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Everyone wants a free lunch, and some people even believe it exists. Julia Gillard is playing to that crowd, offering the impossible. Somehow, we will cool world temperatures while using some of the most expensive forms of energy we can find, and, wait for it, most Australians will become better off too. It’s money for nothing.
Why we didn’t do this years ago?
Quotes from wise men tell us that there is nothing new under the sun, and those who forget history are condemned…
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“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
Possibly, Alexander Tytler (circa late 1700’s)
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“Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage […]
It’s 22 times as expensive to to something rather than nothing.
Gillard’s tax on “carbon pollution”: the facts
The PDF version for printing
If the Australian Government’s proposal to oblige 500 big “polluters” to engage in what the City of London calls “trading hot air” were to achieve its stated aim of cutting 5% of Australia’s CO2 emissions by 2020, and assuming HM Treasury’s 3.5% pure-rate-of-time-preference commercial discount rate for inter-temporal investment appraisals –
By 2020, CO2 in the air would be 411.987 parts per million by volume, compared with 412 ppmv if no action were taken. Global warming forestalled by 2020 would be 0.00007 C°: i.e. 1/14,000 C°. 0.00007 C° is 1/700 of the threshold below which modern instruments and methods cannot detect a global temperature change at all. At this rate, total cost of the carbon tax/trade policy will be not less than $127 billion between now and 2020, not counting gasoline and power price hikes. If all the world’s measures to cut greenhouse-gas emissions were as cost-ineffective as the Australian Government’s proposed policy, forestalling just 1 C° of global warming would cost the world $1.7 quadrillion. Forestalling all of the […]
Lord Christopher Monckton compares the cost of action with the cost of inaction and finds that even assuming that the IPCC estimates are correct, that would be far more expensive to reduce CO2 than to pay to adapt to the potential damage. He compares 8 case studies of carbon trading schemes, as well as wind-farms, and even a bicycle-hire program, and finds that costs vary from $90 tr -$101,000 tr per degree forestalled. By Garnaut’s own discount rates, the global abatement cost would be 2.3-4.5 times the inaction cost. — Jo Nova
7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […]
Another great contribution from Speedy 🙂
If the ABC was relevant (Part 37)
(The Collector)
[Scene: A street corner. JOHN is carrying a clipboard. He approaches BRYAN.]
John: Hi – I’m Bob Brown from the Greens. What’s your name?
Bryan: I’m Bryan Dawe from around the corner. What’s up?
John: The Greens are holding a raffle to raise funds and save the world. Would you like to buy a ticket?
Bryan: What’s the prize?
John: Prize?
Bryan: What do you win?
John: The lucky winner will receive… [consults clipboard] a lifetime supply of free air.
Bryan: Sorry, I’ve already got one. [Keeps walking]
John: Come back! You haven’t got a ticket!
Bryan: You haven’t got a prize…
John: But everyone wins a prize in this raffle – we’re going to save the world!
Bryan: What from?
John: Everything!
Bryan: What does Everything do?
John: Everything does Everything, Bryan! Droughts, floods, heatwaves, blizzards, hurricanes, volcanoes, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, species extinctions, plagues, pestilence and starvation. And that’s only for starters…
5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
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What a great video. Enjoy. Skill and talent meet a roomful of science.
Thanks to encounterbooks
I like it!
Hat tip to Christian K in Germany. 🙂
http://tinyurl.com/6howlvu
PS: I’m touring at the moment with Monckton, sorry for the gaps between posts. It’s much fun all round, especially as journalists try to trip him up and come unstuck, as did the ABC this morning, when Adam Spencer was so angry that Christopher had excellent answers to all the questions that he hung up mid-interview. Ouch for him. Monckton was nonplussed about this interview, so much so, he couldn’t remember who the interviewer was he told us the story this morning.
Why don’t the interviewers do their homework and read the answers the Monckton has given to Abrahamson and others before they try to “enjoy” scoring points? These are the holes you might step in if you don’t read both sides of the story. When will the believers wake up and realize they’ve been living in a groupthink bubble?
As I’ve said — Monckton puts on […]
Background notes to the Lang Hancock Memorial Lecture by Christopher Monckton (70 pages)
5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
See the Monckton Tour page for details. 5.45pm Wilsmore Lecture Theatre. UWA Chemistry Dept. $25.
Ph 043 542 3636 to Book. (I hear tickets are almost all gone).
Then we’re all travelling to Newcastle and Sydney this week. Book now!
4 out of 10 based on 3 ratings
I kid you not. Chris Mooney at Desmog has got the data that shows skeptics were more literate and numerate than believers, and he wants to share it.
Last week, an intriguing study emerged from Dan Kahan and his colleagues at Yale and elsewhere–finding that knowing more about science, and being better at mathematical reasoning, was related to more climate science skepticism and denial–rather than less.
When faced with the news that smarter more mathematical people were skeptical of man-made global warming, it’s a sure bet that as a Desmogger, he would fail to reach the obvious conclusion. Are believers gullible fools who can’t see the flaws in the reasoning? No. Skeptics are more literate and numerate about everything else, except for climate science, when they become dangerously overconfident and seek only to use their intellect to punch holes in the theory. Its not like these bright types have anything else to do is it? Of course.
This is bad, bad news for anyone who thinks that better math and science education will help us solve our problems on climate change. But it’s also something else. To me, it provides a kind of uber-explanation for climate skeptic and denier behavior […]
Anson Cameron makes a PR contribution in the big fog of the Climate War (Please: don’t dump the Monck), and I must say that it’s more sophisticated than the 50 religious academics who have no answer to Monckton and are terrified he might — God-forbid — speak.
Cameron’s been called out from somewhere to go into damage control. The pro-tax-team might be catching on to the idea that academics and clumsy GetUP campaigns have helped the skeptics no end. (Ta boys!)
Cameron’s better than the brutes-of-silence, and pretends to be oh-so-sensible and wise, but in the end the pretext that underlies his commentary is a joke. He can point to lots of keywords that are ripe for mockery, but when it comes down to it, Mr Cameron can’t explain why Monckton is wrong on the climate. Oh, he can link to Real Climate and mention the Stefan-Boltzman equation, but can’t explain it (I assume, or he would have; this is his only substantial point after all).
Cameron resorts to ad hom after ad hom, probably doesn’t realize how anti-scientific that is, and pulls out all the usual Monckton Voodoo doll points to stick pins in. But, when it boils down […]
Christopher Monckton
Answers by The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
to questions by Megan Clement of “Conversation”
30 June 2011
All of the questions and answers herein must be reproduced in full: otherwise none of my answers may be disseminated in any form, in whole or in part.
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Q. I’m mainly interested in your reaction to the petition that’s been going round in Western Australia urging Notre Dame to cancel your visit. Is this an issue of free speech?
I understand that the petition makes the following assertions, to which I shall respond seriatim:
Primo, I am alleged to have circulated “widely discredited fictions about climate change” and to have distorted the research of countless scientists.
Please specify three instances in which I am thought to have circulated “widely discredited fictions about climate change”, with a clear citation in each instance of my ipsissima verba, and provide evidence, in the form of at least five peer-reviewed refutations […]
Menzies House are reporting that GetUP are so scared that some Australians might hear Christopher Monckton speak, that they had a campaign to get the Brisbane Broncos football club to break their contract and cancel the “Climate of Freedom” speeches by Monckton in Brisbane.
GetUP are a virtual arm of the Labor Party, being funded by Unions*. They’ve already removed the “idea” where someone boasted they’d axed the Bronco’s deal. (Did anyone save a screen image? Pass it on 🙂 )
They are desperate! They know they have no answer to what Monckton has to say, and that Monckton convinces people everywhere he goes, so their only option is smears, slurs and banning him. GetUP have become ShutUP.
We don’t ask to silence them. We know if people hear both sides of the story they’ll make up their own minds, and we look forward to that happening.
Their plan will backfire, and could prove a media bonanza for us. Right now, scores of people are phoning the club to express their disappointment that the Broncos turned out to be spineless puppies, obeying their masters, caving in to “pressure” and not standing up for Australians.
We can take some easy actions.
[…]
David Archibald
Rally 1st July 2011
We can thank the global warmers for one thing. Their claim that the sky is falling got people like me to investigate. What I found was that global warming is exactly wrong. Instead of warming, our planet is cooling as solar activity weakens.
The heating effect of carbon dioxide is minuscule. It is lost in the noise of the climate system. That is why the temperature of the planet today is exactly the same as it was thirty years ago. On top of all that, the carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere is dangerously low. All living things would be better off if we had more of it in the atmosphere.
You have not been told that before because the global warmers have corrupted all the institutions that are meant to serve us. The CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, the universities, have all sold their souls, and sold the Australian People down the river. Those institutions we once respected are now venal and not to be trusted.
Global warming is a litmus test for our politicians. If they believe in global warming, they are easily deluded fools.
That leads me to a useful […]
What are they so afraid of?
It’s all become a media frenzy. Who would have thought that holding an opinion about climate sensitivity due to a trace gas could become a reason to mark someone as an untouchable heretic? Venues are being canceled (and new venues arranged), the media are hunting in packs, and the university witchdoctors are coming out to show how neolithic (but politically correct) their reasoning is.
And they think they are so civilized.
They are stone age tribes with smartphones.
University Witchdoctors — collapse under the hypocrisy of their own reasoning
Academics want climate sceptic’s Lecture cancelled! is the headline on the front page of The West Australian.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s serious. We can no longer stand by and watch as once great institutions embarrass themselves with childlike efforts to silence dissent.
Natalie Latter, a PhD Student at UWA, wrote a letter, endorsed by a few other academic types (who ought to have saved her and themselves from such an embarrassing mistake):
“Lord Monckton propounds widely discredited fictions about climate change and misrepresents the research of countless scientists,” says the letter. “With zero peer-reviewed publications, he has declared […]
There are two protests coming up in Sydney. Friday – tomorrow with David Archibald in Martin Place, and Saturday week with myself Christopher Monckton and David Evans at Hyde Park on Saturday 9th July. Click on this link to see the Monckton tour dates. Click here for other protests around the country.
If you live in or near the electorates of Greenway (NSW) and La Trobe (Vic) groups are forming. Please add a comment below or email me to find out more. If you want to start a group to meet like minded people, Holler!
Click on the image to see a larger one.
THE HUNTER VALLEY — SAYING NO TO THE CARBON TAX RALLY
Saturday, 2nd July 2011 1pm Foreshore Park, Newcastle see Facebook
5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings
Shouldn’t the government know what the benefits and costs of the carbon tax are before they make it into law? This is looking awfully like a case of “policy first, justifications later”.
First they promised they won’t do it. Then they do it, and they ask for even more of our money so they can pay PR hacks (introduced to us as scientists and economists) to tell us how fabulous their unwanted plan is — after all, the Climate Change Commission has no purpose other than to advertise the Carbon Tax. Then there’s a $12 million advertising program. But wait, there’s more…
Amazingly, there are now $250,000 grants (how many?*) from the Department of Climate Change to anyone who can persuade the public to accept the carbon tax!
If the government had thought this through, they’d already know why they wanted to bring in the tax. (Or maybe they did think it through, but are afraid to tell us the real reasons?)
As it is, they’re only bringing in the tax because 12% of the voters voted one green member into the House of Reps, and it was the price paid to keep Gillard in power. But for most Australians […]
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Here’s a new sign of the times.
Almost no one has gone from skeptic to believer on global warming. The conversion flow is nearly all one-way traffic. But on the Skeptoid site, author Craig Good is a “convert” of a sort, and I have to give him credit for writing the most sensible advice yet for believers of man-made global warming (see below).
But before anyone gets too excited, the two key questions here are: how much of a skeptic was he, and what did it take to change his mind? Answer, not much and not much.
This is not a big believer-awakening-moment of the Mark Lynas type, or another Judith Curry sort of conversion. Both of those were active, involved and outspoken in the climate debate. Craig Good’s entire skeptical position can be summed up in a few paragraphs, so yes, he qualifies as a skeptic, of the gut-hunch-it’s-wrong-but-haven’t-read-a-single-skeptical-paper-type skeptic.
If there are grades of skeptic from 1 to 10, he was only a 2.
So here’s the flash of insight, that’s never been seen before from alarmist circles
This is great stuff (if blindingly obvious):
To my friends on the Left: Do you want […]
Check these out. There’s been an ongoing war of ideas, Hayek vs Keynes, for eight decades and counting — and these videos sum it up consummately. This ongoing academic fight has shaped lives and countries for decades: booms, busts, unemployment, and possibly even wars.
Indeed it’s an ominous sign of the times that there is a resurgence of this debate. (The masses take no interest in monetary policy when times are booming.)
(If you are in a tearing hurry, skip the first minute).
I’m not a rap fan, but this is so good that, for the first time, I have to admit rap has its role.
There’s a second in the series and it’s even better.
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There are parallels between climate and economics. Using global markets against “man made global warming” is a Keynesian solution to the weather.
The big left-right divide is not about conservative versus progressive. The “progressives” want us slow down, and give up cars, flights and air conditioners, and the “conservatives” fight to keep development rolling. Ultimately the left right dichotomy boils down to the individual versus the collective. Thus Keynes (the big government solution) […]
Click on the image to go to a fully interactive infographic where you can find out just how much money people have buried, I mean, invested in clean energy in your country. It’s nifty.
Have you ever thought about how lucky we are that only kind-hearted helpful souls are involved in the erstwhile cottage industry known as “renewable energy”?
Imagine if a less-than-scrupulous agent got into these green-fields of money, and frolicked in the vast acreage of subsidies, schemes, and easy loans? Where would we be? The public would think the people and the industry were here to save us, the industry could prod levers of government to encourage more subsidies and pro-renewable energy legislation. The “cottage” industry could also pay for and help write reports that the government then used in order to convince the people to put more of their goods and chattels in the public-trough. In variations on the circular theme, the industry could apply for grants from the government to help pay for the reports it wrote for the government to help it earn even more subsidies, or to cripple it’s competitors. (eg. See here).
Thus deadly positive feedback would spiral out of control.
Then […]
By now every person in the climate debate knows that Monckton used a swastika on a slide in LA.
UPDATE: By the time I wrote this, Monckton had already been roundly condemned for his unnecessary hyperbole, and unreservedly apologized. I couldn’t see much point in joining in the chorus. Yes, I agree, he did the wrong thing. The ends doesn’t justify the means. We can hardly complain about namecalling, if we do it too. I’m just trying to add perspective on the magnitude of the crime. People are suggesting we exile the man for — as far as I can tell — one clumsy joke and one very poor choice of slide.
None of this would be necessary if the media had reported information from both sides of the story.
I groaned when I saw it. The fascist comment has been used many times before (and Garnaut is advocating ad hoc extensive government control over business). The Nazi swastika, though, is a new low in rhetorical excess. Definitely not one I would have used, and I’m glad Monckton has apologized so quickly, and won’t be using it again — it’s a cheap shot.
This is […]
Naomi Oreskes
The great Fred Singer takes the time to explain why Naomi Oreskes is a scientifically inept and a poor historian. Her famous claim of a scientific consensus based on 900 papers missed more than 11,000 that should have been included. Her grasp of science is so poor she isn’t familiar with the pH scale, thinks Beryllium is a heavy metal, mistakenly assumes that CO2 is trapped in the troposphere, and climate models can predict forest fires and floods. Embarrassingly, Oreskes doesn’t understand the difference between reactive oxygen and radioactive oxygen.
Armed with cherry picked distortions she sets about maliciously impugning upstanding senior scientists with distinguished records in science, and years of service. Unlike a professional historian she hasn’t even interviewed any of them to find out if the information she promoted was correct. Sadly Singer is the only one still with us to point out the flaws.
Years from now when their contributions are still recognized, Oreskes will be but a footnote in history classes of how poor research and largely baseless innuendo were used to serve a groupthink meme and feed a hate campaign against some of our best and brightest. No humility. No respect. No […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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