Australians will pay $77 million per week in carbon taxes, while Europe with the 30 most green countries pays just one third of that, according to the Mineral Council of Australia.
“Australia’s carbon tax starts generating $77.3 million per week from today. New figures from the Centre for International Economics show that Europe’s emissions trading scheme — which covers 30 nations — has generated $23m per week so far in 2012.”
Wholesale electricity prices have stepped up by $21-25MWh (roughly doubling) overnight across the three largest states – apparently $2 more than was expected.
The ACCI points out the contradiction in sending a price signal but intimidating anyone who dares to say how big that signal is.
THE Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has taken a swipe at the consumer watchdog, accusing it of intimidating commercial operations and trying to mask the cost impact of the carbon tax on business.
ACCI’s director of economics and industry policy, Greg Evans, said yesterday the purpose of the carbon tax was to introduce a price signal into the market, but the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission was trying to prevent businesses from attributing increases to the impost.
“It’s basically saying to business: don’t attribute price rises to the carbon tax, otherwise we’ll come after you,” he said. “Wasn’t one of the whole points of this that you are actually trying to send a price signal? [The Australian]
Companies can incur fines of $1.1 million per breach and private entities could pay $220,000 per breach if found guilty of deceptive and misleading conduct under the Australian Consumer Law.
Flashback to all those signs I wrote up when we first heard we could be forced to pay a $1.1million fine for overestimating the effect of The Carbon Tax on our prices.
Shop owners — do feel free to plagiarize ad lib. No copyright on those images.
From Speedy:
Don’t waste your money –
that’s the government’s job
***
Our prices have not risen.
Your standard of living has fallen.
***
No planets were saved in the collection of this tax.
Joe V wrote in comments:
“Any impression our prices have risen by 15% due to the Carbon Tax
is an illusion, caused by threat of a $1.1million fine.”
Geoff Sherrington pointed out that the law appears to apply to businesses, and it’s likely the ACCC (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission) can not investigate individuals. (I am not a lawyer etc etc).
Have a look at this idiot.
blah blah blah, blah blah blah.
Craig Emerson sings Whyalla
Scroll forwards to the 1.30 mark.
And the ABC set this up.
This is Gold.
What a prize idiot.
Craig Anthony Emerson MP Minister For Trade and representing the seat of Rankin in Queensland, one of the seats that go in the next election.
I’m not sure who is more culpable here, this idiot or the ABC.
Tony.
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When the community of Whangamamana in New Zealand decide to become a republic, it elected a billy goat for president. I think poor old Billy is dead now and they elected a rooster. But either one of them could run circles around this bat shit crazy nutter in logic.
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So that’s a senior minister in our Labor-Green Government. How embarassing. What a disaster.
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Simply embarrassing.
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Tony
Thanks for putting the Emerson link up.
Amazing, simply amazing that a minister would do that.
It indicates that there is an incredible level of stress amongst the people charged with implementing and backing this farcical tax.
or possibly:
he was just addressing his market on ABC and Triple JJJJJ (which are both taxpayer funded).
Weird stuff – man under huge pressure!!!!!
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Even Julia gave this idiot the flick. And boy, doesn’t it become more obvious with each passing day just why she did!
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Bwwwaaaahhahahahahahahahahahaaaaa
I can`t stop bwwwhahahahha … laughing .. … bwwahhhahahahahahahaaa…
Hang on hang on, that`s Crying, bwwahhahahahaaa !!!
My God, A Federal Minister treating his Constituents with utter Contempt and Disdain !!
– He could not sing if his life depended upon it!
– He could not sing if any other ones life depended upon it.
– He could not sing on cue if his life depended upon it!
– He could not dance if his life depended upon it! Just start those weird rotating motions.
– He could not lie straight in bed if his life depended upon it!
– He wasted many many many CO2 Emissions with that skit.
Just Imagine how many people are going to watch this on Jo Nova, Bolty, Blair, WUWT, You Tube, Twitter and so on….creating many more emissions than if he just kept his mouth shut!
This will create just as many emissions as what the government is trying to get us to cut!!!
How Ridiculous is that? What a F$%N Hypocrite! And they call us the Lucky Country…
He has Blown it for Labour right there!!! What a classic F#$K UP!!
And one must ask once again, exactly what is this CO2 Tax going to do for the environment??
Do I Laugh or Cry?
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Reminds me of the fabulous Ian Dury lyrics “If you’re going somewhere would you start from here?”
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What a Goose
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Did Emerson have a licence to perform that tune in public?
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I was informed by my mechanic friend that the price of the refrigerant gas R134 has gone up from $462 per cylinder to $1542 per cylinder. That’s no mistake over a $1,000 increase due to the carbon tax.
He estimates that will add a few hundred dollars to a car service. However he said the same gas or its variants is used in all refrigeration requirements and have suffered the same fate.
So think about food storage at the primary producer, the wholesaler and the retailer.
So much for only a $10 per week increase in costs
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Err what? How will the cost increase by “a few hundred dollars” when the cost of the gas cylinder has increased by $1080? You are trying to make me believe that you can only re-gas the A/C systems in less than 4 cars using an entire cylinder of gas!?
I had my A/C in the car re-gased ages ago. It cost $85 for the entire job, but most of that was labour. The cost for the gas was something like $15!
It sounds like your mechanic friend is extremely uninformed.
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Typical Adam Smith miss-direction and disinformation. You are not referring to the same type of gas or the same size of cylinder. The mechanic has a real-world business to run, not just a government paid trolling job like you do.
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I know when I am being lied to. Your assertion, based on the figures you provided, that an entire cylinder is only enough to re-gas 3 or 4 cars is a load of nonsense.
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I know when I am being lied to as well … every time you make a comment. I did not provide any figures. I just pointed out that you made (yet another) baseless assertion making unjustified assumptions. Troll Team Smith fails again …
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guys I love rhetorical arguments in a factless void like the rest of you but I also find Google quite easy to use. This is from an industry media release but correlates with other hits http://www.mta-sa.asn.au/wcm/MTA/News/MediaReleases/Carbon_Tax_to_hit_automotive_industry_hard.aspx
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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
“Adam Smith”……….
The pathological liar extraordinaire!!
You should join a circus!
Ha ha ha ha ha
What a crackup!
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HFC-134a has a carbon dioxide equivalent (emission factor) of 1,430 implying a carbon price (at $23/tonne of CO2e) of $32.89 per kilogram of refrigerant. So the new fad is to replace refrigeration systems using HFC-134 with non-HFC systems using refrigerants like carbon dioxide and HFO-1234.
Deja-vu. It was not that long ago that industry was forced to replace CFC with HFC refrigerants to protect stratospheric ozone.
HFC producers will not continue to produce HFC-134 in large quantities and importers will be loath to store them given the cost of consumption allowances and offset credits. The industry won’t mind the churn but the end users bear the real cost.
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Refrigerant. Yes, REFRIGERANT. makes things cold. Takes away heat.
Crabon Dioxide WAS used in refrigerators early in the piece before the more efficient CFCs were developed.
These gasses work by expanding and compressing, GUESS WHAT THE HECK HAPPENS IN THE ATMOSPHERE? It expands and compresses from dawn to next dawn. IT TAKES AWAY HEAT FROM THE SURFACE AND DISPOSES IT ATOP THE ATMOSPHERE.
So called greenhouse gasses help cool the planet. Call me a denier.
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No incorrect physics there lol
BUT the Fluro-carbon scam was the ‘first’ attempt at control by the global bankers and idiot media that ran with it. All based on a discredited paper that CFCs deplete the ozone! No one ever explained how heavy (very) CFC molecules get up to the ozone layer. Unfortunately that ozone hole has been there since the atmosphere formed on some form or another and is related to the solar flux..So a dam good refrigerant was taken away from the market and forced to be replaced by a more expensive one.
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Maybe you should read the Montreal Protocol which is what has helped the ozone layer recover somewhat since the production of CFCs is almost completely banned by international agreement.
The rest of your post is just conspiratorial nonsense that isn’t worth responding to.
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Yes. The Adam Smith troll is working with outdated information. The original CFC/ozone layer link has been discredited and furthermore the chemistry of the reaction chain has been shown to be flawed. One of the key intermediate reactions has been shown experimentally to run an order of magnitude slower than previously theorized.
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Mike, Adam Smith has already admitted he is not a scientist. We probably shouldn’t confuse him with actual science.
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This is worth a read !!
FALSIFICATION OF THE ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GREENHOUSE EFFECTS WITHIN THE FRAME OF PHYSICS…..
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/23/2303/S021797920904984X.html
Holes in the Ozone Scare…..
http://www.gwb.com.au/gwb/news/beck/230899.htm
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I’ll pass on whether CO2 was used as a refrigerant, I simply don’t know. I suysepct it could work well. I do know ammonia was used too, but you really don’t want to be close to an anhydrous ammonia leak. Lessee, CO2 boiling point -57°C, NH3 boiling point -33°C, so a CO2 system would have to work at a much higher pressure and the heat exchangers would have to be thicker, bigger, and much heavier.
Refrigeration cycles generally compress a gas, cool it to get much more heat out as it becomes a liquid, then gets the cooling by letting it boil in the cooling coils under low pressure. A pure gas phase system you describe is very inefficient.
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Scott wtote: July 2, 2012 at 5:49 pm
“I was informed by my mechanic friend that the price of the refrigerant gas R134 has gone up from $462 per cylinder to $1542 per cylinder. That’s no mistake over a $1,000 increase due to the carbon tax.”
Is your mechanic saying that the “carbon tax” applies to the whole content of the cylinder? Presumably, the only concern would be for the refrigerant that escapes to the atmosphere (if even that is really a concern). So why would the complete content be taxed?
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The price change for recharging less than 1kg of refrigerant is not simply the direct cost of the carbon price on that 1 kg (say). The price has to take into account the altered net present cost of producing (or importing), distributing and storing (at different points in the supply chain) and accounting for transactions involving the product. The increased cost also reduces demand, so there is a risk cost of increased ‘shelf time’ from overproduction.
An initial price surge should be expected which is significantly greater than that indicated by the direct carbon price.
So instead of a $33/kg price increase for HFC-134, the increase could well exceed $100/kg.
Ideally, the retailer would generate a carbon credit (referable to the entity taxed) for refrigerant recovered and decomposed. In practice, it doesn’t happen.
BTW, the scientific basis for emission factors is questionable, being that the number of degrees of freedom of the molecule (a la statistical mechanics) is proportional to its greenhouse warming potential. IMO not just questionable but BS.
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My understanding is that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is an EFFECT; not a CAUSE of higher temperatures.
It would certainly seem that temperatures have been in decline for some time, and that trend I suggest is accelerating to some extent. I bear as evidence snow on Kilimanjaro, Arctic ice further south in the Bering Sea than it has been in living memory, Arctic ice thick enough to delay Shell’s drilling operation by a month, a record low in NSW coldest in 112 years etc. and Melbourne with its coldest day in 17 years, despite the heat island effect.
Does anyone know if this is accompanied by a drop in CO2 concentration yet? I know it’s darned hard to measure since it is so tiny. I recall in one of Ian Plimer’s books that the Mona Kea atmospheric research station was at times measuring concentrations similar to today’s when it was constructed in the late thirties.
My point is of course that if the concentration is dropping, it would be only logical that the only reason it appeared to rise in the nineties was due to relatively warmer temperatures, which of course coincides with a more active sun, according to Luning’s “The Cold Sun” Does anyone know where to locate this data?
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The influence of temperature on CO2 levels is limited. The glacial-interglacial changes and the MWP-LIA drop in temperature show some 8 ppmv/°C in ice cores. Thus an increase of about 1°C since the LIA would have given at maximum 8 ppmv increase of CO2, while we see a 100+ ppmv increase since about 1850 (70 ppmv since the measurements at the South Pole and Mauna Loa started). The current swings in year to year temperature (like the 1992 Pinatubo cooling and the 1998 El Niño warming) give some 4 ppmv/°C change in increase rate, but still an increase, which in average is halve the amount of human emissions. See the data at:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Thus CO2 levels are closely tracking human CO2 emissions (100+ ppmv increase for about 210 ppmv emissions), hardly influenced by temperature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
In the period 1945-1975 temperatures were decreasing, but CO2 levels still were increasing…
Thus while in the past CO2 was fully tracking temperature, that tracking still occures, but is limited to the variability around the trend, while the trend itself is (near) fully attributable to human emissions…
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Ferdinand
I say again.
Your method is totally flawed and you cannot say that human emissions cause increases in atm CO2 nor temperature.
There may or may not be tracking between one or more of the factors you mention but it DOES NOT PROVE CAUSATION.
That is scientific fact and is typical warmer PhD l;evel thinking.
CO2 levels also track ticket Prices on the New York Manhattan island ferry trip as well but the ferry does not cause or influence CO2 levels.
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KinkyKeith
July 3, 2012 at 12:41 pm
KinkyKeith,
I agree that correlation not necessary means causation, but a lack of correlation points to a lack of causation. If you look at the main temperature periods, there was warming 1910-1945 and 1975-2000 and cooling/flat temperatures 1945-1975 and 2000-current. Thus there is a positive correlation in two periods and a negative or none in two other periods. Thus we can safely exclude temperature as the main driver of the CO2 increase.
On the other side, humans emit about twice the amount of CO2 as what is measured as increase in the atmosphere. That means that nature as a whole is a net sink for the difference. Add to that that levels follow the emissions at an extremely linear rate, not seen in any natural process. And that the human emissions as cause fit all observations like 13C/12C and 14C/12C ratio decrease, ocean CO2 (DIC) increase, increased plant growth and oxygen use. Any alternative I have heard of does fail one or more observations…
See further: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html#The_mass_balance
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Ferdinand,
You say:
In the period 1945-1975 temperatures were decreasing, but CO2 levels still were increasing…
Do you expect to see an instantaneous change in CO2 as Temp changes or do you think there is a lag effect taking place?
00
There is a near instant reaction of CO2 on temperature, with only a few months lag, over the seasons. That causes huge CO2 exchange flows between the atmosphere and the biosphere + oceans. Because the oceans and the biosphere act in opposite ways, the net effect on CO2 levels is rather modest, where the NH shows the largest swings (more land vegetation), while the SH shows less variation. The average CO2 level change is about 5 ppmv for average 1°C temperature change over the seasons (again most in the NH as land warms and cools faster than the oceans).
The Law Dome ice core with a medium resolution (21 years) shows a 6 ppmv drop for a cooling of ~0.8°C from the MWP to the LIA (if we may use the temperature reconstructions with the largest temperature difference), with a ~50 years lag. That is a drop of ~8 ppmv/°C, the same as we see in long-term ice cores for the glacial-interglacial periods, but there with some 800 years lag at upgoing temperatures, and several millennia when the earth was cooling again.
Thus I expect a fast initial reaction of ~4-5 ppmv/°C within months to years, increasing to ~8 ppmv/°C over (very) long periods, from decades to millennia. And a lag from months to millennia, depending which processes are involved.
In the case of the seasons to several years, that are mainly the mid-latitude oceans and land vegetation which are involved and rapidely react on temperature changes. For longer periods, ice sheet growth / melting over land and corresponding plant growth area destruction / increase play a role, besides (deep) ocean current changes.
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“Ferdinand Engelbeen”,
Please quote one, just one, scientific study which PROVES, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that human beings and carbon DIOXIDE (PLANT FOOD) are/is causing some determental effects on the weather/climate of planet Earth.
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There isn’t one. But even if there was, you wouldn’t believe it.
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Angry, no need to be angry…
I have no idea what effect CO2 has or will have in weather/climate, except that I would like to have the nice weather of Nice (at the Mediterranean Sea) here in my cold and wet country. That is all what I expect from more CO2: a benign increase in temperature (~1°C for a CO2 doubling, based on its absorption characteristics), good for agriculture in most mid-latude countries…
Where I react on is that some misconceptions (the observed CO2 increase is not caused by humans) give skeptics a bad name, as that is one of the very solid cornerstones of the AGW theory. So it makes that the better arguments of where the real discussion should be: the real effect of the increase of CO2 on climate are not heard. There it is where AGW and certainly CAGW is on more shaky grounds…
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OH AND USING COMPUTER MODELS INSTEAD OF REAL WORLD DATA DOES NOT CONSTITUTE PROOF OF THE GLOBAL WARMING HYPOTHESIS!
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“The influence of temperature on CO2 levels is limited. The glacial-interglacial changes and the MWP-LIA drop in temperature show some 8 ppmv/°C in ice cores.”
No that will not wash. Ice cores can show the past trends in CO2 but due to diffusion problems not the actual past atmospheric concentration. We know this due to the poor correlation between ice core CO2 levels and the start of direct chemical messurements and of course plant stoma records.
Of course CO2 levels over 200ppm are largly irrelevant to the planets temperature. CO2 does not increase in temperature when it intercepts outgoing LWIR. It instead almost instantly re radiates it. Back radiated LWIR can slow the cooling of the planets surface, but this effect is virtualy non existant for liquid water that is free to evaporativly cool. That would be 71% of Earths surface. So “grey body” calculations showing 1.2c increase for a doubling of CO2 concentrations should be reduced to around 0.25c. Add to that the fact that water vapour feed\back is negative on this planet and the only thing left that is dangerous or catastrophic would be the permanent record of shameless advocacy that scientists, politicians, activist and journalists have left on the Internet.
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Konrad,
The migration of CO2 through ice cores was (theoretically) calculated from the migration in remelt layers of the “warm” (-21°C) Siple Dome ice core. Calculated over medium depth of the ice core, the averaging (the resolution) of the CO2 levels in the bubbles broadened from 20 to 22 years. At the deepest layers (~70,000 years old) the broadening doubled to ~40 years. No big deal at all. For the “cold” ice cores (-40°C) like Vostok and Dome C, the migration is unmeasurable over resp. 420 kyr and 800 kyr.
Direct chemical measurements had a lot of problems, even if the methods were reasonable (+/- 10 ppmv), most measurements were taken at places, completely unsuitable for “background” CO2 levels, like in the middle of towns, forests and other places with extreme hourly variability.
Stomata (index) data have similar problems: a huge local bias, which may be outcalibrated against ice cores over the past century, but that doesn’t prevent that the local bias can have changed over the centuries as result of huge changes in land use in the main wind direction, including changes in the main wind direction itself… Moreover, over the past century, stomata index data and direct chemical measurements, as collected and interpretated by the late Ernst Beck, contradict each other…
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
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Surely, the direct influence of the slight increase in air temperature over the past century on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels should be zero. The contribution of indirect effects associated with biota would have been to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and increase methane.
Changes in the temperature of the ocean surface and of the upper ocean (including the well-mixed layer) are more important. The oceanic sequestration rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide is governed by CO2 concentration (air and ocean) and upper ocean temperatures.
I doubt that the carbon dioxide theory of global warming can account for oceanic warming- except in regions where albedo is reducing without compensating effects (possibly in the Arctic).
It’s plausible that the observed increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is a consequence of increasing anthropogenic emissions, but that is debatable. Annual anthropogenic emissions are a very small fraction of total emissions in a natural system that has some strong negative feedbacks.
Examining the published accounts of emissions and atmospheric concentrations, it appears that carbon dioxide is sequestered at a rate that is proportional to the difference between the atmospheric concentration at the beginning of the Industrial Period and the present concentration. When you think about it, that is quite odd. It is as if the intermediate oceanic “carbon” reservoir established an equilibrium level before the Industrial Period and that equilibrium level still determines the sequestration rate. That proportionality factor presently (it’s actually more than 5 years since I last did the sums) suggests a half-life of the notional anthropogenic component of the atmosphere of about 24 years.
The ocean-atmosphere interchange of carbon dioxide is actually far more active than the overall sequestration suggests, with complete turnover of atmospheric carbon dioxide by exchange with oceanic storage occurring over less than 9 years.
These processes also suggest the futility of future programs that may be aimed at reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations by dramatically reducing anthropogenic emissions, since the atmospheric storage has an equilibrium with a much greater oceanic store.
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Leo G,
You should make a differentiation between the upper ocean level (the “mixed layer” for 100-400 m depth) and the deep oceans. The mixed layer has a very fast half life time for changes in the atmosphere of 1-2 years. But there is a problem: the uptake by the oceans is limited: if you double CO2 in the atmosphere, the increase in total carbon (DIC – dissolved inorganic carbon – CO2 + HCO3- + CO3–) is only 10%. That is the buffer factor, or Revelle factor. For the ~1000 GtC in the mixed layer that means only 30 GtC extra for the 30% increase in the atmosphere.
Looking only at the natural emissions, human emissions indeed are very small (some 3%), but that is a false comparison: natural emissions are part of the natural cycle and largely (over)compensated by natural sinks. Human emissions are one-way additions. What counts is the difference between natural emissions and natural sinks, which was negative over the past 50 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg
Indeed the sink rate (currently some 4 GtC/year for an excess of some 210 GtC above equilibrium, that is a e-fold time of ~53 years or a half life time of ~40 years) is proportional to the difference with the temperature driven equilibrium or with other words, between pCO2(atm) and pCO2(aq), both in the oceans (but mainly into the deep oceans near the poles) and land plants (alveoles water). The partitioning of the CO2 sinks between vegetation and oceans is more or less known, based on oxygen use:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
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Hi Ferdinand
You obviously spend a lot of time analyzing the many factors involved, either at the core of or peripherally, with the AGW Theory.
It’s great to see that sort of inquisitiveness which is really the heart of science.
That approach, unfortunately, can lead to a mass of mechanisms and anlysis that covers over the main issue being assessed and lead to great efforts being put into analysing irrelevant comonents of the problem to the excluson of those of most relevance.
After having myself been snared by the Warmer Expert Scientists into thinking that the CO2 mechanism was all, I was rope-able when after much wider analysis of the issue it became aparent that a great many factors, some of great importance, had been excluded from consideration to distort the picture.
You may wish to consider that there is an elephant in the room, and that it is also present in the last line of Leo G’s post above.
Regards Keith
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Just in case:
Leo G is saying that there is a Very Strong possibility that the Expression or Absorption of CO2 from the oceans controls CO2 levels in our atmosphere.
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Kinky,
Leo G is right that there are huge interchanges between the atmosphere and the oceans, but that is restricted to the “mixed layer”, as that part of the oceans is in close contact with the atmosphere and is thoroughly mixed by wind and convection. But that part has only a limited storage capacity for extra CO2. The main storage of some extra CO2 in the atmosphere is in the deep oceans, but these are quite isolated from the atmosphere by the mixed layer (due to higher density of the cold deep waters) and the diffusion speed of CO2 in water is very low. The only (in)direct exchange between the atmosphere and the deep oceans is via the cold sinks near the poles (mainly in the NE Atlantic) and the upwelling near the equator (mainly the equatorial Pacific). But that is rather limited in flow, compared to the whole ocean surface. That is the reason for the difference between exchange rates (which are huge, but with a limited absorption capacity) and the removal rates (which are small, but with an enormous absorption capacity).
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Yes, I figured it was going to get nasty.
They can’t fine if the increase is true. Keeping the paperwork – even taping it up in the window – proves the increase to store owners. Of course as EVERYONE is hit, they’ll all be claiming the increase. I can’t see this threat of 1.1 million forcing shop owners to swallow the debt themselves when it impacts so severely on their service. Of course they have to state it and yes, pass it along, or they go under.
I hope every single business tells it like it is and back it up in court if necessary.
The ACCI is a disgrace. The sooner the election, the better.
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I tihink you’ll find the ACCI is on your side.
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No Matt,
You are OH SO BLOODY WRONG!!!
They are ONLY there to do the Gummint’s business.
That is, to force poor SMEs to SHUT UP about WHY their prices have to increase in an attempt to hide the TRUTH.
But the TRUTH will ALWAYS out in the end – and that’ll be good cause it’ll mean we’ve then we’ll have heard the last of you and all the other trolls out there!!
BTW – WTF are the Liebor party going to do now for their next sacrificial offering to their new leader when they eventually roll Gilliard? They can’t nominate Rudd, OR Emerson OR Swan (not that he’d EVER be in the running) – they are ALL set to lose their seats at the next election. (although the so called brain drain won’t hit them too hard, will it – can’t lose what you never had?)
HA HA HA – couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of NITWITS!!
Cheers,
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Popeye:
On this one Matt has it right. ACCI, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is anti tax.
Ally used the wrong acronym, the one that should have been used is the ACCC.
Even matty can’t be wrong all the time.
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Bob,
Thanks for the heads up (I missed that) – replace ACCI with ACCC.
EVERYTHING else stands.
Cheers,
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I heard a rumour that jooLIAR was going to be replaced by Bob CARWRECK (carr).
GOD HELP US ALL!
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One more thing Matty,
I look forward to the day this bunch of losers EVER try to force a $1,000,000 fine on ANY SME in Australia.
THEY WOULDN’T DARE – there would be a revolution!!!!
Cheers,
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Thanks, Popeye, I’m with you. And yes, I meant the mob threatening to fine! The ACCC (my error, I was typing too fast).
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Don’t you guys get it… the big fine is simply the maximum fine available for false and misleading advertising of any nature. It has nothing to do with the carbon tax. Surely you support this? Or do you think that companies should be able to put up prices way above the carbon related increase and still claim the increase is because of the carbon tax?
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In a free market firms would be free to put up prices as far as they thought they could get away with and not have to say why. Surely false advertising is about the capabilities of the goods being advertised ?
If lying generally were a crime then the present Govt. would surely be culpable.
Ah Julia
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Every time I watch that damning clip, that conk seems to get bigger & bigger. What an angle. That camera person seems to have captured it perfectly.
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Jo and Goeff,
Not withstanding what an ideologically compliant ACCC may now threaten, and as AFL super-coach Kevin Sheedy demonstrated a few years back, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
When faced with some of the more totalitarian edicts of the AFL hierarchy, Kevin referred to what he considered glaring inconsistencies on the part of umpires, as being simply the work of “Martians”. Surely, with freedom of speech now under great threat, it’s time for the Martian strategy to be invoked?
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Bob, Matt, everyone, the ACCC don’t need to fine anyone. Just the threat is already stopping many people in business from speaking out.
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In any event, businesses are liable for their employees behaviour. If employees explain to customers that prices have gone up due to the carbon tax, and the ACCC van prove that only 98% of the price increase is attributable to the carbon tax, the Employer can be targeted for poor training and supervision for the breach. Just the same as a restaurant business being fined for an employees unhygienic acts.
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The ACCC had exactly the same powers when the GST was introduced so that companies didn’t dramatically increase their prices and blame it on the GST.
The GST increased the CPI by 2.5% in the first year after the tax started. The carbon price will increase the CPI by about 0.7% in its first year, so it is a much smaller change.
In my experience businesses don’t go out of their way to charge higher prices, they usually compete to keep their prices as low as possible so they can stay competitive and attract and keep customers, so I doubt we will hear many stories about companies jacking up their prices a lot, because this just gives them a bad reputation.
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Why do you think that anybody is happy with the GST. Why do you believe that comparing one theft of citizen’s wealth with another is a good strategy.
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Is there a genuine threat to people who accurately report the impact of the tax? Or just those who exaggerate it in an effort to rip people off?
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No. Its if you misreport. So, if a business decides decides to quote an amount of increase due to the carbon price for whatever reason, it is naturally up to them to get their sums right and be able to justify it.
The “oh my Dog they are stifling free speech” usual suspects getting worked up about it are idiots.
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Wrong! The cost of defending and “justifying” a public disclosure of cost increases is more than enough to stifle free speech. You are the idiot for not knowing this or worse for knowing it and covering reality up with your propaganda.
Both you and MattB are incompetent and clueless about what it takes to operate a business.
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You’re not good at rational argument MarkD. Why don’t you resort to gratuitous abuse?
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Speaking of incompetent and clueless…….Oh Hi John!
Funny John Brookes, I gave up on you ever understanding rational argument. It is the smelly Cat that accused (gratuitously) people of being idiots.
So besides offering a spacer here, do you have a rational comment on why this potential fine would or would stifle free speech?
I bet not.
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Greg Combett was “answering questions” on Triple J 107.5 in the last Half hour.
I called three times and each time told the operator that I had a question about the need for a carbon tax to address global warming when in actuality we were seeing declining global temperatures world wide. Each time I was “put on hold” and then hung up on.
None of the questions were about the science behind global warming. I think I just got censored.
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Censorship…..
It’s the COMMUNIST WAY.
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“Companies can incur fines of $1.1 million per breach and private entities could pay $220,000 per breach if found guilty of deceptive and misleading conduct under the Australian Consumer Law.”
is fair and reasonable. Hopefully any prosecution would be based upon deceptive and misleading conduct not based upon simply accurately reflecting the impact of the tax. I’ve seen nothing to suggest the latter (other than this blog of course).
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Enjoy this moment MattyB. It may be the only time you can state a plain fact without being downvoted by the mob.
I was surprised that the magic 1.1 million dollar figure stems not from the evil carbon tax but from a generic fraud provision clause of the ACL that pre-dates the CEF bill by over 18 months and which had a similarly worded ancestor in the Trade Practices Act of 1974. The only thing that has been updated is the fine price per penalty unit.
The sting in the tail is all about the enforcement. Pollies can put laws on the books all day long and they don’t mean a thing until people in spiffy blue uniforms carrying guns turn up to your business to enforce them. Selective enforcement of the law is a characteristic of tyranny. We saw this in the famous case of the Thomsons when they voiced concerns about the CPRS, so will we see it again played out across the country? We ought to know the answer by the end of the year, perhaps even the end of this month.
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Sure matty; there are a myriad of Acts and sections of Acts ready to trap the unwary business trying to make a buck under the CO2 tax. The COMPETITION AND CONSUMER ACT 2010 is a good place to start since the ACCC will be enforcing good behaviour by business under the new CO2 tax regime with the COMPETITION AND CONSUMER ACT 2010 as one of the main whips to enforce conformity.
Section 2C of the COMPETITION AND CONSUMER ACT 2010 is informative; this section defines what is NOT a business so as to not come under the auspices of the ACT. Sadly, only government activities are to be regarded as NOT being a business. And since business is NOT defined by making money any activity such as standing on a street corner and berating the CO2 tax may arguably bring you under the ACT.
So, for all those out there who thought Finkelstein was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.
How does that sit with your expectations of reasonableness matty?
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So Mattb what would you say if I said the university sources who overstate the threat of carbon pollution should face fines of $1.1 million, and the “private entities” up to $220,000. You’d say that was fine eh? You’d say of course all the universities could make their data and methods known in full and have a complete audit trail to show their statements would stand up in a court of law, and it would be fair too, right, for the scientists in question to fund their own QC’s to defend themselves.
And would you also say that the announcement of this law would not immediately affect the productivity of researchers greatly either?
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I would be happy for any academic who was found to deliberately manipulate data and produce false results to push a particular barrow to be punished to the full extent of any applicable law. Why wouldn’t I.
Here’s UWA’s misconduct policy.
http://www.research.uwa.edu.au/staff/research-policy/procedures
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Too right Matt.
Slightly on topic, but do you remember the discussion about the price increase of a bottle of Coke? Now might be a good time to check how accurate the predictions of the “skeptics” here were about the price increase.
And now drifting way off topic, so that I can be misquoted later, the price at our local Coles of a 4-pack of Monster went from ~$9 to $10.50 a few days ago – about the time the carbon tax came in. Coincidence? I think not.
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@rse-covering and methods of distributing white-wash … that’s all that that policy describes.
How can one tell? Easy. Read the published research papers and the PR campaigns by e.g. Lewandoofsky.
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Let’s see how fast and quietly the Labor gubberment can back out of this carbon tax.. BTW, according to the Australian Constitution, gubberment is only able to make Statute Law (Maritime) as per section 76:
Any Statute Law (Act of Parliament) that attempts to supersede the tenets of Common Law is void, in law (Ultra-Vires). Because Common Law is the law-of-the-land, and supreme.
Statute Law is merely the law-of-the-sea, inapplicable on land, and subservient to Common Law in all cases. Historically much has been written about this, in particular by Sir Edward Coke, and Lysander Spooner.
‘Nuff said..?
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This is completely wrong. An act of parliament is superior to common law! You have things completely back to front.
What is supreme is the constitution. No act of parliament can breach the constitution. Acts of parliament either replace or clarify elements of the common law all the time. For example, the Mabo decision 20 years ago found that a Native Title existed in Common Law, but it was the Native Title Act (1993) that provided a legal frame work for native title claims and resolution of disputes.
Your statement couldn’t be more wrong.
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You’re still relying on “Acts”,IE – Statute Law. Common Law was granted by the Magna Carta, reiterated and backed by the Constitution. The is no Statute that we can be held by which we do not consent.
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What on earth are you going on about? The Australian constitution itself is a a statute, it is an Act of the U.K. Parliament.
Every single day you are made to do things because of statutory law, whether or not you agree with it. For example, if you walk down the shop and buy a bottle of Coke, you have to pay the Goods and Services Tax which is a tax instituted by an Act of the federal parliament.
It doesn’t matter what you do, as soon as you hand over money for that Coke, 1/11th of the cost MUST be sent to the A.T.O. as GST.
Whether or not you think you should pay taxes on petrol, alcohol, or tobacco topics, ALL of the laws that place taxes on these items are because of statutorial law that you can’t ignore simply because you don’t agree with them.
Clearly you have no understanding of Australia’s legal system.
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Section 8, subsection 12 of the Imperial Acts Application Act states “That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction,are illegal and void”.
This means all on-the-spot fines are illegal and, you have the constitutional right to ignore them. You can only be convicted in a Court of Competent Jurisdiction, as ruled by the High Court Forge V ASIC 2006. The statutes that override them are Ultra Vires – beyond law and illegal. Judges must be reminded of this.
Common Law is based on those “traditions & customs” of our land. First specifically written down in the Magna Carta, 1215.
It sets the scene for peaceful co-existence. In essence Common Law says that the peace shall not be breached, and that no harm, injury or loss to any other individual is acceptable behaviour. No harm shall be done to anyone’s life, liberty or property. Many Statutes today do exactly the opposite.
And that says it all.
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I think you’ll find Olaf, that when the representatives of the people (the parliament) pass a law, that means that we consent.
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@Adam Smith
“Clearly you have no understanding of Australia’s legal system”
If I said to you ‘I am not a person but I have a person’ and you do not know what I mean by that then I would politely suggest the above quote applies to you as well.
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All very exciting, they’ve actually supplied us with the rope. I just hope you Aussies make it count when the time comes for a reckoning. These people are crooks and frauds, the world over their methods not unlike that of the mafia. Think of this as the real beginning of the end, the tie break that changes the balance of the match. I still think, with my limited knowledge of Aussie politics, that somehow the media in your country holds the key. They have been hijacked by interests other than that of the average Australian.
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Well I completely agree with you that Rupert Murdoch, who owns most of Australia’s newspapers, does not reflect the interests of the average Australian. In fact, he became an American because it meant he could buy up a lot of U.S. media organisations.
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Yea you are right Smithy thats why he out sells all the other major dailies because the average Australian does not like what he rights.
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Big deal, newspapers are dying.
In fact, The Australian alone loses something like $200 million a year.
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Please state source????
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ceetee takes possession.
Smith intercepts.
Smith passes to Smith.
Ball on Adam now.
Adam Smith passes back to Smith.
Passes to… OH! Intercepted now by Smith who is RUNNING THE OTHER WAY!!!
Smith is running as fast as his legs can carry him!
The rest of the team doesn’t stand a chance of catching up!
This is a spectacular run from Smith! Approaching the posts… will he…
he goes for the strike….
OH! OHHHH!!! IT’S AN OWN GOAL!
IT’S AN OWN GOAL FOR THE SMITH TEAM!
The stadium is in absolute uproar.
Argued against the importance of the point his team had fought so hard to make.
Team Smith have no chance now.
There is going to be a long evening of soul searching ahead for Team Smith.
Their Carbon World Cup hopes dashed by a split second mistake by Smith.
Number 14 jerseys will be burning in the streets of Canberra tonight.
The crowd cannot believe it.
I tell you, Tony, I’d love to be a fly on the wall when Coach Gillard gives that team a Stern review tonight.
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The annual losses of The Australian are interesting. Now that News have separated their newspapers from the more profitable parts of their business, will they be able to keep The Australian going?
I stopped reading it some time ago, because of its relentless agenda. You’d think that they could evaluate every issue on its merits, but no, they can’t. Everything has to be filtered through Rupert’s tired old ideology. Its so boring.
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This is persistent rubbish. In fact Murdoch publishes 32 per cent of all Australia’s newspapers. Parliamentary library figures suggest News’s share of circulation – as distinct from ownership – is 68 per cent in the capital cities and 77 per cent of the Sunday market. That is, Murdoch has about 1/3 of the papers but about 2/3s of the readers. So he does “reflect the interests of the average Australian.”
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Actually, Murdoch only owns 30% of Australian newspapers, which is hardly “most of Australian newspapers”.
But then, when did Team Smith ever let actual facts get in the way of a good propaganda campaign?
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But he owns 68% of actual newspapers in terms of the physical documents actually produced. If there was a big pile of newspapers being every newspaper printed in a year in Australia… 68% of them would be Murdoch’s.
Lets say I had two cola companies… Coke and Pepsi, and coke’s market share in Australia was 75%. Would you argue if I said “Coke produces 75% of Australia’s cola”. Or would you tell me Coke only owns 50% of Australia’s cola.
Given every newspaper produced is purchased by a consumer, then actually Murdoch owns practically no newspapers at all! He doesn’t own mine – I bought it off him.
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MattB stoops to Reductio ad absurdium in a failed attempt to defend Team Smith from (yet another) foot-in-mouth moment.
Even better, he doesn’t even realise how stupid he sounds.
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More misinformation. Murdoch only owns about 30% of the actual newspaper titles. The fact that about 70%, and increasing, of the papers now sold are from those titles speaks to the quality of those Newspapers. The continued decline of the main competition, “Fewfacts”, shows that the loonie lefty view of life is a declining view within the Australian community. This is also reflected in the polls that show a simlilar decline in support for the socialist wealth destroying policies of this incompetent government.
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Ct, you are correct. The Australian media is why Tony Abbott doesn’t condem the junk science outright. Unfortunately if he did he’d be condemned by our media and the average apathetic Australian voter could see him as extreme and not worthy of being in government. Do not underestimate the power of the media to influence democracy. This is a good example why our existing government is so keen to restrict the freedom of the press as Jo has pointed out recently.
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http://forecast.uchicago.edu/Projects/archer.2009.ann_rev_tail.pdf
And it is not a tax but an ETS with fixed price permits for the first three years.
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Hey Maxine,
ETS eh!
Tell me how much trading will be done in the first three years. None whatsoever.
OK, we’ll pay your game.
It’s a Tax on consumption, user pays, and hey isn’t that the opposite of what Labor once stood for.
Everyone call it a Carbon tax, the Prime Minister, all her Ministers and well, even you Maxine, even you called it a Carbon tax.
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Oh Maxine, any apology yet about Natural Gas.
And yes people, that is Maxine, and note what nice things he says about Joanne.
Tony.
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Well, not true! If a business buys excess permits, but finds their liability goes down (i.e. because they find ways to cut their emissions), they can sell the permits back to the government and thus get their money back.
But you are right that permits can’t be traded between companies until July 1, 2015.
Wrong. If you want to characterise it as a tax, it is a tax on PRODUCTION of CO2-e emissions.
If you want to talk about consumption taxes, what about the Goods and Services Tax that will raise about $52 billion this financial year? That’s $1000 million every week!
I agree that the Opposition has been excellent at characterising it as a “tax” because taxes sound scary.
But if you want to be completely correct, it is a fixed priced Emissions Trading Scheme, that shifts to a market price (with upper and lower limits) form July 1, 2015.
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You mean that they have to pay for the right to pump CO2 into the atmosphere? That is outrageous!
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Like your breathing “pumps CO2 into the atmosphere”? OUTRAGEOUS INDEED! Pay for “the right”? Are you going to support a credit back when Nature happily reabsorbs this “pumped” CO2?
Naw of course you won’t. You LIKE forcing people to donate to the UN.
Sorry, where is that rational argument you pretend to offer? Or is this another snarky spacer comment?
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Hey Dog, get a haircut!!
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Let’s see how long it remains fixed and, if it plummets like the US market..
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The price will be fixed for the first three years, but then it will shift to a semi-floating price.
The United States doesn’t have an emissions trading scheme at the national level, but California’s emissions trading scheme starts on January 1, 2013.
Keep in mind that California has a bigger economy than Australia.
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Well, it did. I’m not sure it will in a few years. The Governor of California, Jerry “Fruitfly” Brown, was put in office by the unions. Companies are leaving California in droves, and monthly tax revenue dropped by 22.5%, Feb 2011 vs Feb 2012. Leftists are death to any economy they fasten themselves onto.
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Adam
There’s also the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative of whom Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont participate. New Jersey dropped out.
The aim of the RGGI was to cut emissions from the power sector 10% by 2018. Emissions are already down 23% and those states are also faring better than average, economically.
Cool eh?
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Yes, down 23% because the economy has tanked! Reduce economic activity, reduce emissions. Why, all we have to do is stop doing anything, we’ll meet the CO2 targets in nothing flat!!
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I live in New Hampshire and was very active last year in the effort to get us out of RGGI. That failed, but this year we passed a bill that defangs most of RGGI. Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to keep up with things as well this year, even my RGGIWatch web site above has been neglected.
One of the reasons New Hampshire does pretty well is that we don’t have an income or sales tax (or VAT). We pay our legislators $100/year.
Of course, it’s the recession and natural gas fracking projects that have cut emissions so much. Tourism is a big business, some some of the manufacturing jobs that left (or didn’t come in) haven’t impacted us that much.
If we’re fairing better than average, then I’d say the average really sucks.
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And, it’s not just in the RGGI region, for the US as a whole, we may fall back to 1990 CO2 emission levels. See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/02/us-co2-emissions-may-drop-to-1990-levels-this-year/
RGGI deserves none of the credit.
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Interesting that you have to cherry pick the science to find long residence times for CO2.
Or you could look at this Residence Times
But why do I bother – when has evidence and logic ever had any effect on your thinking???
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And just to be crystal clear – here is the close up image
You know Maxine – your just too easy, however it all ways gives me a good feeling to point out how cluelessly inept your reasoning is.
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Just a remark: the residence time if any CO2 molecule (whatever its source) in the atmosphere is about 5 years, as 150 GtC/year is exchanged between the atmosphere and the other reservoirs. But that is only temperature driven back and forth exchange over the seasons (at a rate of roughly 20% of the amount in the atmosphere), without any influence on the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere at the end of a year. The only point which counts is how much CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and that is currently only 4 GtC from the 800 GtC present in the atmosphere. With that speed, the “adjustment half life time”, that is the time needed to remove halve of the extra CO2 above equilibrium, would be about 40 years. Far less than the hundreds of years from the IPCC, but far more than the 5 years residence time.
Thus the short residence time is about exchange rates, but that says next to nothing about how long it takes to remove an extra injection of CO2 into the atmosphere…
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Ferdinand
I give up.
Why don’t you go back to square one with a big sheet of paper and start to list as many CO2 inputs and outputs as you can identify.
In on one side and out on the other.
Next try to assign an approximate quantity to each.
There will be many factors that you cant quantify , don’t worry, neither can anyone else.
The sum total of ALL HUMAN ACTIVITY will give CO2 inputs somewhere near the bottom of your list so you can strike it off.
Now go the one about the 98% of all CO2 being in the oceans and figure out how you are going to stop the ocerans from getting warmer.
Yes, it’s a big problem isn’t it?
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KinkyKeith,
Easy to do in simple math:
Increase in the atmosphere = human emissions + (NE1 + NE2 + NE3 + … + NEx) – (NS1 + NS2 + NS3 + … + NSx)
where NE1…NEx are all known and unknown natural emissions and NS1…NSx are all known and unknown natural sinks.
Increase in the atmosphere is measured over the past 50 years with high accuracy.
Human emissions are calculated from fossil fuels sales (taxes!) with reasonable accuracy (maybe somewhat underestimated).
Thus filling in the knowns:
4 GtC = 8 GtC + (NE1 + NE2 + NE3 + … + NEx) – (NS1 + NS2 + NS3 + … + NSx)
or
(NE1 + NE2 + NE3 + … + NEx) – (NS1 + NS2 + NS3 + … + NSx) = – 4 GtC
Or with other words, all natural emissions together are smaller than all natural sinks together, already 50 years long. I know that for sure, without any knowledge of any individual natural flow in or out the atmosphere. Thus nature as a whole is and was a net sink for CO2 over the past 50 years, thus added nothing, nada, zero CO2 to the increase in the atmosphere and the human emissions are the sole cause of the increase.
That 98% of all CO2 is in the oceans is not of the slightest interest, as long as it stays there. How much flows in and out of the oceans is not of the slightest interest, as long as the ins and outs are equal. The only item that increases or decreases the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is the difference between the ins and outs at the end of the year…
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Ferdinand, of course, is correct. Note he’s not a warmist by a long shot. He simply understands basic physics in this case.
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Just for YOU “Ferdinand Engelbeen”………..
Imagine one kilometre of atmosphere that you want to clean up. For the sake of the discussion, imagine you could walk along it.
The first 770 metres are Nitrogen.
The next 210 metres are Oxygen.
That’s 980 metres of the 1 kilometre. Just 20 metres to go.
The next 10 metres are water vapour. Just 10 metres left to go.
9 metres are argon. 1 metre left out of 1 kilometre.
A few gases make up the first bit of that last metre.
The last 38 centimetres of the kilometre – that’s carbon dioxide.
A bit over one foot.
97% is produced by Mother Nature. It’s natural. It has always been in the atmosphere otherwise plants couldn’t grow.
Out of our journey of one kilometre, there are just 12 millimetres left. About half an inch. Just over a centimetre.
That’s the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.
And of those 12 millimetres Australia puts in .18 of a millimetre.
Less than the thickness of a hair. Out of a kilometre.
So in every kilometre of atmosphere, complete with green-house gases regulating the climate – in every kilometre reflecting back and retaining the sun’s heat on earth, just .18 of one millimetre is contributed by Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Now gillard’s Great Green carbon DIOXIDE (PLANT FOOD) Tax is designed to reduce Australia’s contribution by 5%. That’s what it’s designed to do. gillard wants to reduce our point .18 of one millimetre by 5%.
That’s what all the pain is about.
It is simply madness. It’s not based on science. It’s a tax. Finally, a tax on the air we breathe.
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Angry
July 3, 2012 at 5:26 pm
Nice comparison, only 2 remarks:
– “97% is produced by Mother Nature”, in reality 97% is circulated every year by Mother Nature, 3% per year is added as extra by humans. A huge difference, as that ultimately led to a 30% increase in the atmosphere.
– I agree that the carbon tax is pure madness in a country that lives from coal for its electricity generation. That is economical suicide and only will push more factories and jobs (and coal exports) to China and India, without any measurable effect on climate…
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Come on Ferdinand. You are fighting against zombies, and you can’t win. There is no point trying to convince the denizens here of anything. There are some who agree with you, and know that kinky is talking rubbish, but they won’t come out and say it (except perhaps Wes George).
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If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck……..
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Anything collected by men with guns, working for the government, is a tax. Doesn’t matter what it is otherwise called.
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Wonder if Amanda knows you freelance at night AS
Wonder if Alan knows you freelance at night TE
Both your verbal behaviours have been reasonably pleasant since your recent employment!
But the interruption is the same! May just start on PI and CS tomorrow with a letter to AK!
Tweet Rupert!
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Some form of ‘global warming’ impost as been in the wind for at least 7-8 years.
Why have business interests been so quiet for so long?
On the other hand, I think The ALP’s carbon (dioxide) tax (price) will prove to be its nemesis, at least in its current form, and that can’t be a bad outcome.
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Just reminding an old joke:
———-
It was October and the Indians on a remote reservation asked their new Chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a Chief in a modern society he had never been taught the old secrets. When he looked at the sky he couldn’t tell what the winter was going to be like.
Nevertheless, to be on the safe side he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared. But being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, “Is the coming winter going to be cold?”
“It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold,” the meteorologist at the weather service responded.
So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more firewood in order to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again. “Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?”
“Yes,” the man at National Weather Service again replied, “it’s going to be a very cold winter.”
The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of firewood they could find. Two weeks later the Chief called the National Weather Service again. “Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?”
“Absolutely,” the man replied. “It’s looking more and more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters ever.”
“How can you be so sure?” the Chief asked.
The weatherman replied, “The Indians are collecting firewood like crazy.”
———–
Well, it seems now the australians are collecting firewood …;-)
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@ Adam Smith
How does Gina Reinhardt fit into all of this? What’s your opinion of her foray?
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I believe Gina has all the right to her profits, regardless the gubberment’s intervention and cajolimg. She’s just famous for being rich, therefore a gubberment victim. Unfair..
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I believe Gina has the right to pay as much tax as our democratically elected gubberment says she should. If she has a problem with that, she should take it to the High Court.
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I have no problem with Reinhart investing in Fairfax as long as it remains editorially independent and so long as opinion pieces and news stories are left distinct from each other.
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Gina would run the papers for her political benefit, and the quality and sales of the papers would decline as a result. Thus the share price would fall and other shareholders would lose money.
She should be honest and mount a full takeover bid so that its only her money being lost.
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“The Tax Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken Begins”
This is exactly how drug dealing and other nefarious activities take place. It’s all about using coded interpretations.
The Gillard government are using techniques more familiar with crime than government.
It’s only a matter of time before Gillard renames taxes as “sweeties” and anybody that continues to call it taxes will be fined and sent to jail. She is the modern day equivalent of the mob boss.
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How many Klingon Darseks do you get for a European Merkel?
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Nein! 😀
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One big whopping Drachma up the KYBER PASS !!!!
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.
We Klingons do not trade with the Merkelions.
It is a matter of honour!!
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What about Gilliards Klingons???
I wont be touching them!
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Why did Juliar cross the road?
Because she saw a vote in it!!
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@Adam Smith
You have’nt answered my question. Also, what exactly, is wrong with becoming American?
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A GUIDE TO TEAM SMITH
.
For those of you new to this site, please allow me to explain about “Adam Smith” aka Team Smith.
Team Smith is not a person, it’s a group all sitting around a table, operating via a shared wireless router, or similar setup, all posting under the same nic – “Adam Smith”. This was established conclusively just before Team Smith got banned last time.
Team Smith’s only purpose and function is to hijack the thread. They will never actually directly answer anything. Any and every post you direct to them simply becomes an excuse for them to carpet-bomb the thread and bury it under a pile of drivel.
Team Smith’s modus operandi is as follows:
Team Smith will state black is white.
Someone responds that black is black and white is white.
Team Smith reply (in 500 words or more) that this ignores all the shades of grey.
Somebody points out that grey is a mixture of black and white.
Team Smith reply (in 750 words minimum), declaring the respondent is simply being abusive, ignoring the issue and discriminating against green and purple.
A frustrated reader will ask what the hell has green and purple got to do with it.
Team Smith will post a cut and paste twenty page reply triumphantly declaring this proves the respondent is intellectually defective and that obviously this demonstrates conclusively that white is black.
And then if anybody is foolish enough (as I have been in the past) to point out that Team Smith has just gone round in a great big circle, they will just lead you around it all over again.
The only measurable end result is exactly what appears above for the second half of this thread; a complete inconsequential carpet-bombing hijack of the entire thread.
.
The ONLY way to deal with Team Smith is simply to ignore them.
You are never going to accomplish anything worthwhile by replying.
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I so want to give you a thumbs up MV. Except to say, there is good target practice material there for those who can stay cool. But if the audacious bluster of false victory raises your blood pressure, then wish the Team well (when they finish school :-)), and don’t take the bait. Jo
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Thank you so much, Memoryvault, that’s given me a good handle on them. I have never engaged and will ignore them. 🙂
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Yes, you are quite right … but think of the pixels they are wasting … 🙁
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Well, come back from two weeks work away and the primate enclosure is rockin!
Had a wander around today and sky was still up there. Rang a mate in Whyalla and it was still there. Strangely enough the coal mining industry hasn’t imploded either??
Ahh, but we have to now wait for someone to squeeze a python or something don’t we?? The allegedly shadow treasurer said so on the telly tonight.
Got the best laugh though when i saw this site, as usual. A couple of posts ago and the OP is about how the Fibs plan to repeal the Carbon Price? Yup, you should get ALLLLL that in writing given whose leading the wabble at the moment.
Hmmmm…..maybe a tissue paper led economic boom to come as all the spittle has to be wiped off computer screens around the nation in the next few weeks??
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Interesting comment Cat.
My current contract involves reducing costs for a company that assembles (under licence) a specific piece of million dollar plus machinery that enjoys a monopoly position of necessity in the coal mining industry.
Over the last six months their monthly order book has dropped from 150 to 80.
In the same period they have averaged around 12 cancellations a month, and about the same number of deferrals on delivery.
As a result the company has had to lay off around 20 of its workforce. So far.
Feedback from clients and potential clients is almost 100% “uncertainty of the future of the industry”.
.
Unlike explosions, implosions can happen in slow motion.
.
But what the hell would I know?
Unlike you in your leather chair in your ivory tower, I’m only working at the coalface – so to speak.
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Good on yah Mem. Remember to wash the dust off on the way out.
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Love your new chair Catz, you got it from ecochic right?
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Thanks Cat and Tristan.
Since we are talking about ordinary, honest, hard working Australians losing their jobs through no fault of their own – or their employer, it’s good of you both to chime in and demonstrate just how callous you can be about the whole deal.
Or to put it in your vernacular – some bogans lost their jobs – so what!
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MattB – the “jumper man” – would be proud.
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[Or to put it in your vernacular – some bogans lost their jobs – so what!]
Yeah i’m cool with that.
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Aye lad, covered in good quantity dead cow with rain-forest timber nicely turned up for the legs!
Comfy, good to sit in while plooting the imminent demoise of Western cultcha, and have a noice laff as well. Recommended seating for meetings of the Collective think i.
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We (at the coal face) have been ordered by group to cut the costs of mine to market by $100 a tonne over the next 12 months. They’ve already targeted contractors, with a number of large contracts not being renewed. The company I work for has already revised their profits down, and is looking into the viability of the various underground and open cut sites. The cost to operate our draglines has blown out (thanks to the wholesale electricity increases, already >$2 a mWH more than treasury modelled) after 2 days.
Should the marginal sites start to close, we are looking at 2,500 people having to relocate, not to mention the drive in/out workforce. This is just the company I work for.
So good for you Catamon. Nice to see you are happy with displacing families, disrupting the education of primary and secondary school children, and emptying out central Queensland and puttiong pressure on major centres, creating skills and services shortages in remote Australia. To me it’s fairly obvious that you don’t think of the support services that will also go under, or lay off staff, such as catering and contracting services, light vehicle servicing and support, educational facilities with no kids to teach, one shop towns with no customers to service.
Yep, it’s all roses isn’t it?
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Surely $23 per tonne would have been enough if the problem was the carbon tax?
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You are forgetting the compounding effect. Explosives costs increase, because they use electricity to make the phosphate, which is also mined (e.g. Incitec Pivot’s Phosphate Hill in NW Qld). That is then freighted by rail and road to the various plants for processing, which also use electricity.
Draglines use electricity to remove the overburden.
Wash Plants use electricity.
The support services (such as IT) use electricity.
Trains use electricity to move the coal to ports for delivery to various national and international markets.
Then we have the direct CO2 tax cost. 3 sites I look after here are individually listed in the “list of polluters”.
Add to it the MRRT. Fortunately it seems that we won’t be making much of a profit from the sites here.
So John, are you comfortable with the possibility of 1000 families being displaced directly due to the MRRT and the CO2 tax? From one town alone? The roll on effects for regional centres as we get evicted from our company housing, and migrate to the coast again? Are you comfortable with the idea that the support services will also shed staff, close shop and cause the local farmers costs to increase for their services, and the lack of timely delivery of freight and mail for them?
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Is your real name Craig Emerson?
Care to sing a few bars there Cat??
Give up Drongo !! The Game is up !!
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[snip… Cat, clean up your own intellectual droppings. Substantiate your insults – OK]
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Sorry, forgot BA is a protected species.
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Came for the evidentially ironclad scientific defence of the carbon tax,
stayed for the trash talking.
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Some bad ideas are *slow* poison.
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I could have sworn that I saw a MONKEY CAGE in the lab the other day with the name “Catamon” on the identity……….
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The rent seekers from “The Businesses for Clean Energy” consortium (300 members) have come out today in support of the carbon tax. Among them Westpac and AGL who have just lost me as a customer. Who the the other 298?
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The list…
A breakdown of a few:
• Furless (online shop specialising in Vegan makeup brushes and not much else)
• Love.fish (there website is ambiguous but possibly a fish and chip shop or an sustainability consultancy that sells fish and chips )
• Marie-Pierre Cleret (not so much a company as a Physiotherapist in Erskinville )
• Organia Revolutuion (store selling “Elephant dung journals & writing paper in Murwillumbah)
• “I ran the wrong way” (possibly a gift shop )
• Byron Bay International Film Festival
• Unfolding Futures (possibly a husband and wife team of motivational speakers )
• WordCraft Global (some type of consultancy which teaches you how to write documents
• NIDA
• Shaunie P Music
• Telstra Shop Balina (note Telstra Australia haven’t signed up – just the Balina shop)
• The Dentist at 70 Pitt Street
• The Family Wellness Centre
• Young District Anglican Ministry
• Cellian (don’t appear to exist based on an online search)
• Damask Perfumery (shop in Woolloongabba)
• tripple0gear (don’t appear to actually exit)
• Jason Corporation (appears to be a house in Neutral Bay)
Awe inspiring bunch eh?
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Combet, barely more than five minutes ago on Q and A, when asked a question about small business and how will they address the rising price of electricity mentioned that it was almost nothing, and for businesses consuming 10MWH of power a week, which he quoted as the average said that the increase would only be around $5 a week.
And believe me, this is a man who as Government Minister has people who will tell him what he needs to know, so he can tell the people.
The average rise so far announced has been around 3 cents per KWH, and that has flowed through to the Middle ranking businesses and the large businesses as well.
so, at 3 cents per KWH extra, then an average consumption of 10MWH (which is 10,000KWH) comes in at an extra $300, not $5 Mr Combet.
You may have accepted the Science, but really, your Maths is crap. How did you ever get out of High School.
If I can get the video of it later, I’ll post it.
Damned liar.
Tony.
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Good points Tony, Combet was swallowing his adams apple faster than you could say 0.000005%.
But…
The Opposition really annoyed me as well.
This is what worries me! The Opposition will continue down the same stupid inescapable UN Green Path as the ALP.
Where the hell is the sanity!!
The Opposition still proposes 5% cuts to some bullshit level of CO2 emmisions that doesnt matter anyway!
CO2 is not a pollutant …why did Sophie Mirrabella not ask that question to Buddy Holly…errr..Big Mac Combo?
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I take exception to that comparison. Holly is a legend, Combet is a dipstick.
Rock On Peggy Sue!!!
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Be honest, you are smart enough to know that not all of this cost increase is due to the carbon price/tax/ets whatever. About HALF of the cost increases are being caused by the cost of permits, the other half other things such as infrastructure investment.
He said $5 a week, i.e. $260 a year! Surely a small business can pass that cost on? That is what they are meant to do, and then consumers pay slightly higher prices, on average about 0.7 cents for every $1 they spend.
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Really? $260 per year, eh? Note the quote said that consumption for the average business is 10MWh PER WEEK. That’s an extra $300 PER WEEK, not $5 per week. Trouble with math, much?
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More like Team Smith has trouble with facts actually D.J.
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Adam “Don’t let the facts get in the way of an attck” Smith strikes again…
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“Adam Smith”,
Obviously you failed PRIMNARY SCHOOL MATHEMATICS…..
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Not the only untruth,halftruth he got away with, talkback overnight said that he stated when the tax comes in on diesel in two years, the impost will be 6 cents a litre. As pointed out by an interstate driver a 19 cent rebate on diesel for the transport industry introduced by the Howard government when the GST came in has already been reduced to 13 cents and will be removed entirely by 2014.
So between now and 2014 cost of diesel for the transport industry will rise 19 cents per litre not only the 6 cents Combet stated last night, and 25 cents more per litre than when the Rudd government was voted in.
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On “Q & A”, Combet, regarding the carbon tax, said, “… what has been implemented now, is asking the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the economy to buy a permit for each tonne of greenhouse gas that they produce.”
If someone asks me to do something, I have the option of refusing. So we can take it that the carbon tax is voluntary! What a relief!
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I have come to realise that this has really taken on a religious tone.
When challenged, many people don’t know quite what to say. Either the reaction is violent, or it is a blank faced stare. That is usually followed by “well I am not a scientist so I just believe what the science tells me”. Most of the time they don’t have a clue as to “what the science says” other than the odd headline they have seen or heard.
However if the subject is footy, They don’t insist that they have to consult a football coach in order to answer. If the subject is cars, they never answer “Ï’m not a mechanic so I don’t know whether or not a Holden is better than a Ford”. If the subject is the economy, they never say ‘Well I just can’t express an opinion without consulting an economist”. Just bring up the subject of money or interest and they don’t say, “Ï’m sorry, I’m not a banker”.
But just mention climate change and they are likely to say “You aren’t a climate scientist so you don’t know what you are talking about”. An undergraduate degree in science isn’t enough. One must be a “climate scientist” even though there really is, strictly speakiing, no such thing. There may be some with a science degree and a major in “climate science” but such a degree is so new that the holder is likely not to be shaving yet.
Funny that, yet it doesn’t take a scientist to read a thermometer, or read a rain gauge, or watch a flood, or read a comparison of floods, hurricanes, or ice in ages past.
But don’t dare suggest that the whole thing is such nonsense that it is a huge swindlle. It really is similar to blurting out “God is dead”or something.
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Too true.
Regrettably.
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This was true a few years ago but it isn’t true any longer. Some universities are now offering degrees in climate science, including Ph.D.s.
Here’s one for Princeton:
http://www.princeton.edu/cics/graduate-degree-program/
Here’s one for a university in Switzerland:http://www.swissuniversity.ch/unibe/phd-of-science-in-climate-sciences/phd-program-description?id=1229&disciplineId=3&phd=true
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Phat Head Disease
Piled Higher & Deeper
Perfectly Heinous Deceipt
Prolonged Histerical Deception
Pathetic Handwaving Delinquent
Plain Helpless Delusion
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I once met a gentleman at a conference by the name of Ian Wentt.
His business card was straightforward enough: I. Wentt, PhD.
But he held a doctorate in Urban Development.
So his friends called him I Wentt PhUD,
Seriously, I couldn’t make this up
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So Adam, when you cherry-picked that quote from Rod’s comment, why did you not include the sentance immediately after which said:
Was it because if you added that part then your comment actually proves Rod’s point?
Once again a reading comprehension and commitment to facts failuer by Team Smith.
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And a BIG part of those degrees will be propaganda studies.
And of course, they will serve their apprenticeships under the likes of Hansen and Man, learning how to manipulate raw data to make it follow THE TREND !
More computer models on the way !! Yeeehaw !!!!
Just in time for the next BIG SCARE in several year’s time.
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What is unclear is the Constitutional basis for imposing a tax, or any “regulation” for that matter on the atmosphere above Australia. Effectively the atmosphere is a “global commons” for everyone, as a natural right to use (hard not to!), and it isn’t “owned” by any nation state to impose taxes thereon for what anyone puts in or takes out (effectively it’s a resource everyone has a natural birthright to use, without regulation).
This “carbon tax” effectively says everyone is a polluter, from humans to termites, with the “worst polluters” to be taxed most. It defies common sense, but then we know it’s Socialist politics on steroids, not science. It should be called the Gravy Train Swindle Tax, because that’s exactly what it is for the parasitic class.
The Consitution deals with maritime matters, water and land, but air or atmosphere never rate a mention. We can and do regulate use of the air space for navigation of aeroplanes, which has similarities to maritime law where there is a right of passage (other than over declared prohibited for military or other purposes). There is national jurisdiction, as set down under the Law of the Sea and the Offshore Consitutional Settlement, which deals with who owns what in the sea and under the seabed outside the territorial limit (3 nautical miles), which extends to 200 mautical miles from the baseline.
Moreover, no-where in the world is carbon dioxide declared a “pollutant”. All the tax measures use carbon dioxide as the base, and other “worse” greenhouse gases (other than water vapour, being the lions share) are rated and taxed accordingly. We regulate air quality for real pollutants, like noxious gases or particulates. But never to call a specific grab-bag of naturally occuring trace gases “pollution”. Surely this is open to a consitutional challenge on several grounds. Anyone have any specific understanding if a challenge would have traction?
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You have an incredibly limited understanding of the powers of the constitution. Section 51ii gives the federal parliament an almost limitless taxation power.
If the federal parliament wanted to introduce a tax on red cars, or yellow buttons, or orange juice it could do so using that power.
If it wanted to institute a new tax on helium baloons it could do that too.
Clearly you don’t understand the constitution very well.
WHAT!? The bills say no such thing. Why don’t you read the Clean Energy Acts before making things up?
Well what the hell is the GST which raises $1000 million a week?
Why do they need to be mentioned!? The corporations power gives the government all the power it needs to institute taxes on anything with respect to corporations. END OF STORY.
This has nothing to do with taxation.
Well this is hilarious because Australia’s adherence to maritime law is determined by maritime treaties that are based on the external affairs power.
Completely irrelevant. The constitution grants the federal government a TAXATION POWER, it could put a new tax on shampoo if it wanted to.
This bares no relation to anything!
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I call cheating Adam! Its clear you actually know something about stuff, which disqualifies you from commenting on this blog.
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Yeh and he knows the difference between “bares” and “bears”.
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It must be said, Adam is definitely contravening the gentleman’s agreement that exists on this blog.
Maybe he just doesn’t know, but the ratio of contrarian to science-backed posts must remain at 10:1.
Otherwise the pile-on just doesn’t work the way it should. :-/
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Tristan, Adam Smith already admitted he knows nothing about science. So what does that do to your imaginary ratio? Does that make him a contrarian? Or are you confused again?
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Tristan, generally 9 out of 10 comments here are the science backed type (you know the people who ask for evidence). We usually can’t find enough fans of AGW to raise that ratio – so few of them can reason, that sooner or later they fail the bar – they argue from authority, ignorance, ad hom. Shame really. I mean look at the hate filled babble of damo?
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Joanne
Seeing as you care about ad homs and hate-filled speech and like to follow scientific practice, how about we sample this blog for negative posts? We can look at the ratio of mocking/insulting comments from those on the contrarian side vs those on the climate scientists side. 🙂
(If you really have a valid complaint worth pursuing please send them here: email the moderators at: support AT joannenova.com.au .Please get back on the topic) CTS
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Canada and the US have it officially on toxic/pollution lists: The EPA in the US http://blog.heritage.org/2009/12/07/epa-formally-declares-co2-a-dangerous-pollutant/
and Canada:http://climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=559:canadian-government-must-remove-carbon-dioxide-from-toxic-list&catid=1:latest
I don’t know if any other countries have made it official on toxic/pollution lists, but stating that it is a pollutant as following, does make it official – except that I can’t get the link to page, comes up 404: http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/climatechange/responses/economic/carbontax.htm
A carbon tax is a tax on energy sources which emit carbon dioxide. It is a pollution tax, which some economists favour because they tax a ‘bad’ rather than a ‘good’ (such as income). Carbon taxes address a negative externality. Externalities arise when an individual production or consumption activity imposes costs or benefits on others. In market transactions, these costs and benefits are not normally reflected in the prices involved in the transaction, or taken into account in the transaction decision” from: http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/07/06/carbon-tax-australia-2011/
Meanwhile, back in reality, just for interest it was a page that came up when I was looking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study
About Common Law v statute legislation – you’re quite right. In Britain if a ‘policeperson’ says you’re breaking the law, you could ask that this law be produced. If the reply you get is one created by an act of parliament you can warn that passing off acts/statutes as the Law (Common Law) is a fraudulent offence, in Common Law. Common Law is the only law of the land in England.
Quite a good overview of the history: http://www.britsattheirbest.com/freedom/f_british_constitution.htm
Don’t know how it is in Australia, but there is a two facetted police force in England, the Common Law policeman/woman and the police officer. The police officer is an enforcer for the Corporation UK – one does not have to put oneself under this jurisdiction. Unfortunately, those trained now as “police officers” appear to not know the difference..
Interestingly, judges do: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/857455-judge-arrested-as-british-constitution-group-storms-court
By the way, the problem I see with these groups in Britain is that they appear to accept the legitimacy of the Corporation’s language and much time is spent on finding ways to bring Common Law back in dialogue with them, however, I think that since the language used is deliberately designed to entrap into accepting jurisidiction in ignorance, this is simply fraud in Common Law.
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Let’s not take our eye off the ball and get distracted by quasi-legal minutiae. The goal is no government enforcement of a price on carbon dioxide – preferably, though not necessarily, by repealing the ETS without replacement.
But wait! Team Smith is poised to spring into action to inform us yet again that repealing the ETS will be IMPOSSIBLE. Yes, a piece of paper is impossible to ignore. Oh how the paper-pushers must get off on that idea! Team Smith will be ensmuggified by telling us AGAIN that the ETS (1) creates emissions permits as PROPERTY and (2) they must therefore be BOUGHT back by the government, and (3) they must be bought AT THE FLOOR PRICE of $15/t. All total legal fictions.
(1) You see if I want to build a racing car, and I build a car that runs like a tortoise, it does not matter how much I say it is a racing car because there is a functional definition of a racing car that imposes performance requirements my junk heap can’t meet. So it is with these alleged property rights in the emissions permits. Is it not the case that at the end of every year the emitting entity is required to surrender the permits back to the carbon trading commissars? Is it not the case that the concept of property in every western nation is characterised by the free enjoyment and disposal of the property? Is it not the case then that a piece of property you are legally obliged to return to the provider cannot have been your private property to begin with? Private property? Pull the other one!
(2) Is it not the case that since the permits have value only because an onerous law of GHG regulation has been created, then the removal of that requirement would mean no money needs to change hands for the emissions to proceed unencumbered? Compensation may be deserved, but that could be any price. Since the majority of permits are initially being given away free the nominal purchase price is barely relevant to the actual costs. And the claim that “the money from the sale of permits has already been spent” therefore alludes to a relatively minor amount! And who’s to say the money has actually been spent when it may have been merely allocated to some project budget or offshore account where only the UN can get it? Buying back the permits need not be a big deal, even if it were needed.
(3) Is it not the case that if the price floor is removed then the price can sink to a pittance and normal industrial activity can resume unencumbered, without even repealing the legislation, and without giving the government goon squad any legitimate excuse to shake down the operations departments of the land? If the market decides CO2 isn’t worth pricing, that’s not the government that has killed the value of bought permits. Indeed, wouldn’t any government take this route to cut their compensation costs? Buying back at the nominal floor price is so not going to happen!
Even if these three scary memes weren’t fictions there is another rather basic tenet of the entire concept of law that Labor and the regulatory class are forgetting:
The law is there to serve society, NOT the other way around.
When the number of people who know this exceeds 60% of the electorate, and the number of voters who know that everyone else knows it too exceeds 50%, then the Great Australian Bite Back bloodless revolution will be on and it is goodbye Labor scum, goodbye Liberal pretenders, goodbye bankster goons, goodbye climate slimetists, goodbye carbon tax, and hello individual responsibility.
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A dozen thumbs up.
Best comment in the last six months.
Now, how do we make it happen?
Not being narky or negative, but the only way forward is via realistic political action.
And every comment I’ve made on that front has been met with total negativity.
So, where to now?
We have a population that knows it’s being lied to and diddled.
How do we change that, if nobody is prepared to actually DO anything?
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I completely agree that it is somewhat futile and academic for me to sit in my chair and craft curly prose of an Enlightenment Restoration while the beat of standard issue boot heels grows louder in the street. (Damn I did it again.)
So you say you want a revolution? A realistic one nonetheless. Then it might pay to learn from previous successful revolutions.
I have to say I am rather bad at organising revolutions, or at least I assume I am because I haven’t done one before.
From what I have heard (link escapes me atm) there are at least three useful features of popular revolutions that have worked:
1) The revolution begins not when everyone knows the truth, but when everyone knows that everyone else knows too, for then the individuals become a mass.
2) A commitment to non-violent protest (and civil disobedience) no matter how much provocation the authorities use.
3) Persistence and capitalising on every opportunity to show the moral bankruptcy of the tyrant, no matter how small.
4) Having a rich secret sponsor tends to help a lot, especially for legal defence.
I do not think we are even at stage 1 yet because there are way too many people in this country who:
A) generally are unwitting statists essentially trusting of the institution of government, AND
B) in particular about the carbon tax have lazily accepted the main CAGW bullet points, AND
C) aren’t hurting too badly (yet).
I reckon raising awareness is still our first strategy. This is difficult because people are lazy. To get Barry Q Public to take 20 minutes out of his lunchbreak to listen to anything with the word “Science” in it is a losing proposition. So although science underpins the case, it can’t be on the teaser. It is about dismantling the carbon tax.
So the strategy is education and building awareness, and the tactics are to deliver verifiable facts and humour. They are the two most powerful weapons we have.
The only new advantage we have now is that the threat to the back pocket is no longer a future abstract, it is a clear and present danger.
Wait a sec, you’re the political activist from way back… do I have to do ALL the thinking myself?? 😉
And.. shouldn’t we…like… be talking in code or something? Or is that only for revolutionaries with immoral aims and methods?
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These things aren’t legal fictions at all. You should read the constitution and you will understand how wrong you are.
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Smith you really are clueless. All law is fiction full stop.
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Yes, and if you break them you might find yourself in a fictional gaol.
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[snip]
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Actually, he was carted off to hospital for tests.
You really are a nasty little piece of work aren’t you BA?
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The lab results came back 10 minutes ago.
Bad news for GetUp fans I’m afraid.
Sheikh tested positive for carbon.
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Maybe you and BA can get a room Andrew?
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No need, I saved up to get a great big turnip of my own in the country.
I’m so disapointed by your attempt at an ad hominem, I’ll never defend you again.
Heyyy! 😀
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This is just sick. Why do you have to personalise the debate in this way? Clearly you aren’t very confident of your position when you have to revert to making fun of someone who clearly suffered a serious health issue of some sort.
Just stick to the issues instead of making fun of someone who was obviously sick in some way.
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oh alright. On that basis i’ll stop being abusive to BA.
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[snip]
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What a sick thing to write.
He has been on the same show before.
Whatever our views on these issues may be we should all be capable of showing common decency to each other.
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[snip. No we don’t make fun of people for their illnesses – Jo]
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[snip]
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I do not feel soory for the Sheik yer mammy!!
He does not feel sorry for us out on Struggle Street trying to live with the burdens of this CO2 TAX !!!
Get over it Catamongst Men !! You are a Green Pansy Too !!!
Election Now !
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BA, how are you going to feel in a few months when all but the loony right are over the whole “Carbon Tax” thing?? Hmm…are you going to organize the next tea, scones and nasty abuse convoy to Canberra or just be a nasty little twat online??
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Like NZ?
I see NZ is rushing headlong… Oh wait…
Apparently not!
Yep… Rushing… To put it on hold
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There there BA. Have a cuppa and a lie down. We’ll see if we can find your tablets.
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This rot should not be allowed to be posted. This is very offensive commentary concerning Q&A.
You are as said elsewhere – a very bad piece of work.
Ross J.
—–
Ross? Are you referring to #25? Really? Offensive? So calling Nobel prize winners who talk science — “deniers” is ok (you never protest) baseless slurs against esteemed scientists is all proper, but crass language at a paid lobbyist is “not allowed to be posted”?– Jo
PS UPDATE: That said — I didn’t realize when I moderated Ross’s comment that there was a real illness involved (Neither his nor Adder’s comment made that clear). I hope Sheikh gets well soon. No more cheap shots at illnesses… for once I agree with Ross and team “Adam”. I’ve snipped.
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Yeah. “Deniers” is a bit strong. Fruitcakes is good…
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In my view, this international carbon scheme is a designed mechanism to redistribute wealth from rich western nations to the third world. It’s also a way to greatly increase control of life. It short, it’s a socialist’s wet dream come true.
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Actually, pricing carbon is designed to abate emissions at the lest cost.
The alternative is politicians sitting around a table in Canberra picking and choosing carbon abatement projects.
If you think that politicians can pick and choose projects more efficiently than the market, then by all means vote for the Coalition’s Direct Action policy.
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tell us again how much this will lower temperatures worldwide and in what time frame.
go ahead!!
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I’m not a scientist so I don’t know.
But what is known is that market mechanisms such as Emissions Trading Schemes are the cheapest way to abate carbon emissions.
Since the two major parties both accept the science and have the same short term emissions reduction targets, it makes sense supporting the one that will be cheaper which is the current government policy.
Also it would be extremely disruptive to business to end the ETS that has just started, so I wouldn’t support a party promising to make another huge series of changes to the existing abatement policy.
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ah yes, Team Smith fails again to answer the question. The REAL question. That is, after all, the whole reason that the carbon tax has been shoved down our throats……………or at least what we’ve been lied to about………that it’s “to save the planet”!
Bunch of liars all of you.
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What is the prima facie designer reason for abating emissions?
“Adam Smith” there is a certain inhuman relentlessness about your responses that is disingenuous. Do you work for the UN, another agency with a substantial vested interest in a carbon dioxide tax?
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Block quote fail.
[fixed]
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Well, that’s nothing really because Australians pay almost $1 billion ($1000 million) a week on the Goods and Services Tax.
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Yeah but the GST is distributed to the states. ( to build things which may or may not need pink bats)
I have a philosophical problem with the designated funding distribution of the carbon tax, starting with the ~$600M that Combet committed for feel good grandstanding purposes @ Cancun.
All while our erudite government is borrowing more OS every day & JG is telling the world how Australia is showing the way to keep economies strong.
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True, but remember, 60% of the revenue from carbon permits is paying for tax cuts and increases in government payments such as family tax benefits and the seniors pension. So that is going directly to people who can then spend the money as they wish.
That money didn’t come from the sale of carbon permits, it just came from general revenue, i.e. mainly income taxes.
Well this is wrong in a couple of different ways. The government doesn’t “borrow money” from overseas. It SELLS BONDS by reverse auctioning them off to whoever is willing to pay the lowest interest rate. Now it is true that over the last few years a lot of these have been bought by overseas banks and governments, but there is a simple reason for this, it is because they are such a good safe investment! There are very few governments in the developed world that still have an AAA+ credit rating from the three major ratings agencies, NOT EVEN THE UNITED STATES!
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Of course you provided figures. You said the cost of a cylinder of gas was going to increase by $1080, and this would require the guy to charge a few hundred dollars more for a service. So assuming a few hundred means $300, that means only 3.6 cars could be serviced using one cylinder.
That’s basic mathematics, which proves that you are making things up.
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Actually the Opposition is proposing the socialist policy of getting the government to directly pay (that’s the ‘Direct Action’ part) for the cost of reducing all carbon emissions.
If they think they can pull that off they will need a bureaucracy of a size that would’ve made Lenin proud.
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[…] The-Tax-Whose-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Spoken Begins […]
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‘Adam Smith’ keeps mentioning the GST, which is a classic tactic of misdirection. The GST is not relevant to this debate because:
i) It was replacing a number of other taxes (incl wholesale tax) and charges. So in that sense it was not a new source of Government revenue except in the way it captured a large part of the up till then hidden/cash economy by capturing ‘spenders’ in the taxation regime.
ii) No political party, and as far as I am aware no organisation, is calling on the GST to be repealed. But at least 62% of the Australian public, and almost half the current parliament do not support the carbon tax.
iii) John Howard was elected with a pre-election promise to introduce the GST. Julia Gillard stole Government by breaking her pre-election promise not to introduce a carbon tax!
‘Adam Smith’ also wants to play semantics about whether it is a tax. Gillard says it is a price on carbon [emissions]. But it’s not really, because the only companies paying it are those nominated by the Government. We don’t pay it to exhale, we don’t pay it to have a camp fire, and not every business pays it. If the Government levies the charge, decides which companies are to pay and how much, then it is a tax!
‘Adam Smith’ says it will make very little difference to the cost of operating a business. Like the Government, ‘Adam Smith’ has got everyone focusing just on the impact of the $23 per ton applied to the starting 294 Australian enterprises. What the Government and ‘Adam Smith’ try to avoid at all costs is admitting this is just the very start. Sure after 3 years we are supposed to move to a ‘market price’, but it is a false market not a real market. A Government appointed board will decide how many carbon credits will be issued to achieve the Government’s emission targets. Therefore that board will effectively be determining the price per ton not the free market. The Government’s own projections indicate that in order to achieve the 80% emission reduction (on 2000 levels) by 2050 a carbon price of $275 per ton (in 2010 dollars) will be needed. (Refer Governments own CleanEnergyFuture projections).
That is a 1,196% real increase in carbon price over less than 40 years! If $23 per ton will increase the average household power bill by 10%, imagine what a 1,196% increase in that price will do! What will that kind of increase do to businesses which do not have access to the magic, cheap, efficient renewable energy solution that doesn’t yet exist and will not exist in the foreseeable future?
The only option will be to buy permits (at a forecast $275 per ton), and increase production costs substantially, or reduce production, close down or move off shore.
‘Adam Smith’ cannot find any logical argument for implementing this carbon price now. Hurting the Australian economy and pushing up our cost of living (or reducing our standard of living) with this carbon tax will have a negligible impact on global CO2 emissions and an unmeasurable impact on global temperatures. And that is if you believe that CO2 drives climate. Everyone knows China’s increasing emissions alone will swamp any reductions by Australia.
I am sure ‘Adam Smith’ and other ‘believers’ would respond: “Australia must take the lead”, or, “reductions have got to start somewhere”. Well if you are of that view, then Australia could still take the lead, and show commitment simply by passing legislation to implement a carbon tax and target a reduced level of CO2 emissions just as soon as there is a GLOBAL agreement to do so.
By having that legislation in place we could be showing the ‘leadership’ the warmists believe we must show, without damaging our economy and placing our country at a disadvantage for absolutely zero benefit.
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This is wrong in so many different ways. For a starters, the reason the GST was introduced is because it is a consumption tax that grows as consumption grows. When the GST was introduced 12 years ago it raised about $11 billion in its first year, but last financial year it raised about $48 billion and this financial year it is going to raise a bit over $50 billion.
Also you erroneously claim that it simply captured parts of the hidden/cash economy. This is total nonsense! The GST added a tax to numerous services for the first time ever. Getting a hair cut was tax free, but the GST added 1/11 to the cost. Going to the dentist was tax free, but the GST added a tax for the first time, getting your lawn mowed, or carpets cleaned. These are ALL services that were tax free, but the GST put a tax on them.
I simply don’t understand why you seem to support the GST which raises about $1000 million a week, but don’t support the carbon price which raises about 1/9 of that.
Well at that election the Coalition didn’t even get 50% of the vote. So if listening to the voters means anything to you, then Howard should’ve dumped the idea because a majority voted against it.
If you are interested in using words appropriately, what started on Sunday is a fixed price Emissions Trading Scheme. But if you want to call it a Carbon Tax, that’s fine, but technically you are using the term erroneously.
Well it is a real market. It has items with a value that can be bought, sold and traded. That’s a market.
Not true. The permits will be AUCTIONED, therefore the MARKET determines the value of them based on elementary rules of supply and demand.
And your point is?
Do you seriously think Australia will be generating electricity using the same mix it does now in 40 years time? South Australia, for example, has increased electricity generation using wind by from 5% to 20% of total generation in 10 years.
No, that is the ESTIMATED permit price. The actual price will be determined by the market.
Well I can actually, but thanks for putting words in my mouth.
The simply reason to do it now is because it means you can start with a lower permit price and thus promote more gradual change. For every year you wait you will need to start at a higher price which will create bigger price increases.
I mean you are getting worked up over a CPI increase of 0.7 cents for each $1 of expenditure. That is much easier to swallow than delaying another ten years and having to produce a CPU increase of a few cents in the dollar.
Not true. Most households will be fully compensated. Some households will be over compensated. It is only basically the top 10% of households that will be worse off.
I’ve always found this to be a specious argument. It is the equivalent of saying that since Australia didn’t have the capacity to win WWII on its own, we should’ve stayed home and done nothing.
Australia isn’t taking the lead at all. There’s already about 800 million people in the world that live in countries or sub national areas that have carbon pricing of one form or another. Australia just joined other countries that have already instituted a carbon price mechanism.
This is just silly name calling.
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You idiot. It eliminated wholesale sales tax. Making things was taxed, providing services wasn’t. The GST levels the field.
There already was carbon pricing in Australia. Called fuel excise.
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According to Adam, a tax on production and a tax on consumption have exactly the same effect on the economy, a point I made which he evaded on the last thread. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a logical and direct response.
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Wow “You idiot” is a really sophisticated argument mate.
You are being completely inconsistent. You are saying that a tax that raises $1000 million a week is fine, but one that is going to raise just $77 million a week is the end of the world.
I am not surprised you are reverting to personal abuse, because your argument doesn’t make any sense.
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No I think “you idiot” is descriptive. It is you Adam, that fail to see the point. The GST has nothing to do with the carbon “tax”. Further, he isn’t complaining about any and all taxes just the stupid ones. It doesn’t matter that it is ONLY “77 million a week” pretty soon it adds up to real money! Worse, it will do little or nothing to reduce global warming. His argument makes perfect sense you are unable to understand it. Hence you are an idiot.
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I’m really very impressed by your knowledge of government revenues etc, and so I’d be really curious if you could help me out Adam old friend, old mate, old pal.
Perhaps you could do me a little favour and construct a very simple little table with 2 columns- seeing as you have all the inside “goss” and all, and in the one column list the GST revenues from the time of it’s introduction in one column (from Howard years through Rudd to Gillard), and in the other column a list of total government budget deficit or surplus in the other column- it might make for an interesting discussion point, I’ll wager- just in the interests of enlightening us plebs.
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Australia’s debt is low compared to all other developed countries and compared to Australia’s historical debt situation.
If you think otherwise then you have simply been fooled by a bunch of right wing politicians and their fellow travellers who try to gain power by pretending that debt is always a bad thing.
Did you know, for example, that during the time Robert Menzies was Prime Minister, there wasn’t a single surplus budget delivered?
Did you know, for example, that major infrastructure projects in Australia like the Snowy Hydro Scheme was funded COMPLETELY by the government selling bonds, i.e. debt?
Did you know, for example, that the way most people buy a home is by getting a loan from a bank?
And of course you seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that in 2008/9 the world economy actually contracted for the first time since 1945, which means it made perfect sense for Australia to use debt to stimulate the economy.
The fact is Australia is the only developed economy that didn’t go into recession during the GFC, but it seems you care more about the government always running a surplus rather than the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who were saved from the unemployment queues during that period.
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Winston, I notice that Adam did not follow through with your request. Then he turned around and posted a bunch of incoherent propaganda (after just accusing Mike Borgelt that: “your argument doesn’t make any sense”).
Like, I could ask him how to tax people into prosperity (as he believes can be done), or ask him to explain when government is actually too big. But he’ll evade the tough questions and then post more propaganda whilst accusing everyone else of “not staying on topic”.
Pretty lame, pretty poor, pretty biased, pretty predictable, mostly wrong.
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Yes Mark,
Thanks for answering, I’ve been ill, so wasn’t up to it. I think his replies speak entirely for themselves anyway.
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Dentistry is generally GST-free. If your dentist is charging you GST for your checkups it’s time to find a new dentist.
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Yes I made a mistake here. Dentistry counts as a health service so it is GST free.
But my other examples are correct. They were tax free before the GST.
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These are not the price increases you are looking for. (Gilliard mind trick)
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Eh, meant Gillard, I guess.
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“Companies can incur fines of $1.1 million per breach and private entities could pay $220,000 per breach if found guilty of deceptive and misleading conduct under the Australian Consumer Law.”
I’m no lawyer etc., etc., but:- Doesn’t there have to be a victim for a crime to have been committed ?
Just who might suffer from any supposed overstatement of the effects of the Carbon Tax ?
The governing parties reputations are all that comes to mind.
Whereas the whole edifice of The Carbon Tax, from which Suffering will be widespread, is constructed on deceptive & misleading conduct orchestrated on a multi-institutional scale. Does that put it above the law ? Such behaviour above the Law?
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Is criticising the Carbon Tax an extradictable offence, or can I just set up off-shore and broadcast the truth, Radio Caroline style ?
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“extradictable” isn’t a word, so the answer to your question is “No”.
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Oops. Extraditable that should be ( as in making liable to extradition.).
Interesting how an answer can be offered based on an obvious spelling mistake ‘though.
It seems to be a useful distractive device sometimes used for diverting attention from the more relevant. Often used unconsciously by nitt pickers though, failing to perceive significance & context, while bedazzled by their own brilliance.
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Nicely put Joe, Well done.
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Joe I note your support for my spelling of Austrailia recently. Your vocal support was appreciated.
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Sorry Mate, I never noticed. Had I though , I probably wouldn’t have remarked it. While bad spelling can be irksome there are frankly better things to be concentrating time, attention & energy on. Pathological nitt pickers (who cann’t help it) might get distracted by it, while those of more malign intent may use it to distract.
Purists may balk, but if they’d experienced some of the handheld devices with which we can now access the Internet they might be more understanding ( not to mention coping with some of the predictive & ‘corrective’ features of some of these devices).
As long as I believe I’ve got your meaning, language has served its purpose.
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Has there been any explanation of where the 77.3M x 52 = 4,019,600,000 is going?
Note: 2010 Australia GDP was 1.132 Trillion so if the tax were spread over all product it wouldn’t amount to much.
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Australia’s GDP is now closer to $1.5 trillion because we didn’t go into recession during the Global Financial Crisis.
Yes there has been an explanation of where the money raised from pollution permits will go.
About 30% of it will go to cutting personal income tax, by increasing the tax free threshold from $6000 to $18200. About 30% of it will be spent increasing government payments such as retirement pensions, family tax benefits, Youth Allowance (for full time students), Newstart, and AusStudy.
About 20% will be sent on a renewable energy bank which will provide low interest rate loans to renewable energy projects.
The remaining 20% will be spent on carbon farming (paying farmers to abate carbon in their soils) and other landcare initiatives.
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And 10% of it will go to the UN, and another significant xx% will be used to support the bureaucracy, auditors, marketers, accountants, advertising, and etc etc that are necessary to churn this 77 million dollar each week in pointless circles.
Since Adam Smith can’t name any empirical evidence to support his theory (like Combet, Gillard, or the IPCC) this is money for witchcraft to change the weather.
It’s $77m each week which could have been used to teach children to read, to protect children living in abusive situations (in dysfunctional towns) to cure cancer, to pay for MRI machines, to reduce waiting lists in hospital….
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Thanks Joanne,
There’s no question the carbon tax is based on fallacy of logic.
I was interested to see how they structured any implied benefit.
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I have seen this sort of sophistry before with other CO2 supporters in general discussion.
This is quite interesting and consistent.
Watch the pea and thimble.
Now watch the rote reply..(are they taught this?)
You dont have to be a scientist to have an informed opinion do you..???
So why play that puerile canard.?
You bore us to death with your views on “economics” yet you are not an economist..Can you say where I am going tiger..???
I will save you time..here is flannery giving the answer you pretend to not know..
And we all know you do know the answer..(you cannot be that dim) you just dont want to say it…
Forget the usual semantic games..the whole point of ETS/CO2 TAX/CO2 Trading etc etc etc..blah blah blah..is too..drum roll “make the climate better in future”.
Yet, when these supporters are asked the most SIMPLE question..what will be the real world effect? be..they “pretend” to not know..but the scarier thing is..they actually dont appear to want to know or care.
Now why would that be.????
How in gods name did Green supporters become this dishonest and dim..
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Increasingly there seems to be very much doubt about the “science”. It seems the only real “science” is the logarithmic relationship between increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperature. All the rest is conjecture and manipulated statistics – not science as in hypothesis and theory.
That snippet of “science” tells us that there is a law of diminishing returns operating i.e the tangent (rate of change of temperature with respect to increasing atmospheric CO2) to that curve asymptotes to zero. Alarmist scientists are aware of this so postulate positive feedbacks to magnify the negligible effect of increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
So far so good but the present rate of human CO2 emissions is anywhere between the equivalent of 4 to 6 parts per million per year. The present increase of atmospheric CO2 is about 2 parts per million per year. That indicates that a large proportion of our emissions don’t ultimately make it to where it matters – the atmosphere. The biosphere takes care of them.
Some research questions whether our emissions have any contribution to that present 2ppm/year given that the oceans are churning CO2 so that rising temperatures mean more CO2 is expelled to the atmosphere and it is quite possible that post-IR natural warming has contributed to steadily increasing atmospheric concentrations.
That is about where the “science”, so often trumpeted by the ignorant, is. A check soon discovers that most warmist experts (scientists) are first and foremost activists with very little “science” to back their wild eyed speculative predictions.
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Just start serving cold lattes to the inner city green leftists.. can’t afford the electricty to heat them properly.
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Oh, the humanity!!!
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Given the exception of Cardinal Pell one wonders whether those warmist fellow travelers who mention “the science” are not practicing or lapsed RCs:
Paddy, who had been on a blinder, was lying on his bier with his family and friends around as Father Flannery performed the last rites. Mick, his best mate, said “he’s alive- he just winked at me”. Mary Paddy’s missus whispered “be quiet Mick – Father knows best”
Adam Smith and his tribe of ignorant (I’m not a scientist) warmists always remind me of Mary.
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The tax is on Carbon Dioxide not on Carbon, CO2 is not Carbon, and it is not pollution.
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Actually permits need to be bought for a range of green house gases relative to their Carbon Dioxide equivalence.
So saying that this is a “tax” on “Carbon Dioxide” is wrong in two different ways.
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Yes but the carbon tax is working perfectly………..well maybe a little too perfectly
http://iceagenow.info/2012/07/seattle-tied-3rd-coldest-june-record/
http://iceagenow.info/2012/07/double-whammy-90-percent-michigan-apple-loss/
“This spring, farmers used frost fans, orchard heaters and helicopters to battle the extreme weather conditions’ affect on the orchards. While the efforts may have saved some of the crop, we are hearing about significant loss from most areas of the state,” said Scott Lewis, chair of the Michigan Apple Committee and a New Era, Michigan apple grower.
And to top it off it was -5 in Canberra today!!!!!!!!!1
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3 July: ABC Rural: Steven Schubert: Indigenous rangers question merits of carbon farming scheme
An Indigenous ranger group in the Northern Territory says it’s concerned an approved carbon farming methodology could effectively punish groups who have been managing their land correctly.
The savanna burning methodology aims to reduce carbon emissions by strategically burning land early in the dry season, when fires produce less greenhouse gas than later in the year.
Chris Brady, from the Thamarrurr Rangers in Wadeye, says he’s concerned that land managers who already have good fire practices won’t be able to benefit from the Carbon Farming Initiative.
“In areas where we have quite good fire management, we get lots of small, patchy fires, which is what these projects actually depend on,” he said…
Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change Mark Dreyfus says any work already being done to reduce carbon pollution will be taken into account.
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201207/s3537699.htm
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still making it up as they go along, and the Coalition is on board:
2 July: ABC Rural: Anna Vidot: More carbon farming methods on the way
Currently, there are only four approved methodologies through which carbon credits can be earned: one for capturing methane emissions from piggeries, native revegetation, savannah burning, and capturing gas from landfill sites.
The Government says seven more methodologies are now out for public comment, and more are in development by CSIRO, universities and industry.
The parliamentary secretary for climate change, Mark Dreyfus says approving methodologies takes time because a lot of the science is new and must be thoroughly tested.
He says Australian farmers will benefit from having to meet high standards to earn carbon credits.
***”Australia comes to this with a very high reputation for scientific integrity, for regulatory integrity.
“We’re expecting that Australian carbon credits will be in world demand for those reasons…
But Mark Dreyfus says the good news is that farmers will not face financial penalties if the credits they’ve earned are destroyed by a bushfire or drought.
***The Coalition, meanwhile, says it’s committed to repealing the carbon tax, but supports the Carbon Farming Initiative and will honour carbon credits earned under the scheme.
But shadow environment minister Greg Hunt says the Coalition would look to expand and alter the Initiative if it wins government.
He says it’s not reasonable to expect farmers to lock up areas of land for carbon sequestration for 100 years in order to earn credits.
“Our view is we will work to make a 25-year approach [where carbon must be locked up for only 25 years in order to earn credits].
“It’s a view which is almost universal across the sector that a quarter of a century, which is still a long time, is realistic, it allows people to long-term investments, but it’s not binding beyond the lifetime of one particular farm.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201207/s3536878.htm
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2 July: ABC: Irrigators warned of carbon tax impact
The chief executive of the Central Irrigation Trust says the new carbon pricing structure introduced yesterday will severely impact on irrigators.
Gavin McMahon says that water prices, coupled with an increase in electricity prices, will rise by up to 8 per cent.
He says pumping water uses a lot of energy and there are few options to reduce this cost.
“As a group of 12 trusts, the carbon tax will cost us $449,000 just in its own right, so it’s a very, very significant increase in our costs and unfortunately the only thing that we as a trust can do, as we only manage them on behalf of of the growers, is actually pass that cost back through to the growers,” he said.
“Overall we think it’s probably about an average increase across our trust of something between 7 [to] 8 per cent.
“That’s on water prices but the power prices are substantially higher in there, so I think the ETSA charges are something like [a] 27 per cent increase this year and the carbon tax adds about the same amount onto the energy bill.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-02/irrigators-warned-of-carbon-tax-impact/4104608
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Watch now as those leftard sycophant morons latch onto the ‘poles and wires’ misdirection as a ploy to explain the increases in electricity costs, when the only price rise here is due to the Carbon Tax. (sic) I’ve seen it now on 4 occasions, from these slavering political followers, and hey, even Gregory Ivan used it last night on Q and A.
These idiots who blindly spread the meme ‘poles and wires’, ‘poles and wires’ have absolutely no comprehension of the way power is generated, distributed and then sold on to consumers, and the biggest laugh of all is that Combet is the Minister For Energy Efficiency amongst his plethora of titles now, so this
moronGovernment Minister actually has staff who he can have tell him what is going on.So then, let’s do an exercise, shall we.
Luckily, (well, there was no luck about it, as I expressly planned it that way) I took screen prints of one Company’s electricity costs late last week (pre CO2 Tax) and then again, yesterday (post CO2 Tax) so we can actually compare prices, knowing that the only difference that happened in that time was the start of the CO2 Tax on Sunday.
Let’s look first at the actual cost of electricity that the providers (Ergon, Energex, Origin et al) have to pay the grid supplying entities then. This forever puts paid to the ‘poles and wires’ meme as this is the cost before those ‘poles and wires’, the costs for the power at the plants themselves.
(if you right click your mouse and then press ‘open link in a new tab, the image will open on a new screen, and you can then navigate between tabs to see the image and read the text here)
Power Costs At The Grids
This image shows a combination of those three States mentioned there, and the pre and post CO2 Tax cost of the electricity they sell.
As you can see there the difference is around $25 to $30 per MWH, which translates to 2.5 to 3 cents per KWH. This is not ‘poles and wires’, but actual electricity generated by those power plants. The ‘poles and wires’ cost is added on after this by the providers. Note the actual costs here, and Victoria is almost $28 per MWH. Note that for the following day, the Monday, as consumption ramps up considerably, the price also ramps up considerably.
So now let’s look at just one Provider and their new costs they will be charging consumers.
Residential Power Cost Pre CO2 Tax
Residential Power Cost Post CO2 Tax
Hey, notice that the price increase has been around 3 cents per KWH, and oddly, that’s around the same price as the increase in the first image of power costs at the grid. Say, no ‘poles and wires’ in that increase.
The same applies across the board virtually for all tariffs and for all applications, be it small, medium or large businesses and for huge consumers, (Coles, Woolies Industry etc)
So let’s look at Woolies then.
They work under the costings shown at this image.
Large Consumers Power Cost Pre CO2 Tax
Now, for post CO2 large scale costs, take this link.
Power Costs Post CO2 Tax
Scroll down to about half screen till you see the new Tariff 43 Large. Note the word obsolescent after it. That is because large consumers already have contracts and they will stay on those contracts.
Note how all their costs have also gone up by three cents per KWH.
Now, not the new scale directly below that. That will be the new large scale power contract for those huge consumers.
Note how it has changed significantly to one set price for the full 24 hour period, instead of being broken down to night and day rates for consumption. While the day rate has lowered, the night rate has ramped up considerably. This will work out approximately to around a 3 to 3.5 cents per KWH increase on an overall consumption basis.
Keep in mind that the average power bill for a typical Coles or Woolies Store is around, and wait for this, $60,000 per week, and at that 3 cents per KWH price rise, then (just) Woolworths alone, Australia wide face an increase to their power bills of around $90 million per year.
So, where you see mindless morons trying to support a political view only, saying any increase in power costs is due to ‘poles and wires’, be fully aware that they are talking out of their fundament, and have absolutely no idea whatsoever what they are talking about.
Tony.
(Oh, and Doctor Smith, you can cut and paste to the bottom of the page for all I care. No bites from me)
(oh, and Maxine, I see you also mentioned ‘poles and wires’ also, so again, it’s plain to see where you are coming from also.)
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Hey math-boy Tones. Are you doing your “conservative” figures again by quoting a figure 14% higher than what your presented data shows.
Rounding cost figures that are actually precise to 3 decimal places to whole numbers (2.619 to 3) is making your current spin state a bit obvious.
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catamon,
Boy! Hey, thanks.
Tony.
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catamon,
Hmm!
See what I mean here when I say people have no idea, and trust me, I was waiting for this exact response, and notice how it’s always those from the left who point out (perceived) teensy weensy errors without ever seeing what is really happening here.
Here, catamon again highlights this, with his inability to be able to work out exactly what was quoted at those links.
While this Residential total does rise by less than three cent s per KWH, and that the average consumption for a typical residential application is 30KWH per day or around 210KWH a week, look closely at the Large Commerce scales I linked to there.
These are for huge businesses with consumption greater than 100MWH a week, around 500 times greater than the average residence, and in the case of Woolies, around 1,500 times greater than the average residential account.
Note how the price increase there is greater than 3 cents per KWH.
Note also how the service fee, calculated Monthly previously and now daily has also risen, so in point of actual fact, that average increase on an overall basis is greater than 3 cents per KWH.
catamon, I hope you don’t believe in reincarnation, because in your next life, if you come back as a Flathead, you won’t make it out of the tiddler size.
Nyuk nyuk nyuk. They bite every time.
Tony.
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Raise the bar if your going ad hom math boy. flathead? Just spent a couple of weeks dealing with undergrad humor and even they are way better than that. Hmm…..most of them are as good or better with numbers though so i guess it evens out.
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But whatever the increase, it won’t matter to Woolies, or Coles, or any other large supermarket chain, because to them it is just a cost of doing business, and they will factor that into the show price.
And for those not in the know, the show price is the cost per metre of shelf space that the retail stores charge the food distributers to “show their wares”.
Charging for shelf space guarantees income for the store, and the distributer takes all of the risk and so has to put up the price of their goods (including staple items) in order to cover the increased costs.
And each step in the chain, costs are rounded up on a per unit basis …
I hear rumours that New Zealand is gearing up to prepare for the first tranch of Australian Boat People … 😉
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Err, this joke makes no sense because New Zealand already has a carbon price.
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Which does not apply to thermal or hydro generation (no carbon there), and natural phenomina to boot. Does not apply to primary production, and has been extended through to 2015.
It seems that Australia is the only country, outside of the EU, to shoot itself in the foot in regard to one of its primary exports.
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It’s quite obvious that the step change in electricity charges is a direct consequence of the “carbon” price. That can be shown by examining the effect of the tax at the wholesale level.
Prior to July 1 the wholesale electricity price around the country was typically $32/MWh. The carbon price should add $20.70 (here in NSW), a 65% increase. The retail margin (including the cost of ‘defacto’ carbon pricing) works out at about $60/MWh so that the retail cost of typically $92/MWh should* increase to $112.70/MWh, an increase of 22.5%.
The Department of Climate Change publishes the emission factors for electricity from the grid. The respective factors (2008) in tonne CO3e per MWh):-
—————————————————————
State …. …. factor …. increase per MWh
…. …. …. …. …. …. …. for $23 C price
—————————————————————
NSW/ACT …. 0.90 …. $20.70
Vic ….. ….. …. 1.23 …. $28.29
Qld ….. ….. …. 0.89 …. $20.47
SA ….. ….. …. 0.72 …. $16.56
WA ….. ….. …. 0.82 …. $18.86
Tasmania … … 0.32 …… $7.36
NT …. …. …. … 0.68 …. $15.64
—————————————————————
*How that wholesale price increase translates to actual retail prices to consumers depends on industry concessions, the extent to which retailers assign it to network costs for billing purposes, and offpeak rate settings.
If it is largely assigned to network costs then lower energy consuming households will have much higher price increases per kWh.
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Clearly you won’t engage with my posts because you can’t refute any of my arguments.
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Doubling CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere gives a direct temperature uplift of 1.2 degrees C. (assuming a linear system, and not a logarithmic one)
What is the value of the net positive feedbacks to CO2 concentration in the atmosphere that are required to increase the termperature from a doubling of CO2 to a value above 1.2 degrees C?
[1] What instrument has been used to empirically measure those feedbacks? and
[2] what published scientific paper records the result?
Let’s see your arguments!
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one i missed from Reuters Point(less) Carbon:
19 June: Reuters Point Carbon: Japanese firms seek CO2 units for less than a euro
Seeking to cash in on the plummeting value of carbon allowances, Japanese firms have bid less than a euro for government carbon permits that once sold for 14 euros.
According to an advisor to the Slovakian government, at least one Japanese company had been seeking to buy 2 million Assigned Amount Units for less than 2 million euros.
“The offer had to be rejected because it was just not enough to launch proper greening programmes,” Stanislav Kolar, founder of Prague-based consultancy Carbon Redux, told Reuters Point Carbon without identifying the potential buyer…
Slovakia expects it will have up to 27 million surplus AAUs in the 2008-2012 Kyoto period and it is hoping to sell all of them before a mid-2015 sales deadline.
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.1927904?&ref=searchlist
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This sounds like a good time to bring in a carbon tax, Julia…
Michael Wesley is the executive director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy. The following is some of what he said in his article in The Australian yesterday.
“Our polling tells a strong story: that Australians supported tough action on climate change, and were prepared to pay for it, when they thought it was a real and pressing problem. But as they’ve come to see climate change as less of a problem, with no global solution in sight, they have steadily turned against action and are less willing to pay to address it.”
“A big question is whether the slide in public concern about climate change is permanent or cyclical.”
“Scientists are predicting a return to the El Nino weather pattern by the end of the year, resulting in hotter, dryer weather and possibly drought conditions. If this coincides with an improvement in the global economy, we could see a return to strong support for action on climate change, and a willingness to bear any associated costs.”
It’s remarkable how a non-problem produces so many problems.
A question I have is about the last paragraph’s weather prediction. Is it reliable information and from where did it come?
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Hi Faye,
There is no simple “yes – no” answer to your question.
Observation shows us that climate goes in 25 to 30 year cycles of warming and cooling, and these cycles, in turn, fit into larger aprox 300 year cycles of warming and cooling. We have just had aprox 25 years of warming (early 1970’s to 2000), and so it’s reasonable to assume that we are now in a 25 to 30 year cooling period, regardless of anything else.
We have also had 150 years of warming coming out of the Little Ice Age (LIA) (each progressive 30 year warming period was warmer than the previous one), so it is also reasonable to speculate that we are now on the 150 year slide into another LIA, and each 30 cooling period will be cooler than the previous one.
That is the overall historical pattern. The ENSO cycle (El Nino – La Nina) a roughly five year cycle is superimposed on the top of that. For Eastern Australia, El Nino’s generally mean warmer and drier, and La Nina’s generally mean cooler and wetter.
So an El Nino that occurs in a 30 year warming period will make things even hotter, whereas one in a cooling cycle will just mean it gets a bit less cold. La Nina’s in a warm cycle keep things cooler than they might have been, and a La Nina in a cooling cycle means it gets very cold.
ENSO cycles are affected by the Pacific Decadel Oscillation (PDO), a 20 to 30 year cycle. A positive PDO means more and longer El Nino’s, a negative PDO means more and longer La Nina’s. The PDO has just turned negative.
Putting aside “climate science” and sticking with historical observation, we are now in a cooling cycle, and it’s going to get colder. During El Nino’s (of which there will fewer, and of shorter duration) we will get some respite from the cold and wet. During La Nina’s (which will be more common, and of longer duration), it will be bitter and wet.
So, even if we are swinging into an El Nino (and I believe this “prediction” from the BoM is based as much on hope as it is on science), we are unlikely to see a return to anything like the temperatures of the late 90’s, and the welcome respite from the cold will almost certainly not last long enough to cause a return to lengthy drought conditions.
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They are taking a punt. Yes the El Nino/La Nina weather patterns are cyclical in nature, but do not have a discernable frequency pattern. There are just so many variables.
If their guess proves to be right, then you will hear a lot of noise. If they are proven to be wrong all you will hear will be the sound of crickets.
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Faye,
Just to add to Rereke and MV,
The key word here is “predict”, they say “predict” because…now this may strange…but we dont know what causes this cycle. Thats right we have no idea, we can guess, we can predict, we can speculate but we dont “know” that is how limited our knowledge is.
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Pretty much ditto for each of the other cycles I mentioned.
Plenty of plausible theories and some intelligent guesses, but that’s pretty much it.
Which is why it is so ludicrous when “climate scientists” are asked how they “know” the recent warming was caused by man-made CO2, and they reply:
Well we’ve looked at every other possible cause, and can’t find anything to explain it, so it MUST be the burning of fossil fuels etc.
Given that we don’t even “know” precisely how and why evaporated water becomes clouds (the molecules should repel each other), let alone understand any of the complex air and water cycles on the planet, claiming to be able eliminate them all as a “cause” has to be the height of chutzpah.
It also makes a total mockery of “the science is settled” mantra.
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MV,
It turns out we dont need a carbon tax afterall
America’s carbon emissions may drop back close to 1990 levels this year. That result would have been thought impossible, even at the end of 2011. But the shale gas revolution makes a reality of many things recently thought impossible. Shale gas production has slashed carbon emissions and saved consumers more than $100 billion per year. Truly astonishing!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/02/us-co2-emissions-may-drop-to-1990-levels-this-year/
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The big drop off has been since the GFC, unemployment and economic contraction is also part of the signal.
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Actually, one of the reason the U.S. has been able to cut its emissions is because the Environmental Protection Agency started regulating green house gas emissions from 2008 onwards. It has classified green house gases as dangerous pollutants under the federal Clean Air Act.
Of course the coal lobby has taken the EPA to court over its decision to do this, but the EPA has won every case, and the only last court is the Supreme Court.
Of course if the US wanted to cut its emissions more cheaply it would avoid ad hoc regulation and would adopt a carbon price, which some states such as California and New York are doing from January 1st, 2013.
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2 July: Bloomberg: Jason Scott: Carbon-Price Future Clouded as Gillard Trails in Polls
Australia’s price for carbon emissions will survive whatever happens in elections due next year, the government says. Power markets aren’t so sure.
Australian electricity futures markets after 2014 indicate doubts that carbon prices will remain in force, according to Westpac Banking Corp…
Abbott is vowing to repeal the levy if he wins office, calling it a “wrecking ball” for the economy in Australia, the world’s largest exporter of thermal coal.
“Abbott’s stance is having a bearing on investment decisions,” Tim Jordan, a carbon analyst at Deutsche Bank AG in Sydney, said by phone. “The fact there are so many ways the election can play out does affect investor calculations.”…
The government has faced criticism from the Australian Industry Group, which represents the interests of more than 60,000 businesses, for potentially setting its carbon price too high at A$23 a metric ton. European Union carbon allowances this week traded for less than 8 euros ($10) on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange…
Baseload power futures for 2014 have declined as the market factors in the probability of a “carbon tax being abolished,” Sandra McCullagh and Benjamin McVicar, Credit Suisse Group AG analysts based in Sydney, said in a May 23 report…
“Once bitten, twice shy,” Padisetti(Melbourne-based partner at Deloitte Access Economics) said by telephone. In preparing for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, businesses “spent a lot of money setting up desks and recruiting people, and they then had to let them go. When they combine that with the opposition’s stance, they see the repeal scenario as a real threat, so they’re deciding to wait and see what happens.”…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-02/carbon-price-future-clouded-as-gillard-trails-in-polls-2-.html
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the only media report i can find on this one:
2 July: 4-Traders: Victoria Bridget McKenzie: NPA – National Party of Australia : Carbon tax hit for vegetable growers
The Leader of the Nationals Warren Truss and The Nationals Senator for Victoria Bridget McKenzie met with vegetable growers at Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market this morning, and heard how the carbon tax would impact them.
Mr Truss said while in the short term the carbon tax did not apply to farmers, it would add to the cost of everything they buy and do.
“It will cost much more to produce and process Australia’s food, and farmers will have great difficulty passing those extra costs on because imported products will not be subject to a carbon tax in their country of production.”
Senator McKenzie said horticulture was important to Australia’s economy, and was worth approximately $10 billion.
“There are 60,000 people employed in horticulture, the second largest employer in agriculture…
Vegetable grower Luis Gazzola said the industry expected a 10 per cent increase in the costs of production.
“Everything we touch – fuel, power, gas, packaging and transport – it’s all going to go up.
“Unfortunately, because our industry is supply and demand we can’t pass the costs on.”
Senator McKenzie said it was going to be a tough road ahead for growers under the carbon tax.
http://www.4-traders.com/news/NPA-National-Party-of-Australia-Carbon-tax-hit-for-vegetable-growers–14394466/
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followup on Agius/LIBOR/BBC – a scandal that is growing by the day, with many of the biggest banks in the world involved. of course, these are the banks that love carbon dioxide trading!
2 July: Guardian: Lisa O’Carroll: Former Barclays chairman Marcus Agius to leave BBC board
Former Barclays chairman Marcus Agius will leave his position on the BBC’s executive board in November when his term expires, the corporation has announced…
A BBC spokesperson indicated it was “normal practice” for non-executive directors to step down after completing two terms.
However, there have been occasions when people have served for longer than two terms.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/02/barclays-marcus-agius-bbc-board?newsfeed=true
3 July: UK Daily Mail: Richard Littlejohn: Expenses Bandits -v- Canary Wharf Mob
Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond has been summoned to appear before a House of Commons select committee later this week.
He will be asked to explain why he failed to root out a culture of corruption, which lined the pockets of traders and jacked up the cost of mortgages and credit card repayments for its customers.
Diamond is expected to brazen it out. His nominal boss, Marcus Agius — who sounds like an extra from Up Pompeii — is the designated human sacrifice. Although Agius, as chairman, was supposed to hold executives to account, no one is in any doubt that Diamond has been running the show.
Agius was expendable. He’s just one of those interchangeable corporate chameleons who slither effortlessly from one highly-paid sinecure to another, collecting lucrative non-executive directorships like children collect Pokemon cards…
We needn’t detain ourselves with the details of the rate-rigging scam at Barclays and other banks. The nuts-and-bolts of this larcenous exercise are academic.
However much Diamond may try to obfuscate, this was a serious criminal conspiracy. For once I agree with the former Met chief Ian Blair, who insists this is a job for the fraud squad…
Forget about a Leveson-style inquiry, what we need here in Britain is a Mob-style trial of City crooks at the Old Bailey…
Into the Westminster glasshouse tomorrow wades Bob Diamond, Capo di tutti capi of the Canary Wharf Mob.
Which MP will have the nerve to cast the first stone?http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2167862/Expenses-Bandits-v-Canary-Wharf-Mob.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
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An Engineers view.
We have set out to lead the world on how to throttle CO2 output (guess that compliments our economic chest thumping of late). I will assume that our leaders do not really want to damage Industry / Business which have assisted us get to the standard of living we enjoy and where we can continue to improve our environment, as we have been doing.
So, you would reasonably expect our leaders (forgive me all) would also ensure that the supply options for generating all things electrical, we really need that to help us stay out of the caves, would be opened to the lowest producing CO2 technologies which can give us best chance of continuing with lowest cost energy. That is Nuclear, Hydro and, in the near term, modern gas use technologies. [I will politely ask that no one scratch me by talking wind or solar farms, otherwise my dogs will have a bad day).
Having not come across a word on such flexibilities being introduced, I am led to conclude that OUR LEADERS REALLY ARE JOKING and things will return to normal when I get up tomorrow morning.
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Unfortunately the “King is Mad”.
Sometimes Governments believe in folly and rush towards catastrophy. When this is the case nearly everyone pays in the end, some with their lives, many with their fortunes.
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This self-mutilation of your economy is probably one of the best things to happen to the US economy in recent times. Thank you from all of us. Next time though just send flowers or a card. No need to go so hard on yourselves like this for our benefit.
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The ABC is at it again with scary stories about rising sea levels.
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dub dub dub // abc.net.au/rural/news/content/20127/s3537825.htm
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Oh, ho ho ho!
read this.
Munmorah to close down.
I can see the greenoids celebrating in their cups.
However, note the age of this plant.
45 years.
Large scale coal fired plants have an effective life span of around 50 years, and this one has obviously reached its use by date.
A plant of this nature, as with another couple in NSW rarely supply continuous power. They are mainly used as running reserve,in other words burning and turning, but only coming on line to deliver large amounts of power for peak power periods as required, or for when other operational large scale coal fired plants have their generators, one at a time, off line for scheduled maintenance.
So, even though this plant is indeed closing, it has zero to do with the introduction of the CO2 Tax, and everything to do with the age of the plant itself.
One thing to look forward to now is that lack of running reserve for the East Coast, meaning other plants, namely gas fired will be tasked to take up the slack, meaning that instead of smaller operating times, they will be running for longer times, hence still emitting CO2.
This has just made grid control for the East Coast that much harder, and with a cheap coal fired plant closing, that means those other plants will have to fill the void, and the cost of their electricity is more expensive that coal fired power, so, umm, increasing electricity prices.
Life is such a beach.
Those Wind Plants and solar plants will be looking at this story with envy, saying, I wish we could last 45 years.
Tony.
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Tony,
I would have thought this plant is closing because of the tax.
Look at it this way, it is only there for peaking power but it costs a lot more to run due to taxes and needs more credits than a gas turbine to run.
So it makes sense to shut it down 5 years early, the extra running costs get passed on and they get the left over credits to spread around on the remaining coal plants.
See the green plan is coming to fruition increase in power costs beyond the common mans reach with little reduction in emissions.
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This is a perfectly valid observation.
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Smith,
What are they replacing the plant with? How are they going to make up the short fall in electricty production?
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Sit in the dark, rub your hands from the cold, watch your breath condense in the pale reflection of candle light.
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Very poetic, but I’m not sure how it relates to this discussion.
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Hi Adam,
Just going from “Shortfall” to “Blackouts”.
I you prepared for social unrest if this Carbon Tax/ETS results in sufficient power plant shutdowns to produce blackouts?
Will you and your family be safe if social unrest erupts in your neighbourhood?
Unintended consequences and all that.
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Higher electricity prices are encouraging greater efficiency which has reduced demand for electricity in NSW.
This is WHY plants like these that aren’t online all the time are closing because they can’t make a heap of cash on peak tariffs.
But of course you are ignoring that the east cost and S.A. are part of a grid, so power can be imported from other states. I believe during peak times NSW imports quite a bite of power from QLD including a lot generated from gas which of course is cleaner than coal.
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Except of course during the exploration and extraction process. Yep, once again failing to look past the glossy veneer.
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How do you know that this is happening?
Or alternatively as a result of economic contraction…
There are alternative explanations which you do not appear to have ruled out?
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Good question.
And many Green activists will be crowing that this proves the success of the new tax regime.
But we need to remember every country has a fairly constant per capita demand for electricity. It is one measure of the degree of standard of living in a society. When the Green say that Australia uses more electricity per capita than, say Botswana, they are merely pointing out that Australia is more developed than Botswana.
I don’t see than changing any time soon, and any government that tries to change it will have civil unrest to contend with.
So let’s hope that there is sufficient capacity in the electrical network to pick up the slack. Improvements in the standard of living of a peoples is gradual, and goes without comment. Degregations to the standard of living are always violent and involve bloodshead. Look to Greece for a recent mild example
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There is more than enough slack in the system because as electricity prices have risen, consumers have become more efficient in their energy use.
Comparing Australia to Greece is just laughable. Australia’s economy is about 4 or 5 times larger. It has high growth, low unemployment, low debt, and an enormous amount of investment lined up, almost $1 trillion.
Australia’s economy is growing at its fastest rate now since late 2007. It is just scare mongering saying that Australia is anything like Greece.
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Adam – might I suggest that the Australian economy is strongly exposed to economic collapse in several ways.
[1] BHP Bilition, Rio Tinto and the big 4 banks comprise more than 50% of the capital value of the ASX.
We are tied to the fortunes of these companies.
[2] The Big 4 Banks have over 50% of the book value of their loans in Australian Residential Mortgages.
It can be argued the the economic maliase striking both Europe and the US will bring a hard landing to China due to the collapse of China’s export markets, along with the other major manufacturing nations that consume our minerals ending the current mining boom.
BHP, and Rio go in the tank.
This will ramp up unemployment, stressing the houseing market further and precipitating a collapse in house prices (house bubble collapse like the US), that will render the big four banks insolvent, that will be resolved by a large government bailout that will crush the taxpayers of Australia.
The Banks and the ASX go in the tank along with the majority of Australian superannuation.
We could easily end up like Greece, and it is a failure of effective risk analysis not to look seriously at the possibilities, and Australian exposure to the current debt insolvency issues that plague the world economy.
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Ex Warmist
Just to expand on your above analysis:
Both BHPB and RIO have costed their current expansion projects in the Pilbara on the basis that, when they come fully online over the next two years, iron ore will be trading at HALF today’s price.
That means goodbye to anything from the mining super profits tax, and a halving of WA state income from royalties. That, in turn, means WA will have to go back to getting their fair share of the GST, rather than funding the other states, particularly Tasmania and Victoria.
On top of that both BHPB and RIO, plus the Brazilian miner Vale (the other major iron ore miner), are only twelve months away from bringing mines as big as the Pilbara online in Africa. That means they will be able to play hardball with OZ state and federal governments – scrap the super profits tax and halve the royalties, or we mothball OZ operations for a year or two.
On top of that we have the fact that all future mining and construction in the mining field looks like being done by cheap, imported labour, and things start looking pretty grim for the average Aussie.
If that isn’t enough the current government is opening the way for Aussie Superannuation Funds to invest in Israeli venture capital funds, which in turn specialise in investment in “green energy”. We all know how well that is likely to turn out.
And, of course, in the meantime we have the current gubmint doing everything in its power to destroy industry in this country.
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All things considered, it is not hard to imagine the situation in OZ being a whole lot worse than what is currently happening in Greece, within the next three years.
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Prosperity takes talent and hard work to create, and can be destroyed by any idiot with sufficient authority to inflict folly on the rest of us.
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Looking forward to the planned expansion of the coal fired ones up in the Hunter Valley. 🙂
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It is vitally important that everybody uses the correct term for this tax.
It is a carbon DIOXIDE tax.
carbon DIOXIDE is an essential element for the continuance of all life on Earth.
To demonize carbon/carbon dioxide is to demonize life itself.
Totally nonsensical.
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What started on Sunday is a fixed price Emissions Trading Scheme where putting a range of greenhouse gases – not just carbon dioxide – into the atmosphere will require the purchasing of carbon permits.
It is erroneous to say it is a carbon dioxide tax, because CO2 is one of a number of gases that incur a pollution liability.
It is also erroneous to say it is a tax when it is a fixed price emissions trading scheme. But I accept that in the first three years it will have the effect of a tax.
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You aught to tell your Prime Minister that, she has on occasion called it a “Carbon tax”, and “Derdy Polloution”, among other things, some of which are contradictionary.
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I have heard Gillard call it, at various times, a carbon price, a carbon tax and a fixed priced emissions trading scheme.
It doesn’t really alter the fact that a tax or a price is a much more efficient way of reducing emissions than the alternative, which is essentially socialism. The government decides where and how emissions will be cut and hands out a heap of money to achieve that goal.
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And where does that money come from, pray tell?
What sources of income does the Government have, that will allow it to “hand out a heap of money” to anybody.
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[QUOTE]What started on Sunday is a fixed price Emissions Trading Scheme where putting a range of greenhouse gases – not just carbon dioxide – into the atmosphere will require the purchasing of carbon permits.[/QUOTE]
Umm…since you are so fond of pedantic semantics why would I need a ‘Carbon’ credit if I’m emmitting methane.
Since I really can’t be bothered but I’m sure given your penchant for accuracy you won’t mind digging up and putting on display here the legislations defintion of Carbon.
Should give us all a good laugh to view the distortion legalese introduces to any scientific discussion…and my might go a long way to explaining why political sock puppets bound up in ‘acts’ are so inept at maintaining any sort of functional grip on the real world the rest of us have to live in.
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Because methane is a strong greenhouse gas. The chemical formula is CH4, the C is the Carbon atom.
There isn’t a legislated definition of “carbon”. There is a legislated definition of what constitutes greenhouse gases for accounting purposes.
You may be interested to know that this accounting was introduced in 2007 by the Howard government. You can read the Act here:
http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2008C00500/Html/Text
This is just a lot of words that contributes nothing to do the debate.
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My my that was fast…
You say…
“There isn’t a legislated definition of “carbon”. There is a legislated definition of what constitutes greenhouse gases for accounting purposes.”
and also say
“The chemical formula is CH4, the C is the Carbon atom.”
Pray tell, with your self professed vastly superior knowledge of law, how can one legislate regarding Carbon as a component of anything without first defining Carbon…
Despite the fact that all Law is fiction you might want to tell your paymasters that they may have slipped up there…
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Interesting observation.
TEAM SMITH showed up on the thread both yesterday and today about ten minutes after the school bus usually goes past in the afternoon.
Coincidence?
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“memoryvault”,
That would have to be the SPECIAL school bus obviously for “Adam Smith”!
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Whenever you post abuse it means I’m winning the debate.
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to be fair the fact Angry is an idiot does not mean you are winning the debate.
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Its school holidays in NSW !! That means lots of 13-16 year olds moping around with nothing to do.
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Victoria too.
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Thanks for that. It explains some greater than usual incidence of the puerile posts on this thread.
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Yeah.
And we’ve asked you, MattB and Team Smith to stop but to no avail.
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Just stick to the issues mate.
Whenever you revert to this sort of personal abuse it just makes me feel more confident that I’m right and you’re wrong and that you know you are wrong but can’t admit it.
[I think it is fairly obvious that the comment was intended as a joke. Also there is no right or wrong, only differing opinion. Please respect that – Fly]
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“Adam Smith”,
Did you mummy make your school lunch today??????
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Which raises the serious question:
Are TEAM SMITH happy little vegemites?
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I don’t think you actually believe that there is “no right or wrong”.
If you honestly believed that, then the statement “there is no right or wrong” is itself just an opinion.
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Is that the same as “what is the sound of one hand clapping”?
Sounds very Zen-Buddha-ish to me.
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No. It is called “relativism”. If someone asserts that all statements are relative to the person making them, then the statement itself is also relative to whoever makes it, and thus can’t be considered an objective fact.
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You’ve been reading the Tao of Pooh, haven’t you?
Go on, be honest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Pooh
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MV, Team Smith’s comments sound somewhat similar to those in a book I was recently reading, to whit:
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Gillard has three lies imbeded in this Carbon Tax debate:
1st. “There will be no cabon tax under a government I lead?” LIE!
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2nd. “This is not a TAX“? – Yet in her press release she’s states it is effectively a Tax for 3 years? LIE
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3rd. “Our Planet is Warming” – here – that’s why we have to have this TAX – to stop the world from warming LIE! – Excuse me Gillard – it’s stopped warming !!!!
The whole thing is a scam from the green camp!
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Even Penny Wong thinks the CO2 Tax is a scam and won’t achieve a thing!
Senator Penny Wong criticises the Carbon Tax
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Here’s Tony Abbott advocating in favour of a carbon tax:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12PN66IBoPs
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Did Tony introduce a CO2 Tax?
NO!
Who’s in government? GILLARD & SWAN!
Abbott didn’t vote for this at all in the house – you’re lying!
“There will be NO CO2 TAX under a Government I lead!”
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Well Tony Abbott was a senior cabinet minister in the Howard government that in 2007 went to an election promising to enact an Emissions Trading Scheme.
So Abbott has been in favour of an Emissions Trading Scheme, in favour of a carbon tax, and opposed to both at various times.
Basically he just says what is popular at the time, hence his “blood promise” to repeal the ETS can’t be believed because he is just as likely to change his mind about that.
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AH finally one of your caged monkees types something of sense
Yes Smiffy all pollies are liars welcome to the harsh world of reality
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Just who is Adam Smith? This is just plain creepy. A very fine intellect over here in New Zealand once said something along the lines of “…never voice your fears, it only gives them ideas…”. Now which one of you silly monkeys made a joke about “Taxing the air we breath?!”
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TEAM SMITH
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/the-tax-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken-begins/#comment-1076917
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For those who doubt the contention that TEAM SMITH is not an individual:
TEAM SMITH came back on thread at 4.33pm.
In the following 25 minutes to 4.58pm TEAM SMITH posted 7 comments, with a total of 894 words.
That’s a post every 3.5 minutes, typing at 32 words per minute.
That’s not allowing any time for reading the post being commented on, applying styles (blockquotes etc), or actually posting.
These comments are “scattergunned” all the way from comment 27.1.1, to comment 40.1 and are not in order.
Nonetheless, TEAM SMITH managed to post at 4.33, 4.34, 4.37, and 4.39pm
Perhaps the most outstanding effort was TEAM SMITH posting 40.1 at 4.46pm, and following up six minutes later with a 300 word post 32.2.1.
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The results would be even more telling for the period midnight to 3.00am, but I can’t be bothered.
Point made, I think.
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I’m astonished that you waste so much time analysing when and where I post instead of spending time trying to refuge my comments.
Clearly you can’t refuge my comments, so you are left do do bizarre analyses of them.
All you have proven is that I’m a fast typist.
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Sorry but I’m trying to quit refuging.
I already have too many bad habits.
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and
Why would we want to “refuge” your comments?
I can type at somewhere between 50 to 100 words a minute. But I still need go back and consider what I wrote in the heat of the moment.
Also it can help you to not make a dick of yourself.
Oh, and before you complain, you pulled the same stunt on Joe, further up the thread, so no crying now.
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I meant refute, but clearly I was typing too fast for my own good.
Thank you I’ll keep this in mind.
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You have a “good”?
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When do we get to see it?
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Priceless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eq_IZZbf8Y
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TEAM SMITH,
The game is up folks!
You have been found out!
Time for another kitchen table meeting………..
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Excellent analysis MV.
MV : 1
Team Smith : 0
🙂
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Game set and match MV nice work , Love your posts .
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Thanks Mobilly and KK.
But sometimes I feel guilty about taking the mickey out of the village idiot.
On the other hand, every village needs an idiot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF-CkMpQtlY&feature=related
And they get their degrees from East Anglia to boot!
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Just following from MV’s original point, I went back and did a manual count of Team Smith’s work “its” first appearance (at 1.25am July 1). By my count, Team Smith has produced over 100 posts in the (almost) 58 hours to this post.
Compared to other (long-time) regular posters like:
Tony from Oz: 17
MemoryVault: 42 (mostly responding to, or informing about, Team Smith)
Rereke: 26
MattB: 17
Certainly appears that either (a) MV is correct and “Adam” Smith is more than 1 person, or (b) “Adam” Smith is using some kind of machine to be able to produce the large numbers of high-content posts in rapid-fire time that “he” has been doing so far (even allowing for ‘Cut&Paste’ posting).
Not sure if Jo or the Moderation team is able to do a thorough count (and perhaps a word count?) of Team Smith’s contributions compared to the rest of this blog, but it certainly appears that Jo’s initial notation about “Adam” Smith was correct.
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Kevin Rudd confirms it was Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan that never wanted the Carbon Pollution reduction Scheme!
“It was Gillard & Swan“
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I have no idea. The Coalition’s policy doesn’t make any sense.
We know that it will cost more, because Government’s aren’t aren’t very good at choosing cost effective abatement projects, so that’s a given, but what they haven’t done is explained where they will get the money from to pay for their scheme.
All they have said is they will end the sale of carbon permits. Which means the government will have less money, but will need to spend more on carbon abatement.
That is the worst of both worlds and it suggests to me that they will increase other taxes to fund the shortfall.
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Third option-
Neither side of the political spectrum continues to waste money on a non problem and gets on with concentrating on fixing up the many REAL environmental problems we have.
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Well this won’t happen for the simple reason that both the Coalition and the current Government agree that Australia should cut its emissions by 5% on 2000 levels by 2020.
The whole disagreement on how to achieve that. The Government proposes a market mechanism, while the Coalition proposes direct government spending on abatement projects.
If you think politicians are good at spending billions of dollars, by all means support the Coalition.
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Proof positive the ruling class has no connection with reality…
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Oh, Right, you are continuing the conversation from #56, I am glad I figured that out, it helps other people to follow along.
So, if I can sum up:
1) You contend that a tax or a price (on Carbon, or whatever) is a much more efficient way of reducing emissions than the alternative, which is essentially socialism. The government decides where and how emissions will be cut and hands out a heap of money to achieve that goal.
2) And I asked you what sources of income does the Government have, that will allow it to “hand out a heap of money” to anybody.
3) And you replied that the Coalition’s policy doesn’t make any sense.
This is the point where some folks might get a little confused, because the word “coalition” is a tad ambiguous. Are you referring to the ALP/Green coalition (is there a formal agreement? – lets assume that there is), or are you referring to the National/Liberal coalition? Can you see the problem that I am having in following your line of thought?
So, assuming that when I talk about “the Government”, I mean the “arrangement” between the ALP and the Greens, what sources of income does the Government have that will allow it to “hand out a heap of money” to people to reduce emissions?
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Yes this is a reasonable summary of my position. And the reason for this is obvious.
How does the government know in advanced where to directly the most money to achieve the most abatement? The fact is it can’t know until after the money is spent, but by then it is too late to take the money and spend it on something that would be more efficient (higher abatement per dollar spent).
Well why is that a question for me to answer? I am NOT advocating the government directly pay or subsidise abatement! The market price is better, because it creates a liability and then LET’S BUSINESSES FIGURE OUT HOW TO REDUCE THEIR LIABILITY. Each business chooses for themselves whether it is better for them to just buy permits or invest in ways to reduce their liability so they don’t need to buy as many permits.
I am sorry for this confusion. No there is no formal coalition agreement between Labor and the Greens. In Australian politics the Coalition means the Liberal and National parties.
The Government system works by charging a fee for carbon permits. The government takes this revenue and has used it to fund significant income tax cuts and increases to family payments.
The scheme that the Opposition (the Liberal / National Coalition) is proposing is to take money and give it to polluters to encourage them to reduce their pollution.
The Government scheme takes money from polluters and gives it to consumers.
The Opposition’s proposed scheme takes money from consumers (from tax revenue) and gives it to polluters in order to encourage them to reduce pollution.
My argument has always been this. How would the Opposition (Coalition) know which companies to give the money too first? And secondly, where will the money come from to do this? What taxes will they introduce or increase? What spending will they cut?
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Well,
Thank you for a rational reply. I didn’t expect to discuss the merits of alternative schemes from the various parties, but I think you have summed it up quite well.
The nub of the issue is the production of gasses that may, or may not, impact the atmosphere to a greater or lesser extent. The Government, applying the precautionary principle, decides to take steps to reduce the level of those gasses. It does this by creating, from thin air, a new medium of exchange – the carbon permit – which it then forces some emitters to purchase. The money gained from these transactions is then passed to the consumer. The emitters, on the other hand, through various mechanisms, pass on the cost of the permits to the consumer by way of tariff charges. So the consumer receives money on the one hand, and pays it out on the other.
But it is not a zero sum game, because somebody must administer such a scheme, and the costs of administration must come from somewhere. I suggest that trhe only place it can come from is the consumer who either pays in their increased tariff charges, or pays by way of receiving a lower amount from the government.
You may argue that at least the gas emission will have been reduced, but not so. The cost of the permits is covered by the tariff increases, so they then become a wind-fall for the producers who can trade them if they can find a willing market.
I am not saying that this will happen, but I am pointing out that it has happened before, in other parts of the world with fishing quotas, mining rights, etc. It is ripe for rort.
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Sure, but you didn’t mention that an alternative for the company is that they could find ways to reduce their emissions, which would reduce their pollution liability so they don’t need to buy as many permits in the future.
The crucial point is each business can decide for themselves if it is worth them investing in ways to reduce their emissions or if it makes more business sense to them to just buy permits. The Government doesn’t mandate a one size fits all approach for all businesses, the market decides.
And I don’t see how it doesn’t make sense for the government to create something out of thin air, so to speak, to deal with this problem. Money itself is a medium that governments make up so that there can be a value made for things. You could say the same about government bonds, or irrigation permits, or car driver’s licenses. The only have a value because everyone agrees they have a value.
Yes there certainly will be administrative costs associated with any Emissions Trading Scheme, which is why some economists prefer a flat carbon tax because it has a lower administrative burden.
But you need to be consistent. What sized bureaucracy do you think will be required to administer Direct Action carbon abatement policies where the government picks and chooses abatement projects?
How many rules and regulations do you think that would require? And how many public servants would be required to make sure businesses actually achieve the level of abatement that they said they would achieve when they received the government funding?
I propose to you that this would require a bureaucratic structure at least an order of magnitude greater than just making businesses buy permits then letting them figure out how best to reduce their liability.
Not true. Once there is a cap in place, emissions must come in under than cap. If businesses aren’t reducing their emissions, the cost of permits will increase which will increase which will create a greater incentive for emissions reductions, because investment in emissions reduction will be cheaper than buying more permits.
Well I could point to examples where systems like this have worked, such as the cap and trade system in the U.S. that successfully reduced Sulfer emissions from power-stations.
I simply don’t believe that the government mandating particular reductions technologies would’ve been a cheaper way of achieving the same goal rather than just setting a permit price and then letting each power station owner figure out the best ways to reduce emissions for themselves.
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Enough Smith………….enough.
I began reading your comments and as the bile began to rise i could read no more.
This statement brought me to the point of convulsion
If we have 3 companies that resell electricity and all three pass on the cost of the tax we the people have 2 choices.
1, We STFU and pay the tax or
2, We refuse to pay our bill and live without
Sweet mary jesus why on earth would a company try to reduce emissions in a closed market?
You are an idiot, the government department you work for are full of idiots.
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what a pleasant and informative exchange between Rereke and Adam. Then the goons show up. Beebop and Rock Steady no less.
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Adam Smith makes this statement:
Obviously without any thought or intelligence.
Adam is such a fool! The “polluters” (a fraudulent use of the word) get the “money” from the consumers! Giving it “back” (minus the expenses and misdirection) is absolute bureaucratic insanity.
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So you have just admitted that the Coalition’s Direct Action carbon scheme will ultimately be funded by the government increasing existing taxes or introducing a new tax of some sort.
I guess they could call it the “Direct Action Tax”.
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NO liar.
Adam Smith is a liar.
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I have no idea why you think a carbon price should apply to hydro generation!
But also, Australia’s carbon price doesn’t apply to farming either! So it seems it is you who has shot yourself in the foot by failing to understand what you are critiquing.
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I didn’t say that I did. I was merely alluding to the fact that a significant proportion of New Zealand’s power comes from renewable resources. So a tax on coal fired generation is only a small and decreasing part of our carbon tax.
I didn’t say that farming, in either country was subject to carbon tax. It is not. But farming brings in the majority of New Zealand overseas earnings, it is our major export, by a long way. Thus New Zealand does not impact its export market that much.
Australia on the other hand does export a lot of other “stuff” – steel and what have you – that will be impacted by the carbon tax on energy generation. That was the shot in the foot to which I referred.
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Well, the state I live in has increased generation from renewables from 5% to 22% in the last decade. And the main generator uses gas rather than coal.
The amount of carbon produced by farming IS accounted for indirectly in the New Zealand ETS, it is just not directly levied, i.e. farmers don’t have to buy permits.
In Australia farmers can actually benefit from the carbon farming initiative where they can receive a payment for sequestering carbon in their soils. About 10% of the revenue from the sale of carbon permits will be paid to farmers to abate carbon in this way. So not only is farming excluded from being a direct liability under the ETS, but for some farmers they will actually get a new revenue stream if they are willing to adopt practices that hold carbon in the soil.
Australia exports a lot more iron ore and coal than steel. The steel industry has been struggling in Australia for a decade because of low world steel prices, and over the last few years from the high dollar. As part of the introduction of the ETS the government set aside $300 million for the steel industry to assist them in becoming more energy efficient, or by utilising the heat from blast furnaces for other purposes.
Of course the Opposition (the Coalition) voted against this assistance package.
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STOP PRESS!
EVEN Tristan (Edis) of Climate Spectator thinks the CO2 Tax is a crook of garbage!
“Don’t appoint a bunch of Investment bankers to spend a lot of money“
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@Adam Smith
Are we allowed to know who you are and where you live?
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Clearly I’m your worst nightmare. Someone willing to post things you don’t agree with.
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“TEAM Smith”,
We would all love to vist you.
Please, pretty please, give us your address……….
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Now you’re just being creepy.
Just stick to the issues mate.
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Relax, just getting my goose and gander on the same page. Debate is fine and good, so long as you’re a real boy.
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Angry has been away about as long as you… weird really. I don’t think that it is only your ilk that finds Angry creepy though. Damian Allan is very strange and about the worst person you’d want fighting on your side.
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Yes Gee, I recall you once saying I was “creepy”.
In my defense, I only wanted to know what was under the grape leaf. I believe my defense would admit ancient Greece as corroboration. After that I would fire them and plead protection under the 5th amendment (sans extradition laws).
A strong breeze could make all this unnecessary.
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Still waiting for your address “TEAM SMITH” so we can come and have a cup of tea and biscuits…
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oh Dog. This isn’t cycling back to the:
“we will only respect you if you tell all the nut-baggers on the intertubes where you live and your real name”
is it?
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.
The lines:
Belong to Greenpeace, not the skeptics.
http://www.nctimes.com/app/blogs/wp/?p=8640
Are you saying (again) that it’s alright for cultists to be threatening,
but not acceptable for everybody else?
.
Yes, I thought so.
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And who could forget this little example of “reasoned debate”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDXQsnkuBCM
00
.
Even Garry Weaven has doubts on the CO2 TAX money coming in
Pacific Hydro Boss (Ex Union Boss & Super Fund IFM Manager)
IFM owns Pacific Hydro – this is another spin off for the supporters of the Gillard LIE!
Same video as Tristan and Richard Dennis!
Who’s next Adam
Brandt,Gillch**^&,Smith,Doctor Who!00
Mad Hatter
I provided you with a link to the Act of the Australian parliament that sets out how greenhouse gas accounting is done in Australia.
This was an Act passed during the period of the Howard government.
What I can’t do is read the Act for you. That is something you will have to do for yourself.
I have no idea what your statement that the law is a fiction means. This Act is the basis for Green House gas accounting in Australia, and has been so since July 1, 2008 when it came into effect (even though it passed parliament in September 2007).
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For your edification…
Fiction = From the mind of man
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This is an interesting post…
It shows the increase in wholesale electricity pricing… Apparently already $2.00 per MWh higher than Treasury modelling expected.
So how much more will it cost as time goes on and the Labor/Greens/Not-really-independents have their way?
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CO2 Tax kills local native wildlife and plant species.
This investigative report in 2010 has been the last – conversion to the GREEN MOB is nearly complete!
Negative Environmental effects of renewable energy (Windmills)
Decrease in native birds, decrease in native vegetation etc etc KILLED by windmills! And we’re paying for it!
And now no more studies since GILLARD, SWAN and COMBET have put a stop to research that citisises any aspect of renewable energy!
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UN Climate Scientists Plead for Immunity from Criminal Prosecution……TELL THEM THEY ARE DREAMING !
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/un-climate-scientists-plead-for-immunity-from-criminal-prosecution/
THESE ANTI HUMAN CORRUPT SO CALLED “SCIENTISTS” PROMOTING ON THIS GLOBAL WARMING SCAM MUST BE CHARGED WITH CRIMINAL FRAUD AND JAILED FOR THE TERM OF THEIR NATURAL LIVES !!!!!!!!
THEY MUST BE JOKING IF THEY THINK THAT THEY CAN COMMIT FRAUD WITHOUT ANY CONSEQUENCES !!
ELECTION NOW TO REMOVE THIS COMMUNIST CARBON DIOXIDE (PLANT FOOD) TAX !!!!!!!
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.
Tristan on the ABC says:
So whats the point of this CO2 TAX? It’s just a money junket & Tristan agrees?
00
The point is to LET THE MARKET, i.e. hundreds of businesses across the country, find the cheapest ways the abate carbon emissions!
The alternative is “Direct Action” government investment in abatement projects.
If you think politicians can pick and choose abatement projects more effectively than the operation of the market, by all means vote Liberal at the next election, because they are playing to spend something like $10 billion worth of our taxes on abatement projects in just the next 5 years.
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South Australia will be the highest priced electricity in the World by 2013!
Fact: SA is now number 3
Fact: The pricing is rising faster than Germany & Denmark!
Fact: By 2013 with the CO2 Tax – SA will lead the world by far!
Don’t you just love having world records!
Ans SA has done nothing to reduce global temperature – it’s already dropping – so what a BL*(&Y waste of money!
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The new ‘Invisible Hand’ of the Adam Smith Collective manifests an excellent lesson in the extreme and distracting politicisation of spurious science and a scent of things to come: life under the unelected bureaucracy of UN Agenda 21, resplendent with the fruits of carbon taxation.
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This was the state of electricity prices in 2001.
Before all this CO2 Tax garbage!
No wonder Asutralia developed strongly to get through the GFC!
Nothing to do with GILLARD OR SWAN!
“Graph of Electricity Prices World 2011!”
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I recently saw a small forest of wind turbines on top of a hill overlooking Raglan on the west coast of the North Island of NZ. It looked surreal and it occurred to me that these were possibly the symbol of the new Green Religion – Green Crucifixes as it were.
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No, it is much worse. They are a policy statement of the Green Political Collective: “Resistance is Futile”
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Just felt a magnitude 7 earthquake. Must be global warming.
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First power station closes because of CO2 TAX!
The carbon tax has been partially blamed for the decision to close a coal-fired power station in the Hunter Valley. See at the impartial “ABC News report.”
said Delta chief executive Greg Everett.
This power station is 45 years old with very few upgrades – wonder what will be the fate of all the windmills and solar farms in 10 years!!!
This CO2 TAX is the joke of the year – they should of started it on April 1st!
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It is nearly full time on this thread and here are the scores.
Number of comments posted by Team Smith about administrivial details of the impact and implementation of the carbon tax in which someone replied to debate him on those same irrelevant details: ~ 47
Number of own-goals by Team Smith: 1 (here)
Number of comments posted by anyone other than Team Smith about the unscientific basis of the carbon tax in which Team Smith replied to debate the scientific basis and lost the argument: 2 (1st,2nd)
So by full time the score looks set to be:
Smith 46, World 2.
Team Smith is on track for a major victory in this round.
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See post 82.1 below.
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Goodnight Bob!
Goodnight Julia!
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‘Adam Smith’, when a government appointed board decides how many carbon permits will be issued, that is not a FREE market. When Howard was elected narrowly with his GST policy, he subsequently was re-elected with a greater majority. However, you may as well talk about whether we agree with Income Tax as GST, it is equally irrelevant to the discussion on Carbon Tax.
If CO2 emissions are causing catastrophic climate change, then why is ‘Adam Smith’ arguing for what everyone, climate sceptics and believers, agree will be a useless, carbon tax (price/pre ETS)? He tells us the price of $23 per ton will have a little impact on prices, business profitability and the economy. He would also know that some of the biggest CO2 emitters are trade exposed so they are receiving free carbon credits and/or subsidies. So I agree, the current level of tax will have little impact – but it will all be negative, it will have no impact on CO2 emissions and it is only the start. ‘Adam Smith’ and Labor dare not talk about the impact when the carbon rate has to increase and be applied across the economy.
A believer like ‘Adam Smith’ should be arguing for the most immediate and dramatic global CO2 emission reduction strategy possible. Instead, he’s happy to spend many hours supporting a useless policy. Clearly ‘Adam Smith’ is arguing from a political perspective rather than a scientific or economic perspective.
Apply all of ‘Adam Smith’s’ quick responses regarding the starting price of $23 per ton applied to just 294 enterprises and see how those arguments stack up against $275 per ton across the entire economy. Because that is what the CO2 emissions reduction targets are all about. That’s where they must get to assuming the rest of the world climbs on board according the the Government’s own projections, and according to the Government’s CleanEnergyFuture Act.
So if ‘Adam Smith’ actually says anything worthwhile can someone let me know?
Meanwhile Jo, we need to get the thumbs up/thumbs down working again, because I’d rather signify my response to ‘Adam Smith’ that way rather than wasting my time typing something he deliberately mis-interprets or avoids actually addressing.
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What TEAM SMITH is:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/on-carbon-sunday-an-ode-to-gaia/#comment-1076610
The only logical way to deal with TEAM SMITH:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/on-carbon-sunday-an-ode-to-gaia/#comment-1076742
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Yes, and Labor supporter though I was, I found Kim Beasley’s calls to roll back the GST tiresome. And so it is with Mr Rabbitt.
00
Thanks Memoryvault. I did realise this, which is why I always placed ‘Adam Smith’ in inverted commas. I do like the suggestion at your second link. I certainly wouldn’t mind people putting a counter view and prepared for a logical argument, but ‘Adam Smith’s’ goal does appear to be to obfuscate. Then what else could ‘Adam Smith’ do, he couldn’t rely on science or economics to support his pro carbon tax position.
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So John are you predicting Julia Gillard will win the next election easily? If you believe that, you’ll believe anything!
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I don’t think Labor can win the next election with Gillard as leader. But I think it is untrue to say that Labor can’t win the next election irrespective of the leader.
I also think that Tony Abbott will be the last Coalition Leader to oppose a pricing mechanism for reducing carbon pollution, either a flat carbon tax, fixed price ETS (which we currently have) or a floating price ETS.
After all, Tony Abbott is the only currently living Liberal leader that doesn’t believe in a price on carbon pollution of some sort.
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I take it this doesn’t count?
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/howard-predicts-lonely-path-on-ets-20110717-1hjp7.html
You distort the truth, misrepresent facts, ignore evidence and twist it to suit your own agenda. Stop telling “fibs”.
Honesty is the best recourse. I wish both the ALP/Greens and GetUp! would recognise this. You are not dealing with errant school children that don’t understand “stuff”. You’re talking to a group of people who have investigated “stuff” for themselves, are well aware of the facts, and discovered the hidden truths, for themselves. The group of individuals who regularly post here are intelligent.
Your blatant distortions of truth are what have dragged me from being a silent observer to posting openly. Judging by the hits Jo’s site gets, I am guessing I am not alone. You should tell your handlers to be aware that the silent majority, something Australia has always had, is slowly wakening and becoming more vocal. Beware the slumbering giant. Queenslands election was a reminder of that for your people, however you still fail to swallow that message.
Enjoy your first meeting for 2014 in the rental Tarago. I do so hope Abbott disbands your party when you can’t even muster enough seats after the double dissolution. You don’t deserve a second chance.
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This is not how the Clean Energy Act will work. The PARLIAMENT will decide what the cap should be for each 3 year period. It will simply be given ADVICE from the board led by Bernie Fraser.
Your assertion that something can’t be a free market because government regulates something is laughable. The Reserve Bank of Australia effectively regulates the price of credit in the banking system for example.
I simply mention the GST to keep a sense of perspective in this debate. The GST raises about $1000 million a week, but apparently that has no effect on the price of goods and services and the cost of living, but the fixed priced ETS or ‘Carbon Tax’ will raise just $77 million a week and yet that is supposedly the end of the world.
Clearly you don’t read enough, because if you did you would find that economists say that if you want to reduce something, putting a price signal in the market is the best way to do it.
Did you know, for example, that about 60% of the price of a pack of cigarettes in Australia is tax? Now are you seriously trying to convince me that a better way to regulate the consumption of tobacco products would be to remove the taxes, but just pay tobacco companies a fee for them to reduce their production of cigarettes?
Because THAT in a nutshell is the non-market approach to regulating the consumption of tobacco products.
Well hang on a second mate, why should you be able to tell me what I should argue for?
I OPPOSE any policy that would wreck the economy in the interests of cutting carbon emissions. We need to start doing this slowly so the economy isn’t effected and so businesses have time to adjust.
Again, it is strange that you seem to think the GST which raises $1000 million a week doesn’t effect the economy at all, but the carbon price which will raise just $77 million a week somehow is going to destroy the economy.
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Hahahahahahahaha Wow!! Those would be the same ones who promoted the derivitive market, promoting pink bats and school halls, to borrow the over used phrases…
You truly have drunk collectively deeply from the kool-aid barrel.
Keynesians… Pah… How’s that working out for the global and Australian economy?
Yep, and you’re standing by your call on a tax that compounds as goods go to market. What the hell do you call that??
Oh, that’s right, every argument the collective Agent Smith (think Matrix 3) has made points to the inability of the collective to see past the initial layer of the tax.
You see so one dimensionally. Just like a Keynesian.
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I’m not quite sure how this relates to my post, but anyway, I think derivative markets are fine so long as they are well regulated.
I actually agree that the government paying for pink batts was a stupid idea. Why? Well because this is the exact sort of Direct Action carbon abatement policy that costs a fortune! It cost about $100 per tonne of CO2-e abated.
This is why I support the carbon price, because it takes carbon abatement away from political decision making and hands it over to businesses who know more about how their business runs than politicians and public servants.
Your nonsense about school halls just demonstrates you don’t read that much. When the school hall projects were being built, the private construction sector hand collapsed. So those building projects saved thousands of construction jobs.
The fact you seem so sure of yourself suggests you don’t really think very critically.
Well for the Australian economy it worked out FANTASTICALLY!
Australia IS THE ONLY DEVELOPED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD that DIDN’T go into recession during the financial crisis!
Australia’s economy is now growing at its fastest rate since late 2007. The unemployment rate is 5.1%, there is about $900 billion worth of investment lined up over the next few years, and about $500 billion of that is in mining. Australia has low inflation, and interest rates are about what they were in the early 1960s.
So to answer your question, Australia basically has the best economy in the developed world.
The tax doesn’t ‘compound’ at all. In fact as you go each step through the supply change the effect of the tax REDUCES!
I guess you are referring to the cost of buying carbon permits, but I can’t tell because I don’t think you actually understand the policy you are critiquing.
Well you seem to think zero dimensionally.
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Let me assist you in compounding effect, which is something I posted a touch further up, and also, answer the question posed at the end:
00
“Keynesians… Pah… How’s that working out for the global and Australian economy?”
“The Romans! What have they ever done for US!”
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Ha! Mate, read it for yourself, it is in the Coalition’s 2007 policy document that you can download here:
http://australianpolitics.com/elections/2007/liberal-policy/07-10-12_AustraliaStrongProsperousAndSecure.pdf
Here’s the choice bit on page 27:
There it is in black and white. John Howard supported an ETS at the 2007 election. But not just that, look at that bolded part, Howard said that Australia should be “among the first movers”.
I guess of course you could just be saying that John Howard is a liar who never intended on implementing his own policy? But of course that would make him a liar and not worth listening to.
I guess his critique of the government’s ETS does make him a liar, because he was the one who proposed being among the first country’s with an ETS, but now he seems to be saying that his 2007 policy document was a stupid idea. I guess I just don’t know which John Howard to believe anymore.
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Once again, you twist the facts.
Yes it was policy, however on the assumption other western/developed nations acted.
Guess what? Can you list the nations who have acted, outside of the EU, in implementing an ECONOMY WIDE, not state run, Carbon Dioxide Tax or ETS who’s primary source of electricity generation is Coal Fired Generators?
Now, let’s get rid of the proviso of coal fired, name the nations, including the EU, that have implemented an ECONOMY WIDE cardon dioxide tax or ets?
Now, how about just a nation wide ETS? And what, pray tell, is the price per tonne?
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Bullshit! It is there in black and white! The Coalition said that Australia should be among the first in the Asia Pacific region!!!
You are being misleading.
Australia’s ETS isn’t economy wide! It doesn’t include farming or personal transport for example. You don’t even seem to understand what you are critiquing.
Do you know that California’s Emissions Trading Scheme starts on January 1st, 2013? To put this in perspective, California’s economy is about 5 times bigger than Australia’s.
I have no idea why you are going on about “economy wide”, because AUSTRALIA’s ETS isn’t economy wide!
You have done a fantastic job of moving on from my initial point that John Howard supported an ETS, and of course his government included Tony Abbott.
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Maybe you should just chillax? We are just discussing issues mate, don’t take everything so personally.
Because those three energy generators compete against each other to sell power into the grid. If one can reduce their pollution liability they won’t need to buy as many permits, which means they can sell into the grid at a lower price while retaining their profit margin and thus out compete other generators!
The Liberal Party approach is to take your taxes and hand it to polluters in the hope they will reduce their emissions, whereas the market approach uses the profit incentive to drive change.
There’s no need to revert to abuse. We are just having a discussion, just calm down.
Also, I don’t work for a government department.
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TEAM SMITH should be HONEST enough to tell us all here how many INDIVIDUALS it consists of sitting at the kitchen table all with laptops….
The words DOLE BLUDGERS SPRINGS TO MIND !
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I’m just one person who happens to disagree with you mate.
I’ve exchange email with Jo to prove I am an actual person.
Nothing amuses me more than people here assuming that one person is incapable of disagreeing with them on the issues discussed here.
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So no one can even tell the truth without threat of disastrous legal sanction. How cowardly can you get? I have to wonder what they hope the prohibition will accomplish. I’ll bet not even one in a million Australians will fail to figure out what the price increase is. It just takes some simple arithmetic.
You have not only been screwed, they’ve added insult on top of injury.
Then I see some of the usual apologists making their excuses…too bad the thumbs aren’t working.
It occurs to me that the red thumb could be changed to the image of an upraised middle finger. I know. I know. It’s not polite. But why treat these people with kid gloves when they’re hurting you so badly? Why? 🙁
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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/opinion/a-carbon-tax-sensible-for-all.xml
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Here’s a bit of real world stuff on how the Australian Carbon Tax in further way affects businesses subject to it. There of course is no help given by our government to end user businesses:
J.J.Richards & Sons Pty Ltd
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO OUR CUSTOMERS
The Carbon Tax and your Waste
“The Carbon Tax commences on the 1st of July 2012. Of the top 500 companies that will be paying the tax directly – 190 operate in the waste disposal sector. The initial price of carbon dioxide is $25.30/tonne including GST, this affects all waste transport companies equally.
The landfill operators are indicating that the impact due to the carbon tax and other operating costs could be as high as $34.00 per tonne of waste disposed.
EPA Levy
The State Government has increased the waste levy from 1 July 2012 to $54.24 including GST.”
That impost on top of 9.8% to 14% (Increases with rising MJs) extra for natural gas, about 10 % for electrical power plus other on costs from suppliers of materials like acetylene and industrial oxygen etc. All due to Gillard’s, selling out Aussies to keep her job, business hobbling carbon tax.
The only thing business gets a credit for from the government in all this, is business savvy Howard’s refund on GST paid.
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As bad as things are in the Colonies, the one asset we still have is the Freedom of Speech. We can call a lemon a lemon without fear of fines or imprisonment.
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