people going in a hundred different directions at once; the effort is not cordinated.
The focus should be the media and its running of this issue which is pathetic and egotistical in the most insidious way. After Monckton and Klaus if nothing is done this will fade again just as it did after Monckton’s last visit; but to do anything will take 100’s of thousands.
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cohenite
Mostly agree. Not sure it will be as easy as you suggest to undo the carbon tax. I suspect business will not support another change – i.e. to undo all they’ve been forced to implement.
I agree we need organisation and don’t have it. But it’s too late to try to set it up now. GetUp! has at least 5 years start. They were well organised with their “Your rights at work campaign” for the 2007 election.
I guess we’ll have to just keep plugging along.
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