It’s 22 times as expensive to to something rather than nothing.
Gillard’s tax on “carbon pollution”: the facts
If the Australian Government’s proposal to oblige 500 big “polluters” to engage in what the City of London calls “trading hot air” were to achieve its stated aim of cutting 5% of Australia’s CO2 emissions by 2020, and assuming HM Treasury’s 3.5% pure-rate-of-time-preference commercial discount rate for inter-temporal investment appraisals –
- By 2020, CO2 in the air would be 411.987 parts per million by volume, compared with 412 ppmv if no action were taken.
- Global warming forestalled by 2020 would be 0.00007 C°: i.e. 1/14,000 C°.
- 0.00007 C° is 1/700 of the threshold below which modern instruments and methods cannot detect a global temperature change at all.
- At this rate, total cost of the carbon tax/trade policy will be not less than $127 billion between now and 2020, not counting gasoline and power price hikes.
- If all the world’s measures to cut greenhouse-gas emissions were as cost-ineffective as the Australian Government’s proposed policy, forestalling just 1 C° of global warming would cost the world $1.7 quadrillion.
- Forestalling all of the 0.24 C° global warming predicted by 2020 would demand almost $60,000 from every man, woman and child on the planet.
- That cost is equivalent to almost 60% of global GDP to 2020.
- That is 22 times the maximum estimate of the welfare loss from doing nothing about the climate, which is just 2.7% of global 21st-century GDP.
- It is 83 times the minimum welfare-loss estimate of just 0.7% of GDP.
- Garnaut’s 1.35% and 2.65% inter-temporal discount rates are very low by usual economic standards, artificially making the cost of action seem less costly compared with the cost of inaction than it really is. However –
- Even at Garnaut’s artificially low discount rates, the cost of the Gillard policy would be 7.6 to 15 times the cost of doing nothing about climate change.
- At the 5% discount rate recommended by President Dr. Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic for climate-related appraisals, the cost of doing what Gillard proposes would be 36 times the maximum cost of doing nothing.
- For most Australian households, the $10.10/week benefit from the Gillard scheme will exceed the $9.90/week cost, providing no disincentive to emit.
- For 500 big “polluters” (CO2 is not a pollutant, but plant-food to green the planet), compensation plus higher prices provide no disincentive to emit.
- Thus, all the above calculations overstate the scheme’s cost-effectiveness.
- Bottom line: It is many times more costly to try to prevent global warming by Gillard‟s methods than to adapt in a focused way to the predicted consequences of global warming.
Conclusion: Mitigation policies cheap enough to be affordable will be ineffective: policies costly enough to be effective will be unaffordable. It is unlikely that any policy to forestall global warming by regulating, reducing replacing, taxing or trading greenhouse-gas emissions will prove cost-effective solely on grounds of the welfare benefit foreseeable from global-warming mitigation. No such benefit is discernible.
High abatement costs, and the negligible returns in warming forestalled, imply that focused adaptation to the consequences of such future warming as may occur will prove more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation. The opportunity cost of diverting trillions of dollars to mitigation is heavy. Therefore, the question arises whether mitigation should be attempted at all.
Background information
The following pages of background information demonstrate how the above results were determined. For full references, caveats, and a thorough discussion, see –
Monckton of Brenchley, C.W., 2009, Is CO2 Mitigation Cost-Effective? Lecture to the Prague School of Economics, May, 12 pp: obtainable from vc@nd.edu.au.
Definitions
Radiative flux is a continuous flow of radiant energy at some surface, denominated in Watts per square metre (W m–2).
Radiative forcing is a change in the net radiative flux at the tropopause, the top of the climatically-active region of the atmosphere.
The mitigation cost-effectiveness of any policy intended to mitigate global warming by reducing CO2 concentration in the air is the cost of forestalling 1 C° of CO2-induced global warming, on the assumption that all measures to mitigate that warming up to a target year are as cost-effective (or cost-ineffective) as that policy.
On the same assumption, the global abatement cost of a policy is the cost (expressed as a percentage of global GDP taken as increasing yearly at 3% real, and discounted at some inter-temporal discount rate) of forestalling all warming from CO2 and other manmade climate influences up to the target year (in this case, 2020).
Base data (with sources)
3.4 C°: cent.est. of 21st-century manmade warming: (IPCC, 2007, p.13, table SPM.3).
8 W m–2: cent.est. of 21st-century radiative forcing (IPCC, 2007, p. 803, fig. 10.26).
5.35: CO2 radiative-forcing coefficient: (Myhre et al., 1998; IPCC, 2001 & 2007: A2).
280 ppmv: Estd. CO2 concentration in the air in 1750 (IPCC, 2001 & 2007: A2).
390 ppmv: Measured CO2 concentration in 2010 (NOAA; ESRL).
22 ppmv: Projected CO2 concentr. growth, 2011-2020 (IPCC. 2007, A2 scenario).
836 ppmv: Projected CO2 concentration in 2100 (IPCC, 2007, A2 scenario).
5%: Proposed cut in Australian emissions by 2020. (Gillard announcement, 2011).
1.2%: Australian CO2 emissions as % world emissions (from Boden et al., 2010ab).
$10.1 bn/yr: carbon trading cost (23/26 x $11.5 bn given in Garnaut, 2011).
$0.9 bn/yr: renewable energy support ($9.2 bn over 10 years: Gillard, 2011).
$1.6 bn/yr: administration costs (Wong, 2010).
$0.3 bn/yr: costs of coal & steel support averaged over 10 years (Gillard, 2011).
$60 trillion: Global annual GDP (World Bank, 2011).
51%: CO2 forcing as a proportion of all 21st-century manmade forcings (IPCC, 2007).
0.1%: Pure rate-of-time-preference inter-generational discount rate (Stern, 2006).
1.35% & 2.65%: Pure rate-of-time-preference discount rates (Garnaut, 2008).
2.75% & 3.22%: Pure rate-of-time-preference discount rates (HM Treasury).
3.5%: Standard pure rate-of-time-preference discount rate (HM Tsy Green Book).
5.0%: Pure rate-of-time-preference discount rate (President Dr. Vaclav Klaus).
The true cost of putting a “price” on carbon dioxide
Using the base data and HM Treasury’s 3.5% discount rate, we determine –
- The CO2 concentration in 2020 if Garnaut’s proposal is fully implemented: 412 ppmv minus 25% of 1.2% of 22 ppmv = 411.987 ppmv.
- The radiative forcing the policy forestalls over the 10-year period:
5.35 x the natural logarithm of (412/411.987) = 0.00017 W m–2. - How much warming Professor Garnaut’s proposal will forestall by 2020:
3.4 / 8 x 0.00017 = 0.00007 C°, or about 1/14,000 C°. - The cost of the carbon-trading policy in year 1:
($10.1bn + $1.6 bn + $0.9 bn + 0.3 bn) = $13 bn. - The total cost of carbon-trading policy from 2011-2020:
$13 bn increased by 3%/year & discounted at 3.5%/yr: total $127 bn/10yr. - The amount of CO2-driven warming over 10 years if we do nothing:
3.4 / 8 x 5.35 x the natural logarithm of (412/390) = 0.125 C°. - The mitigation cost-effectiveness of Australia’s carbon trading policy:
$127 bn / 5% of 1.2% of 0.125 C° = $1.7 quadrillion/C° forestalled. - Total global GDP from 2011-2020:
$60 trillion/year in 2010, hiked by 3%/year: total $708 trillion/10yr. - The global abatement cost of the policy:
(100 x $127 bn) / 5% of 1.2% of 51% of $708 trillion = 58.4% of GDP. - The global abatement cost of the policy per capita of world population:
58.4% of $708 trillion divided by 7 bn world population = $59,000/head.
Table 1 summarizes the effect of various inter-temporal discount rates.
The action/inaction ratio compares the action cost with the upper-bound inaction cost.
| TABLE 1 | Stern | Garnaut #1 | Garnaut #2 | Treasury | Klaus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ROTP discount rate | 0.1% | 1.35% | 2.65% | 3.5% | 5.0% |
| Policy Cost | $153 bn | $142 bn | $132 bn | $127 bn | $117 bn |
| Mitigation cost-effect. | $2.1 qd/C | $2.0 qd/C | $1.8 qd/C | $1.7 qd/C | $1.6 qd/C |
| Abatement cost/head | $71,500 | $66,500 | $62,000 | $59,000 | $55,000 |
| Global abatemt. cost | $499 tr | $465 tr | $433 tr | $414 tr | $383 tr |
| Abatemt. as % GDP | 70.4% | 65.6% | 61.1% | 58.4% | 54% |
| Global inaction cost | 5-20% | 2.2-8.6% | 1.0-4.1% | 0.7-2.7% | 0.4-1.5% |
| Action/Inaction | 3.5x | 7.6x | 15x | 22x | 36x |
M of B: monckton@mail.com: 10 July 2011
what a terrible mess:
10 July: Ninemsn: Self-funded retirees overlooked
More than 280,000 self-funded retirees will miss out on any carbon tax compensation, says National Seniors Australia (NSA)…
Mr O’Neill said a single self-funded retiree on an income of $50,000 or a couple on $80,000 a year will not receive cost-of-living assistance.
He said it was wrong to consider a single self-funded retiree on $51,000 should be deemed wealthy enough to absorb the impost of a carbon tax…
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8271214/self-funded-retirees-overlooked
9 July: SMH: Tax may force self-funded retirees on to pension: Seniors
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/tax-may-force-selffunded-retirees-on-to-pension-seniors-20110709-1h7kn.html
10 July: Herald-Sun: Carbon tax puts Hazelwood ‘in the gun’ – Peter Ryan
THE Federal Government’s carbon tax plan is a stake in the heart of Hazelwood power station workers in Victoria, the state’s Acting Premier says.
Under carbon tax plan, 2000 megawatts of the nation’s dirtiest power generators would close…
Mr Ryan said the closure of Hazelwood threatened the state’s capacity to generate adequate power supply.
He said the federal government had not consulted with the Victorian government…
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/carbon-tax-puts-hazelwood-in-the-gun-peter-ryan/story-fn7x8me2-1226091782398
10 July: Reuters: Coal miners say Australia carbon tax treatment unfair
Simon Bennison, chief executive officer of the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies, disagreed: “Australia’s sovereign risk continues to take a battering, to the detriment of investment, whilst key trading competitor countries continue to emit high levels of carbon dioxide and not incur the same carbon pricing costs as their Australian counterparts,” he said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/10/us-australia-carbon-coal-idUSTRE7690JH20110710
10 July: Ninemsn: TWU repeats threat to hold tax protest
The government announced on Sunday that the heavy transport industry will start paying the $23 per tonne from 2014, instead of 2012 like other businesses.
TWU federal secretary Tony Sheldon has warned union members will stage “sit-ins” and protests at MPs’ offices if industry costs are increased by the tax…
The union said on Saturday its member could take “civil disobedience action” as early as this week.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8271155/twu-repeats-threat-to-hold-tax-protest
just do it, tony. CFMEU members need to threaten to not pay their dues unless their leaders call them out as well. tony maher needs to go NOW as he does not speak for his members who pay exorbitant dues to keep him in his position. what a traitor:
10 July: ABC: Carbon tax details fail to sway business
However, Tony Maher from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) says the package provides the funding the sector needs to reduce its emissions.
“The Coal Association needs to come out in support of this package – it will give them time to clean up the industry,” he said.
“We support cleaning up industries, not closing them down, and the Australian coal industry has a long and vibrant future for decades to come.” …
The renewable energy industry has expressed its delight with the Government’s proposed $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation which will invest in large scale renewable energy projects.
It has also welcomed the consolidation of the Government’s $3.2 billion worth of existing clean energy programs under the new Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
The chief executive of the Australian Solar Energy Society John Grimes says his members warmly welcome the boost in funding for renewable energy.
“This is great news for solar – in fact this will put solar on steroids in Australia,” he told reporters.
“We particularly welcome the $10 billion fund to fund large-scale renewable projects.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/07/10/3265862.htm
10
So – The CPI is set to rise by 0.7% (or around 25% from its current level).
The Reserve Bank will have no choice but to hike interest rates as the new CPI will be well outside of its comfort zone.
Thank God my $200 basket of Grceries will only cost 80 cents a week more. (sarc)
10
Neat Tax Trick:
Raising the tax free threshold from $6,000 to $18,200 sounds brilliant, until you take into account that the ‘Real’ tax free threshold for low income earners was actually $16,000 to start with, because of the $1,500 low income offset.
10
VOTE NOW:
The courier Mail are running a national plebiscite on carbon tax.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/cast-your-vote-in-national-plebiscite-on-carbon-tax-hosted-by-news-ltd-websites/story-e6freooo-1226091387866
10
When is everyone going to realise that this “price”has nothing to do with the climate, renewable energy or pollution.
If this tax gets thru parliament the power that this government will have over everyone thru a vice like grip on the economy will be complete.
500 companies will live in fear, year by year waiting for their ‘turn’.
Their turn will come when government decides they need more control / tax revenue or when ‘government decides’ carbon pollution levels need reducing a bit more.
I bet the household compensation levels will then remain static while government revenues soar.
Wake up people we are in the grip of a SOCIALIST take over of the economy. They will own each one of us and they will own whats left of the economy.
10
The only rational reason for implementing tax on air is to destroy the “free-marked”.
And when the free marked is gone soo is mostly capitalism and right Wing parties.
They want radical political solutions that will give the left Wing parties monopoly.
Its probably good for labour.
But its very bad for the people of Australia.
Because this is only the beginning in the downward spiraling road towards eco/enviro-socialism or -communism.
10
Let’s look at Bayswater again, just one of many large scale coal fired power plants.
Bayswater has 4 generators.
Each generator weighs 1350 tons.
That enormous weight has to rotate at 3000RPM, or 50 times a second.
A huge 3 stage turbine drives it, adding to the weight that has to turn.
Enormous amounts of high temperature high pressure steam are required to drive the turbine.
That steam need huge amounts of heat, provided by a critical furnace.
They burn coal in that furnace, in fact one ton of crushed coal every four seconds, each ton of burned coal producing 2.86 tons of CO2 on average.
That amount of coal is the minimum requirement to keep that turbine moving.
Any less than that, and there’s not enough steam, no drive for the turbine, and the generator just stops dead, the end result being no Power.
So, either it turns or it’s stopped. No in between.
Coal fired power is 75% of all consumed power in Oz, and CO2 emissions come from other power generating sources as well, totalling out at 93% of all consumed electrical power in the Country.
Forget the Top 500 Polluters Just from the top 20, 14 of them are large scale electricity providers, including the Top 4, and that’s where the bulk of the money will be coming from, not polluters, but providers of what is an absolute necessity of life.
CO2 Tax Australia – Julia Gillard – Absolutely Clueless explains in more detail how this iniquitous tax will not even achieve what it is supposed to do when it comes to the generation of electrical power.
How is placing a tax on those CO2 emissions supposed to lower those emissions.
10
Financial Fascism!!!!!!!!!!!! I rest my case.
10
@TrueNews (#4)…
I hate those polls where the questions/options are such crap. For example, to give “climate change is a myth” as one of the 4 choices shows the lack of understanding of the real issues on the part of the survey designers.
10
Steve at 8 – Gillard’s climate change science is a myth! So is AGW. Tony Windsor has been given enough evidence to say that the climate commissioner’s report (that contained a disclaimer) was based on false and misleading data. Something is wrong and it ain’t the Australian voters. This tax will do nothing to cut polluting emissions as they have found in
the EU. And carbon trading is failing and we were warned about this a few nights ago on the ABC news.
When is the rally in Tamworth for No Carbon Tax. Tony Windsor might be there, and I wonder if he feels like one labor MP when asked to carry Gillards tax to his electorate. “I would rather seek asylum in Malaysia than walk in my electorate”.
10
Almost all commentators plus all politicians have completely misread and grossly underestimated the depth of feeling against the AGW fraud,
They have also not realised the level of knowledge possessed by those who oppose this useless, destructive carbon dioxide tax which will do absolutely nothing to help the environment nor to bring about the fantasy of Man being able to control the climate.
AGW is the biggest scientific fraud of the modern era and it’s acceptance by those gullible enough to believe the climate-modelled hypothesis ranks with the greatest examples of mass delusion and brainwashing of people in history.
After nearly eight decades of living in the best country on this wonderful enduring self-regulating self-healing planet, I regard today as Australia’s darkest in it’s peacetime history!. Cry, my beloved country!
10
Steve # 8
Have to agree – I tossed up whether to answer 1 or 4 on that question. If interest rates rise as a result of this tax, then I’m going to have to cut back elsewhere, simple as that. The retailers and other non-mining business are already suffering. The Govt might be giving with one hand, but they will be taking more with the other. Utter stupidity with large portions of the domestic economy subdued already.
10
Sorry, that was to Steve # 9
10
Is it just me ?
While I admire Christopher’s grasp of reality, and his uncanny ability to get it across to the great brainwashed, his portcullis does make me rather uneasy. It may go down well in Sydney, but it does distract somewhat from the power of his message.
This new Tax will do Not One Thing for Climate Change ( as Chtistopher has quantified). It will merely feather the nests of Politicians & Global bureaucrats, but as long as the brainwashed are happy with it, then they’ll be coming back for more, thankyou very much.
10
Beware a fast approaching ETS near you soon! (from across the ‘pond’) its catchy.
According to Rodney Hide (NZ minister for local Govt and NZACT party leader) in a recent interview said that Kiwis are now aware how much NZ’s ETS is costing in real terms after it was trumpeted in with what I would call strongish protest but not strong enough and the lame MSM dint help at all by continuously showing pictures of smoking chimneys whenever the ETS was mentioned added to by melting Antarctic ice. The minister of Environment Nick Smith was told in no uncertain terms by many letters from The NZ Climate Science Coalition the errors of his ways on AGW, of course he ignores to this day. Rember NZ has a National consevative party in power.
10
There is too much for Ma and Pa Australia to absorbe in this. They not only have to understand economics, but some of the arguments of climate science.
This is such a mess. They may succeed in dividing and conquering.
10
Steve @ 9 & lmwd @ 12
I struggled with the same dilemma with the Courier Mail plebiscite because it promotes the warmist myth that AGW sceptics don’t acknowledge climate change. However,the framing of the questions leave no alternative but to vote for “climate change is a myth”.
The ninemsn poll “Are you worried the carbon tax will drive up living costs” is running YES 69,711 : NO 9,631
http://ninemsn.com.au/ocid=ww
The Yahoo poll “Are you for or against a carbon tax ” is running
FOR 16% 4416 : AGAINST 84% 24010
http://au.news.yahoo.com/polls/
10
Nick @ 16:
The article is actually quite short, broken down to just a list of bullet points.
The article could do with standing out more from the reams of background info. though
and the,
bit, at the top, needs to go elsewhere, as that just deflates any normal joe who was tempted to try reading further.
10
Sorry. That Yahoo poll link doesn’t work so just Google Yahoo News and it will take you there.
10
Keith H @ #7
Yes the Yahoo question is much more simple steaightforward & honest.
What would you call that 16% ?
The moral majority, that the rest of us should be forced to listen to & be guided by ?
10
The same straightforward question at the other poll, at Courier Mail, gets only ~10% in favour of a Tax.
How can these other 90% expect to be taken seriously ? 😉
10
@Steve Schapel:
I Agree the question “climate change is a myth” is a little biased which is why I personally didn’t select it.
However the bias pales into insignicance compared to the question asked by the Greens in their latest poll.
(The – would you rather pay a tax ? – or – Tax the polluters ? question)
.
@BushBunny:
Love It.
I would have asked you to pass on my letter of regards to Tony Windsor when you see him, but I think it might be illegal to send a Turd by Australia Post.
.
@TonyufromOz:
Brilliant as usual Tony
GUYS – Read the Link to the PAPundits article – it explains a lot.
10
Just saw that Tony…..u…..fromOz
Great.
I can’t even spell my own name.
10
True @22
In the context if the question , will it make you consume less (owtte),
‘Climate Change is a Myth’, while not logically correct, does seem to engender an appropriate reaction to the question.
On the Green’s
question.
While this is clearly designed to be emotive:
Don’t these poor misguided , emotional, Idealists realise it is They who Are the said Polluters.
Industry, Big Mining etc are just a convenient proxy , to deflect guilt for their self indulgent consumption., but it they who will pay, in bills, costs, and jobs (assuming they have any).
10
TonyfromOZ; #23
Don’t worry mate, I can’t even remember my own name when I have cracked a few … That’s why I need to have it on a label sewn inside my jacket.
Cheers, Armani
10
Nick@16
Ma and Pa live in the laboratory we call climate and if you get around you will soon discover that they apparently have a little more personal, first hand experience of the cyclical and chaotic nature of weather events than Gillard, the Greens and those two independents imagine they have.
Unfortunately for Gillard and her army of well paid Climate Change propagandists Ma and Pa thus know a con when they see one.
10
TonyufromOz @ 7
Thanks for that link “CO2 Australia – Julia Gillard – Absolutely Clueless”. I tried to post a comment but didn’t know how to log in, so here it is>
“Brilliant as always Tony. You should distribute this to every politician and News organisation in Australia and challenge them to try and counter your points.
The polls since the PM’s announcement today are still running heavily against a carbon dioxide tax and as I posted at Jo Nova, the pollies and commentators have grossly underestimated the depth of public opposition. I have never known such general anger and outright hostility in the community to any government decision and that feeling is almost completely independent of any actions of Tony Abbott. Putting the real facts in front of the thinking public will show up the Labor/Greens concoction for what it is – all mindless spinning vote-buying B.S!”
PS: What are your requirements for us to use or pass on your posts?
Keep up the great work. Cheers. Keith
10
Jo,
I think in the end, this debate will at least show that the current government system does NOT work.
What is in the best interest of the citizens is not always the best interest of the country. Two competing philosophies of power.
10
IMO we need to find ways people can act -not necessarily through protest – to get the message through.
Might I suggest that any TV channel running the governments propoganda adverts get blocked for a week in your household? I for one will be ensuring this is the case.
Maybe the media outlets might get the message that their myopic bias on this topic can and will hurt their advertising revenue?
Does anyone have any other ideas on how average working people can make their disgust at the bastardisation of democracy we are currently seeing can be countered?
Protests are all good and fine, but action which actually hits companies bottom lines will be much more effective.
10
Help me out here BushBunny
.
Tony Windsor hates the idea of Road Transport Fuel being included in the Carbon Tax package – hence the following disclaimer in the ‘Transport Fuels’ section of the package.
“The Government intends to apply a carbon price on heavy on-road vehicles from 1 July 2014, but notes this measure was not agreed to by all members of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee.”
.
Knowing Tony Windsor, can you consider the following:
.
If Tony Abbott proposed an amendment to the Carbon Tax legislation (when introduced to parliament) to Include Road Transport Fuel from 2012. (rather than delay it for 2 years)
THEN:
The Greens would obviously be delighted, and back the amendment.
Tony Windsor would obviously be absolutely ‘dudded’ as it is the one thing that is of major importance to him. (He was not a happy vegimite regarding this – and basically said, on TV tonight, Abbott will reapeal this when he wins the next election)
.
Do you think that Tony Windsor would still back the ‘Carbon Tax’ legislation package as a whole ? (with the amendment)
.
I am just looking for chinks in the armour, and although it wouldn’t be a good look for Abbott, it would bring the Transport Workers Union ‘on side’ for action against this stupid tax.
.
10
Joe lalonde @ 28
I’m sorry Joe, but you’ve lost me. What is this strange entity “country” that you refer to, if not the citizens that inhabit it?
10
Madjak @ 39
Ah, therein lies the rub, Madjak. When all is said and done, Aussies, even the poorest, are far too comfortable to actually DO anything. In this I speak from hard-won experience.
All we can do now is sit back and watch the train-wreck unfold, and make sure when the people are REALLY angry they know who to blame.
Then turn a blind eye to the inevitable blood-letting that must follow.
Sad but true.
10
Gillard’s speech today was delivered with such an incredibly patronizing tone that she seemed to be delivering a scary story to a bunch of very naughty preschoolers! She also looked as if she had botox to her forehead, possibly to avoid any tell-tale signs that she was lying through her teeth about the “benefits” of said tax as frown lines might give a negative vibe that the spin doctors may not be able to hide. Her smile and constant squinting while delivering her message reminded me of a crocodile swallowing a wounded flamingo, rather apt in the circumstances, the flamingo being the Australian economy. Then the MSM chimed in. Peter Overton on 9 seemed to be trying to sell the tax himself…..”not everyone will be better off under this tax” would have to be the understatement of the century. More disturbing on 9 was the propaganda techniques used when interviewing “random” so called representatives of the community and their reactions. A well dressed well spoken obviously educated man pictured with his attractive wife and cute 2.4 children who felt he might pay a bit more but it was the least he could do for the environment. Then the contrast with a lesbian couple with 1 income who felt they would be worse off, while a poorer, less educated couple living with their parents were worried about how it would effect their future, but were pictured sitting in front of their big screen TV, a not so subtle picture then emerges! Subliminally, the message was that this tax would only effect those with nontypical, socially less desirable (not my belief mind you, but obviously theirs, appealing to the lowest impulses of the population), or the less well educated who are frowned upon by the inner city latte set. Then, cross to a reporter in an RSL club, in an area where coal employment will be negatively impacted, where contrasting what was feigned concern of the reporter was the again subliminal message- in the background patrons could be seen drinking beer and playing poker machines.
I just have two questions-1. Are these people for real? and 2. What sort of sick minded people set up this
sort of propaganda to try to influence the population in this underhanded, and I believe fraudulent way?
10
I think we should all walk into to parliament house at the next sitting and sit down in the middle of the floor and chain ourselves to each other ..They saved the trees that way. We are saving ourselves.
Say YES to an election now !!
10
This is a sensible structure with a low carbon price that will prepare us for more significant action should a global agreement be found, and will be the cheapest way to cut our emissions by 5% by 2020, cheaper than “direct action”.
Other than nukes of course.
I think you guys should take a deep breath, take some time to consider the policy, and let some serious economists have a look at it before flying off in a blind rage.
10
“Serious economist”= oxymoron
10
I just realised those figures are from MoB. Phew for a second I thought they may resemble reality.
10
@Memoryvault:
Ah, therein lies the rub, Madjak. When all is said and done, Aussies, even the poorest, are far too comfortable to actually DO anything. In this I speak from hard-won experience.
All we can do now is sit back and watch the train-wreck unfold, and make sure when the people are REALLY angry they know who to blame.
The truth hurts MV but it is still the truth.
.
10
MattB @ 35
MattB, most people in OZ who are sitting around discussing this “attempt to ward off global warming” are doing so in front of heaters (if they can afford them) and under blankets.
It’s snowing in tropical areas of Brazil and Chile and the Caribbean . It snowed last week in Hawaii. Snow resorts in the USA are holding July 4 ” Snow Specials”. At best it’s been a tepid summer in most of the Northern Hemisphere and a season of record lows in the Southern Hemisphere.
What does it take for a cretin like you to understand it’s getting COLDER?
10
And that is, of course, assuming that the “something” is spent efficiently and wisely. However, given the current government’s track record in school halls, green loans, housing insulation, cash for clunkers etc, it is “very likely” that the given 22 times number is out by a factor of at least 10. Where the term “at least 10” means 100.
I mean – what sort of turkeys would pay 250 grand for a few squares of shadecloth? That’s right – the Rudd/Gillard government. Just cough up and watch the spend your money…
Cheers,
Speedy.
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@MattB #35
“I think you guys should take a deep breath, take some time to consider the policy, and let some serious economists have a look at it before flying off in a blind rage.”
The ‘Real Economists’ in London already did – They said ‘Don’t do it – it dosn’t work’.
So – Who else would you like to put up for references (‘FALSE’) MattB ?
(The REAL MattB is far more literate and mature than the ‘IMPOSTER’ MattB)
Grow up Kid, and get a life.
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But MV, be sure to check with Hansen et al. who I am sure will show you that 2011 was the 17th hottest on record and contained unprecedented warming in various far flung locations, by records from an ever decreasing number of stations, now located just either side of the equator- had to get rid of all those pesky cold ones! And once they’ve taken that as far as they can, then “cooling” will become the new “warming”- severe cold temperatures will be further proof of the truth of manmade climate change- “look -see it is changing!- we were right all along”- Oh good grief Charlie Brown!
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All this discussion about the flawed economics of “tackling climate change” (shudder) is playing right into the hands of the green left agenda. We’ve got to divert all discussions of details of the tax and economics back to the core issue of climate science.
Remember, 1 climate data point is an average of 30 years of weather. We have had weather satellites only since 1979.
The fact remains that there is no scientific basis to CO2 alarmism. I would argue that if the minimum data quality level of global and accurate coverage can only be met by weather satellites then it will be the year 2070 before there could ever be a scientific understanding of the trend in modern climate. You can’t gather 3 climate data points any faster than 90 years.
Think about that. Tell as many other people as you can to think about that too.
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Andrew is right… if the science is right then the ETS is the best way to go.
MV most of us with heaters in Australia are aware it is the middle of bloody winter!
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Well, I hunted through this site looking for a post of mine in September of last year that predicted that JG 4.2 would commit this act of folly (I could not find it!). I also predicted that the “blind rage” of the electorate would be something to behold. The rage will increase as the numbers of people jumping from the AGW ship continue to increase.
If for a delusional moment we imagine that AGW is not the worst scam inflicted on us in modern times, it would make no difference. The politics of the carbon tax have been very poorly managed by JG 5.31
The stark choice facing the ALP is to either go to the polls now and lose OR go to the polls later and be decimated.
Every piece of hard core science and truth that seeps into the public awareness means more votes lost which they will never get back.
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@memoryvault: #39
“What does it take for a cretin like you to understand it’s getting COLDER?”
Maybe we should block the UK from broadcasting over here – according to Huhne it is warming – next thing, the UK will be a tropical paradise.
“There is none so blind as those that will not see” comes to mind.
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Matt B @#35
I’ve no doubt that the subject, methods & background to this article have already been pored over at length , by the architect of the last recovery from a disastrous socialist experiment.. No not Lady Thatcher, but the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, veteran of the Velvet Revolution, and Finance Minister in the immediate aftermath, will be coming to tell you all about it in about 12 days time.
If you missed the opportunity to see Lord Monckton in action, please don’t be so silly a 2nd. time around
Here is the link .
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MattB @ 44
Yes, and they are aware that they experiencing record LOW or near-record LOW temperatures.
Did you bring your “Plan B”?
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I don’t need one… it seems Plan A is holding strong.
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MattB is not the REAL MattB
I have talked to MattB for months and this guy (with the square head) is an imposter and a troll.
(Unless the ‘Real’ MattB has had his ‘UN Funded’ labotomy).
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Funny, even with all this cold weather everywhere, the UAH satellite record (kept by a skeptic) shows that 2011, after getting off to a cold start, is rapidly warming up.
Anyway, bad luck guys – we are getting a carbon tax. Much like the GST, the cries of doom and gloom will turn out to be unnecessary.
Interestingly, back when the GST was coming in, Kim Beasley as opposition leader opposed it bitterly, and promised to roll it back. Back in those days, I ran a small business. After a year or so, the GST was going well, and filling in the quarterly BAS was pretty easy. Kim’s incessant negativity was annoying. Tony should take note.
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MattB @ 49
So I can record you on record as claiming there is absolutely no chance the world is cooling, with all the famine, disease, fear and death that history tells us accompanies that.
Please say YES Mattb. I so want to allot you your proper place in history.
When I think of Mussolini I think of you.
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OMG
John Brookes has a new Gravatar
Even more FRIGHTENING than the last one !
(When will this intimidation of poor Skeptics end ?)
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TrueNews @ 50
You got conned.
Yes, I know, it’s painful.
They can seem so reasonable
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O/T – Get Up Donors
My last post, on another thread, tied the donors to ‘Get Up’ (over $11,500) to venture capital, the government, Big Oil, Big Tobacco and The Govenor General.
I am happy to say that I have now tracked down the background of EVERY Major Donor to ‘Get Up’.
My only hope is that I can use my research wisely.
Help would be appreciated.
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TN this really is me:)
MV- there probably is a chance that the planet will end up cooling unexpectedly, but I think that is out of our hands and there is nothing we can do.
Also – the last person who said that to me was Mrs Mussolini.
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Anyway MV I’m told that the tax/et won’t even have any impact on the temperature.
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re #51
Help and/or Advice
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@memoryvault: #54
“You got conned, Yes, I know, it’s painful, They can seem so reasonable”
NO MV – I know the REAL MattB and this it not he, I can tell.
SO – Who is this ‘Con Artist’.
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Keith H at Comment 27,
thanks for the comment.
Our Blog is like a lot of large Blogs in the U.S.
They’re more cautious than some of the Blogs here in Australia that do have open commenting.
Most in the U.S. are conservative in nature and send all comments through to moderation first.
If you do wish to leave a comment, just write it in the text box at the bottom of the post and then press the ‘Post Comment’ button at the bottom right.
Rest assured that the comment has been accepted, just that it will not appear until we OK it, either the Site Administrator in Pennsylvania, or me next time I login in and I’m usually logged in all day, and when we OK it, the comment will appear with the original Post.
Try it again on Monday morning.
Tony.
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does that make you feel better?
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sorry I mean that.
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CHANGING FACES
I notice that our resident ‘Warmists’ keep changing Gravatars.
Don’t worry about your identity on this site guys – we are not vindictave – It’s only Deltoid where you would have to worry.
🙂
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MattB and John Brookes — what a pair you make. Why do you hang around where all you get from one day to the next is told off for nearly everything you post?
Are there any psychologists in the crowd? What kind of personality does that? I’m at a loss to understand either one of you.
What is it that keeps you here? If you have a dissenting opinion we don’t mind that. But you have no credibility if you can’t (or won’t) support your position with evidence and sound argument.
MattB, you’re so off the wall that I can’t even figure out what you’re talking about a lot of the time, much less find a consistent position.
John Brookes, you talk big, real convinced. But then you can’t put even a dozen words together to explain to us why you believe what you believe.
I can tell you what I believe and then I can explain why I believe it. I’ve done it on this blog. I can make a logical argument and back it up with the evidence that convinces me.
You two hand us BS all the time. Don’t you have even the slightest sense of shame?
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MattB / John Brookes
Do you guys really think this is a good package? Honestly? Borrowing $4b to hide the tax in a wall of cash thrown at voters to buy their silence? Where most of the abatement will be achieved by sending cash off to other countries for project unknown?
Time to step up fellas : are you going to speak out against this tax as all proper warmies should, or are you going to pretend it’s a good idea just because it comes from the right ‘team’. It does nothing, will achieve nothing, but is just a gigantic socialism policy implementation using envrinmentalism as a convenient marketing tool. Anyone truly concerned about co2-caused climate change / global warming should be speaking out saying – this is crap! If you truly believe the IPCC science, then you should speak out against this convoluted mess.
Me, I hate it because it’s a useless gesture designed to hold together a ratbag minority government devoid of ideas and being led by the nose by the Greens. The key to a good environment is a rich country. I’ve vistited poor countries and the poorer the country, the worse the environment, no exceptions. The poorest islands dynamite and overfish their reefs. The poorest countries have no land management practices and dump rubbish all over the place. The poorest countries slaughter all their wildlife for meat and poaching. Ex-socialist or communist countries are the worst because there is no incentive to fix anything, as it’s all ‘public good’. The only thing that can save environments is either rich societies with advanced technologies, or genocide. Societies that are busy shooting their toes off by squandering their comparative advantage don’t get to adopt advanced technologies and keep their environments clean. Visit any failed South American state for evidence of that one.
So, come on, tell us what you really think. Don’t hide behind team support.
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MattB
Explain how Jevons’ Paradox the Khazzoom Brookes postulate and price/demand elasticity interact. If you can explain how these accepted long standing economic theories have no effect on the Gillard/Brown carbon tax I would be stunned & you would be up for a Nobel Prize in Economics.
You seem to be most chuffed that this is happening, no real surprise, it’s not as if an environmental engineer has anything to gain from this policy is it? Just like the heads of companies in the finance sector have no other reason than regard for the planet as a basis for their support of an ETS?
With all of the prattle you go on with you disregard one important aspect of governance, that being the fiduciary responsibility of the government to the governed.
No form of taxation or futures market have the power to change behaviour beyond a certain point when demand is inelastic. If you seriously believe that people waste energy with no concern for the finincial cost to them then you are as deluded as Bob Brown. The majority of the population are price/cost sensetive and have moved to the most efficient ways to use energy years ago and most businesses have done as much as they can to reduce input costs to stay competitive and maintain market share over at least the last 20yrs.
In actual fact energy demand, be it electricity or fuels started becoming inelastic in the wake of WWII as massive reconstruction requirements fueled demand beyond the capacity of the developed and developing world to supply. The rise of China, India (two of our biggest and nearest markets, who will only continue to expand their economies and raise the average standards of living to their peoples), Sth America and Africa (our two biggest competitors in supply of resources like coal, iron ore and bauxite) will drive demand and increase emissons for at least the next 50yrs as they strive to become first word nations with developed economies. All of which history have shown are comprised of people not averse to violently overthrowing their governments. These governments have no intention of slowing the increasing affluence of their citzens as prosperity is a fairly good damper on the urges of people to overthrow the governments that provide their prosperity. This fact alone show how futile this carbon dioxide tax is, let alone the economic principles that show it won’t work.
For someone supposedly educated and intelligent to completely ignore these facts points to an opinion that is agenda driven rather than based in reason and logic. If all developed nations were to stop emitting then all we would do is effect 3% of atmospheric CO2, the 97% natural contribution would continue and the climate will continue to change as it always has. And as has always happened we will eventually return to another ice age as the natural cycles of this planet continue to function in the same manner they have for millions of years and will continue to do so for billions more.
We can’t stop climate change, it is a natural process we still don’t fully understand and we would be better served by engineers, academics and politicians who dedicated their efforts to mitigation of changes we can’t stop whilst developing reliable alternate energy generation methods that don’t require energy taxes to make them competitive which only distorts the market, increases costs of production, reduces productivity and reduces standards of living without any benefit to the environment. For all the bleating of the Greens, Labor and the like of you, the simple economic fact is that if renewables were cost effective and cost competitive, there would be no need for carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes because there would be financial benefits to investment in these manner of energy production.
Some questions for you, one of the supposed endless renewable sources of power is geothermal, what happens to a system based on the motion of the molten core of the planet when you remove energy from the system? How much energy can be removed from the core of the planet before the mantle of the planet starts to feel the effect of that energy removal and what effects will this cause? If these answers aren’t known doesn’t the vaunted precautionary principle say we shouldn’t do it? The same questions apply to wind and tidal power, all result in the removal of energy from the natural systems of the planet. How much can be removed before they have a detrimental effect and what are those effects?
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True @# 63:
Have they been taking advantage of Joolyar’s $250,000 awards perhaps, to give Global Warming a facelift (after their own of course) ?
Well good luck to them I say , if the Govt. is dumb enough to be handing it out.
Better spending it on a haircut for Matt B. & highlights for John Brookes, than on more Acadaemically embellished propaganda.
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Disagree with your bottom line Jo … the bottom line is that perceived global warming over the past 150 years is almost certainly natural, and is consistent with previous cooling and warming over geologic time … no amount of carbon dioxide mitigation by Australia will change a suite of overwhelmingly powerful natural processes that we are yet to understand and quantify …
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There would appear to be some benefit for the Coalition Members NOT being on the MPCCC: they at least do not automatically make the list of the most self-deluded, un informed, arrogant politicians in Australian history.
I sincerely hope there is a nice big “photo-op” picture of these people. It is certain to take a place in history tomes.
Ah well, at least there is deed poll for the offspring.
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The “con” in con man means confidence. The scam artist relies on winning the mark’s confidence, usually by baiting them with a small amount of cash, say $5 to lower their guard, meanwhile relieving the poor sap of hundreds or thousands of his hard earned dollars. This bears a startling resemblance to Gillard’s approach here, classic bait and switch. Who would have believed that it was so simple to buy our confidence with 20 pieces of silver!
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Memory Vault,
I am inclined to agree with you, however, with 80-90% of people polled being against this, even if a small group of people do actually take real steps it could have much more of an effect that one might think.
I refuse to resign myself to the idea that this will happen. If it does happen, I want to ensure that as much pain as is possible is inflicted on the perpetrators of this stalinist scheme.
You are right about the apathy people have as we continue to become victims of our own apathy, but without some form of stance the professional manipulators will continue to believe in their superior skills in manipulating us just as a dog manipulates sheep.
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Madjak, TrueNews and others
It takes no effort, nor costs anything, to click on a “NO to a carbon tax” button on some website. As such, politicians and others are happy to ignore the results whatever they may be.
Ditto for emails which also cost nothing and only take the most minor effort to send.
Ten thousand such votes, or ten thousand emails, does not carry the weight of a single, addressed and posted letter, which takes ten minutes effort and costs less than a dollar. Try starting a campaign to get people to spend ten minutes of their time and a dollar of their money to “save the nation”.
Good luck. Been there, done that.
A thousand ordinary letters carries the weight of one, registered, delivery certified, personal delivery letter. The cost is about ten dollars.
If just ten thousand Australians were all prepared to spend ten minutes of their time and ten dollars of their cash, this whole sorry mess would be over in a week.
Don’t hold your breath.
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memoryvault at #71
Clicking on the polls is therapy for me. Speaking of which, for your ultimate polling fix, the Courier Mail has a all you can eat special this morning. Four polls, all with good questions:
* Will the carbon tax change your energy consumption? Currently 64% for ‘No, climate change is a myth’
* Should Australia have a carbon tax? Currently 90% ‘no’
* How would you describe the compensation measures? 87.5% so far for “Disgraceful, we shouldn’t have this tax at all anyway’
* Will the carbon tax change your vote at the next election? 77% for ‘More likely to vote Coalition’
The article also says:
The electorate does not seem all that happy this morning for some reason.
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Sorry, forgot the link.
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To John Brookes :
John , since you are so sure that the tax is good and the policy overall will work can you list for us what you think will be the positive ,practical things (in your view) which will happen first eg. when will the coal fire power stations start closing down or changing to gas etc etc.
What in practice will actually happen in the near future John?
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Excellent list of facts! I hope somebody down there listens…
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Bruce of Newcastle.
The first question has left me perplexed, answers 2 & 3 are only for fools, although, No 3 I’m alright jack their giving me money, at just under 15% shows how easily some can be bought.
I will probably need to watch my electricity consumption and modify my use. So answer 1 is the closest fit for me.
The last choice is poorly worded, (No,climate change is a myth). what kind of misleading statement is that?
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PaulM @66. The heat energy of the inner Earth may as well be infinite compared to what we can pull out of the crust. If the Earth was a 64cm basketball, the crust would comprise not much more than a millimetre, and powering the whole planet would need only a few barely noticeable shallow pinpricks. The deepest we’ve ever drilled is less than a third of the way into the crust, and we don’t need to go anywhere near that deep in general terms to extract usuable energy. If we could tap 1% of it economically, there is enough energy in one geothermal region of SA (where the crust is a bit thinner than normal), to supply Australia’s current usage for the next 26,000 years. It would take an unimaginable number of tidal power stations to cause enough drag to slow the Earth’s spin by even one second per year. Wind energy is grossly inefficient because it captures so little of the actual air flow. I doubt that even the biggest arrays of towers could reduce downwind turbulence, let alone slowing air movement en masse. Similarly, powering the whole planet with our current (inefficient) solar collectors would have less global albedo impact the the present extent of roads. In other words, renewables really are renewable, and unlikely to have any gross scale impacts. I agree with your propositions about elasticity of demand for energy, and Jevons paradox regarding efficiency gains, meaning that both price and technical advance will have little impact on demand and consumption. But I do think that cost pressures and technical advance will bring renewables into play sooner than most of us would expect. The interesting question is, what worries will become fashionably apocalyptic once we have solar hydrogen at grid parity, as will happen by mid-century if not sooner?
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Yeah, I don’t believe that the carbon tax is the best possible implementation, but sometimes you just have to go with what is achievable – and hope for improvements down the line. But there really isn’t much point me telling you how I think it can be improved, as the only change you’d like is its scrapping.
In general, when it comes to government policy, I’m with Ross Garnaut, and believe that improving productivity is the key to prosperity. In Australia, too many people who could contribute to the economy are idle, and that is a problem which we will have to tackle. I have a friend who is a very competent and hard working programmer (albeit with a slightly prickly personality at times) who is struggling to find work. Every day where he doesn’t work is a waste, and makes us all worse off.
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Bob Malloy at #76
Got to read what I said…the questions are good ones. The answers, well…
On the other hand the message is clear, the Courier Mail readership are not happy.
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mullumhillbilly
With tidal I am not talking about slowing the spin of the planet, I am talking about the removal of energy that effects how far into wetlands the tidal flow goes and the reduction in the inflow/outflow of silt and nutrients both ways in the system and how that will effect seagrass beds, spawning grounds and mangroves. This effect is well known when sea walls are built to produce a port or harbour and have been used as a legitimate reason here and around the world to stop the building of marinas due to the changes it will cause to costal wetlands and mangroves, key breedeing grounds for aquatic and avian species.
As far as geothermal goes, your logic is unsound. You can’t remove energy from a system without cost, it may take millions of years for the effect to become obvious but it will happen. There is no such thing as an open ended energy equation, it must balance in one form or another. You simply can’t remove energy from a system without it reducing the potential of the system over time, no matter how large and seemingly endlessly renewable they appear.
When it comes to wind power, I am talking about reducing energy in the system, yet again, and whilst you may think it isn’t important, the disruption of natural windflows across landscapes and in the eddies that lead to updraughts and downdraughts changes rainfall patterns. This after all is one of the problems of deforrestation and construction. They change natural windflows and change the local climate to a measurable extent. That is before you take into account that the best places to locate them are also avian highways, or the effect of the harmonic resonance created by the towers themselves and their effects on the local ecosystem. It is quite easy to see the effects of wind farms on birdlife and large sea creatures that rely on acoustics for navigation etc, what about bats and insects. If you disrupt the movement patterns of birds, bats and insects there is a cost to the ecosystem, be it in the areas that they feed and pollinate plants or where they defecate and distribute organic matter and seeds. No intervention in a natural system comes without a cost that cascades throughout the ecosystem.
As for solar, well that is simply a sick joke, instead of solar rebates and solar farms the government would have been better putting solar hot water systems on houses and factories if they wanted to reduce consumption. This would still, as with wind, not do any good as you still need baseload backup for low light low wind periods.
The only true renewable energy is hydro, where a dam is built and the potential energy of the water at the top of the dam is converted to kinetic energy as it falls to the turbine station at the base of the dam and is converted into electrical energy. Setup properly the outflow into the river system can be maintained with a net yield in energy created.
You are also wrong when you say price and technical advance will have little impact on demand and consumption. The paradox is that increasing efficiency over time increases consumption as production costs fall, profitability increases and standards of living increase.
A wild guess may be the ammount of arable land needed to produce the biofuels this is based around and the impacts that will have on food security and food prices.
As I have already said, the two unassailable facts for energy production are, you can not intervene in an ecosystem without cost to the ecosystem and you can not remove energy from a system without cost over time if that energy isn’t replaced.
One last point, regardless of the so called renewable solutions suggested, they all require the use of non-renewables in their energy matrix. The best that can be said of coal, gas and nuclear power generation is that the ammount of scarce resources needed in the system to produce energy is signifficantly less that the rare earths and rare metals needed in large scale wind and solar projects. There is a sound reason why fossil fuel based energy production is cheap, the gross inputs to generate power are abbundant and the opportunity costs involved in the building, running, maintaining and decomissioning them are low. That is the economic foundation that productivity and profitability are built on. And like any system, you can not intervene in the system without cost.
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Just a brief note on the steel industry “compensation”. This chaotic abomination just gets worse in regard to the steel industry. Gillard and the Greens have just killed domestic steel production in this country. The only argument between the ALP and the Greens is just how quickly the execution should take place. The ALP is proposing:
# four years of protection from the carbon dioxide pricing scheme.
# a $300 million steel industry assistance plan, shared between Bluescope (Wollongong) and One Steel (Whyalla). The split is Bluescope 60% and Onesteel 40%
# BlueScope will receive 94.5 per cent of its carbon pollution permits by subsidy and about $45 million a year, to help cover its carbon tax costs.
# Under the proposed “clean technology program”, the Government will contribute a third of all capital costs for “energy-efficient capital equipment and low-pollution (sic) processes. Bluescope will not be investing in carbon dioxide emission mitigation.
The Industry Assistance Plan was not part of the deal reached with the Greens and independents through the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee. It will have to make it through the Parliament under separate legislation and will only get through with the Liberals and Labor voting together. The Greens will oppose it in the Parliament. If this has any upside the Greens Party is now politically extinct in the steel regions.
BlueScope, is on track for a large loss for the 2010-11 financial year, and argued for assistance on the basis that it would have to borrow capital to pay the carbon tax.
So there we have it. What was until yesterday an internationally competative manufactury industry in a fiercely competative market is today totally dependent on Governmant assistance and subsidies for its survival. And has a “guarantee” for four years.
And when the election is over in 2012 and some of the union officials who have annointed this shameful sell out of thousands of workers jobs, families and their future have retired on hefty superannuation payments paid by their members or have been elevated into parliament (Howes, Maher) the steel industry will just begin to be moved off shore.
I am sorry to use this language but its difficult to contain the anger and disgust, perhaps we can be cut some slack today, but they – the ALP and the Greens are bastards. Just bastards.
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The said $10.10 benefit versus the $9.90 energy tax is only part of the story. The increased cost for energy (the carbon tax) will not stop there. They are deliberately understating the full effect of the tax. It will increase the cost of MOST things, not just your electric bill. The final cost will be much more than $9.90 per household.
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My two cents worth ….
This Tax does not reflect the reality within which we live ….
I am only reminded of what keating once said , if you don’t understand it , don’t vote for it !,and if you did understand it, you would never vote for it !
Is there a political cartoonist reading this blog ? I have cartoon gem I would like to gift .
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PaulM@81. I think we’re probably in agreement on a number of things, but are talking at cross-purposes. I attempted a broad-brush answer to your final question @66 “How much can be removed before they have a detrimental effect and what are those effects?”, and it seems like you think I am promoting renewables as an alternative now to coal-fired power… I’m not. I’m just saying the amounts we can extract from the natural systems (wind, tidal, solar) are trivial compared to the total flux of energy in those systems. Of course bad design can cause problems, but that’s avoidable. In their present state, the renewable energy technologies are expensive, and unnecessary as a response to the low risk of CAGW. But some of them will become cheaper, (even without a carbon tax to spur development) and when they do, we will have some interesting new questions to face, including that fundamental of Socrates “how ought we live?.
For geothermal I said “may as well be infinite”, not “is infinite”. Sure, the Earth’s core is cooling right now, but the order of magnitude here is that extraction of a piddling amount of heat to boil water might make it a hundred degrees cooler in say one billion years (not a million) instead of one billion and one years. And that’s assuming we keep doing it for thousands of years, which we won’t because other energy sources will be cheaper and more accessible by then. Your tidal power cf marina argument is fair enough, but easily resolved by not putting the power stations in the wrong place to start with, or using a design that doesn’t involve a barrage that diverts flow. Windfarms, OK I agree about the birds, but I think you missed my main point; the amount of energy extracted from the flowing air, compared to the total energy in the flowing air, is very very small. Forests have local climate effects because of evapotranspiration, albedo, longwave IR retention overnight, aerodynamic roughness of an extensive canopy area, however the effects are significant only with regional-scale forest blocks (10 or hundreds of km2 of contiguous forest. A wind farm could never emulate a forest in those effects, they are built at wide formation for safety reasons. Surprised by your support of hydro, when clearly it is the one renewable energy technology that IS having a bigeffect on local ecosystems, and I dont understand why you would approve of solar hot water when you clearly understand it has no impact on baseload power needs. “You are also wrong when you say price and technical advance will have little impact on demand and consumption”; ok I meant “will have little impact on reducing demand and consumption”.
I don’t think I mentioned biofuel at all. Solar hydrogen will come from photovoltaics and electrolysis of water, both of which are practically limitless, as well as being clean, transportable, decentralisable, and not found in difficult locations with cartel ownership. The materials needed to make the infrastructure for solar H, ie aluminium and silicon, are two of the most abundant metals in the Earths crust, and even rare earths are not really all that rare. There need not be huge cost in transition, and in fact once the solar H gets to grid parity cost, the switch to electric or fuel cell vehicles and PV power will be market-driven. Overnight energy storage?… free market incentives for the winnning technology will see to that.
we should be selling our coal as fast as we can now, because when solar H hits grid parity by mid-century, it’ll just be a worthless dirty black rock.
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mullumhillbilly
If solar generated hydrogen worked, that would be great. I don’t think anyone would argue that coal is better if the price and practicality turned out to be the same.
However, solar continually trips up on two fundamental problems. These are that it only works half the time, and that the suns energy is just too diffuse. True, by creating hydrogen you solve the problem of nighttime, but that just means you need twice as many panels to get it to work 24/7. Even granting a generous doubling of solar efficiency through future technologies, the amount of land that would have to be turned over to solar is staggering, and the cost is monumental. In order to replace just one power station or oil refinery in terms of energy generated, huge amounts of land would have to be turned over to solar panels or collectors.
I’ve never understood why environmentalists are so ‘for’ solar and wind when they require massive amounts of landscape devoted to them in order to collect enough of the diffuse energy. If someone proposed a fuel refinery of the size and impact of a large solar or large wind site, the environmentalists would turn inside out with rage, yet with solar they are shtum and want to give them more money? It boggles the mind.
In short, the fundamental sums are against it even approaching 100% efficiency. And when you consider you could do all this, and much, much more with a couple of big nuclear plants, miles away from society you see just how ridiculous it is to pin hope on solar energy converting to hydrogen. Sure, geothermal might come along this path a bit down the track, but in all seriousness, just build a nuclear plant already. No research needed, just plan and build. We even have all the fuel we’ll ever need right here already.
As for vehicles, hydrogen has been ’10 years away’ for the last 30 years. It faces major cost, energy density and chicken-and-egg problems. Sure, the manufacturers have all built hydrogen vehicles, most with a limited range. It might get there somehow, somewhere. But there is plenty of natural gas around and natural gas technology is in use today. It’s clean burning, cheap and has the right energy density. Conversion of the vehicle fleet, starting with heavy vehicles, could start anytime soon. It would even have side-benefits of cleaner air in cities, where diesel particulates are a major problem.
I don’t particularly want Nuclear because coal does everything we need for a very manageable impact. I’ve no ideaological opposition to renewables as long as they are cost effective.
We already have all our energy needs solved, come what may, peak oil or not. This shooting of toes approach based on idealogical hatred of progress and prosperity just boggles my mind. It’s not like the proponents themselves actually gain anything from it – useful idiots suffers just as much as everyone else. Only a select few power brokers and financiers actually gain from all this madness. And yet the hens in the house are calling for the foxes to have more control.
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brc@86
Yes it’s big, but let’s keep it in perspective. Try a square with side= 100 miles. How big an area is occupied by all the open-cut coal mines on the planet?
Following Lomborg 2000 p.133, let’s say average solar influx (arid zone subtropic latitudes) of 300W/m2, efficiency 20%, thus to produce 500 EJ (global energy usage 2008 =474EJ: Wikipwedia), we’d need ~26,000km2 or a square with sides ~160km. The Sahara desert occupies about 9M km2. We could probably spare 2-3% of that, or somewhere floating on the open sea.
I agree with you about the cost-effective bit. But I happen to think it will come, and sooner than you might think. Here’s a starting point that explains why 90% of the world’s coal will never be mined, for sound economic reasons, nothing to do with sky-dragons.
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mullumhillbilly
My argument for solar hot water is as a replacement for gas hot water which is the most widely used under current arrangements. PV and solar thermal will never (IMO) be commercially viable because of the issue of energy storage and landmass required to produce along with the generation degradation of mirrors and PV film over the short lifecycle of the plants compared to fossil fuel power generation. Yes ther are places in the world where it is viable small to medium scale due to these reigons being mainly desert and having low population densities, but they too will need to look elsewhere as their population densities increases in their national drive to prosperity and affluence on par with the western world.
Personally I think that the money that has been wasted on the global efforts to prove AGW would have been better spent in three key other areas,
1) funding the construction and running of thorium reactors in the developing world with the thorium derived from the waste products of desalination plants to provide water security and increase agricultural viability and food security of those nations.
2) R & D in the next generation of nuclear energy production and reuse of existing waste stocks to extend the fuel cycle.
3) Funding a concerted effor to amalgamate the numerous disparate streams of research into fusion generation in the same way they did with the human genome project to bring it to fruition sooner and with much less repitition of research and expenditure.
Solar electrolysis to produce hydrogen has potential, not as a power source but as a replacement for fossil fuels for general transport. And we would extend the life of coal and petroleum stocks if they were to be used for fuels for heavy transport, or high load engines and the production of lubricants as well as being an additive to bioplastics and thermoplastics to widen the applications they can be used for, rather than being used for general transport and synthetic materials for clothing/other consumer goods.
My support for hydro is based on the reality that dams are the most efficient means to capture and store water for human/stock consumption and the irrigation requirements of agriculture/horticulture and can provide power at the same time. To build a dam without a hydro plant is a waste of potential. In reality our global population will continue to grow and the requirements for potable water and productive water for agriculture and industry will grow with it.
The Romans managed to build aqueducts to provide water and allow arid areas to be used for food production, there is no logical reason we can’t do the same in this modern era and reclaim the littoral zones between arable/arid and desert lands to create the farmland needed for biofuels, bioplastics, biomass power generation which will help reverse the encroachment of deserts and have a positive effect on local and reigonal climate/weather patterns.
I suppose my main argument is that all systems whether natural of man made inherently act in a manner to achieve equilibrium, and whatever we do, no matter how seemingly insignificant disturbs the balance and shifts the point of equilibrium, thereby effecting something or someone in the ecosystem/biosphere in a negative manner. The question should always have been how we manage the changes of a still evolving planet (both biologically and geologically) and mitigating the harm these ongoing changes will cause.
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Nuclear… hmmm. Ask the locals around Louisiana in 30 years about Deep Horizon, and they’ll say “Huh?, Who?”. Try to ask the locals in 30 years time about Chernobyl, and you’ll find there still aren’t any living within cooee. The chance of a nuclear accident may be 1 in 10,000 as nuclear technology improves, but when we have 10,000 nuclear power plants around the world, then statistically speaking one of them will be going “pop” every year. Will that be the one in your backyard?
Fusion is a nice idea, but thats all it is so far. But anyway, we already have a big fusion reactor, supplying hundreds of times more energy than we could ever consume. And it’s free for everybody to access, and not likely to leak into the local ground water.
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Mullumhillbilly @ 87
So you build your vast array of solar panels out in the middle of nowhere. So what have you got? A lot of 12V, 24V or maybe 36V DC electrical energy in the middle of nowhere, thousands of kilometres from where we need 240V AC power in the cities.
Transmission of low voltage DC current over distance is not feasible, so you will need a step-up transformer and inverter.
Whoops, there goes half your power in conversion losses.
Okay, so we double the size of original solar field, bump the juice up to 22,000V AC and transmit it the thousand kilometres to the city.
Whoops, there goes over half of your power in transmission losses.
So we build a solar array eight times what we originally planned, transmit our power to the city where we need 240V AC for consumption. So we will have to run it back through a step-down transformer.
Whoops there goes half of your power in conversion losses.
So, we end up building a solar array some sixteen times bigger than we originally intended, and we end up matching our load requirements in the city.
Only to find the system is not capable of responding instantly to fluctuations in the base-load requirements.
So we have to have a coal, gas, oil or nuclear power station running on stand-by to maintain base-load anyway.
And we have accomplished what, exactly?
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>Try a square with side= 100 miles. How big an area is occupied by all the open-cut coal mines on the planet?
160km square is 25,600 km2. 1 million m2. 160 km takes at least an hour and a half to drive on a highway. To drive the perimeter would take all day. The cost and size are staggering. And I suspect that is just the panels themselves, and not the several meters of buffer between each panel needed for installation and maintenance. The actual installed size would probably 2-3 times as large. Speaking of maintenance, the requirements of that are massive, as it would be like trying to maintain a 25,600 km golf green. And still no answer on what happens on cloudy days, or how the power is efficiently stored until people need it (ie, at night).
Open cut mines are large when you look at them but inconsequential when compared at this type of scale. And you should be comparing on energy per sqm, not just total sqm. Open cut coal mines are big but the amount of energy they contain is also very large, and so in an energy returned on energy invested assessment, they stack up quite well. And indeed we know this to be true, because people will quite willingly build them even in the face of large government taxation regimes.
The truth is Solar is a niche product for low energy usage or energy top-up in certain scenarios. It is just not viable as a widescale deployment, even if you got the price down and the efficiency up fundamental limits on the suns energy and characteristics cannot be wished away. It’s not even worth doing at the household level as it is a very inefficient way of generating power, and represents wasting of wealth at a societal level.
If you have trouble conceptualising this, imagine that instead of buying solar panels and subsidised electricity, we instead investing that in better education or healthcare. The outcomes from better education and healthcare are massive in terms of quality of life and human potential. The residents of Easter Island probably did themselves in by investing all their energy in the ridiculous statues instead of making their lives better. Solar Panels on grid-connected house rooftops is no different. It represents real wealth wasted in inefficient energy, just like burning a pile of currency in order to show off to your mates.
And this still doesn’t explain why the greens are OK with covering ground in panels but not with mines or dams.
The fact is, widespread solar and wind are just pipedreams like flying cars. There are fundamental problems that cannot be overcome even with the best technology. They are an energy dead end, a blind alley of research apart from specific uses, none of which include baseload. That money and research is far better spent in all types of nuclear research, whether it is different types of fission reactor designs, fusion reactors or low-energy reactors.
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mullumhillbilly: Nuclear does not necessarily mean mk1 fission reactors. Open your mind and drop the fearmongering. It will be hard, because it’s probably been drummed into you from an early age. Nuclear means liberating the inherent energy bound up in all matter.
The Titanic killed more people than all the nuclear disasters combined, and was even more preventable. Did people stop using ships? No. More people travel on ships today than ever have before.
Motor vehicle crashes kill more people daily than all the global nuclear accidents combined. Do we shun the vehicle? No. Continual imporovements in design mean crashes are more survivable than ever before.
You say Chernobyl is a disaster area. It’s true that people won’t live there for a while. But does nuclear mean ‘10,000 years of uninhabitability’? Why don’t you ask the residents of Hiroshima which had an atmospheric nuclear detonation just 65 years ago? Seen any glowing-green Mazdas? They’re all made in Hiroshima, you know.
The point is that mistakes have been made, but it’s young technology. Mistakes will continue to be made because regulations are preventing new reactors from being built, so old reactors are still online. The next nuclear disaster will be directly attributable to idiotic anti-nuclear policies that force squeezing of extra life out of an old reactor.
The idiotic absolute rejection of nuclear (and hydro) technology and simultaneous uncritical embrace of solar and wind marks all Greens as irrational, emotionally driven people prone to preaching rather than clear-thinking evidence based, rational thinkers who look at the numbers. Even arch-greenie George Monbiot has seen the light on this one, as have others. You can’t power societs on wishes, dreams and good intentions. Compromises must be made if we want the 24/7 ability to rant on websites.
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Funny how you guys unquestioningly swallow anything fed to you – so long as it supports your view.
http://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/carbon-tax-nova-misleads-perhaps-you-wont-notice/
I don’t.
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That’s pretty good Blimey:)
mullumhillbilly – nuclear is the solution you are looking for, give it a chance.
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Blimey @ 93
Went and had a look at your latest drivel Blimey. To quote:
Errrh, where’s the “warm” Blimey?
It was supposed to be in the tropical troposphere, but it’s not – confirmed again just this week by a published, reviewed scientific paper.
It was supposed to be secreted away in the depths of the deep oceans (Trenberth’s Travesty), but again, a published, reviewed paper just this week confirms that it is not.
Last year when the NH was suffering it’s third (in some places fourth) consecutive record cold winter, it was claimed the “warm” was hiding under a rock at Nuark Airport.
But it wasn’t there.
Americans went skiing on July 4; it’s been snowing in TROPICAL Brazil; most of the world is suffering record or near record LOW temperatures for this time of the year, and idiots like you and JuLIAR keep carping on about “global warming”.
I’ve got news for you Blimey (and MattB and John Brookes and the rest of you blind fools):
You cultists are not winning the debate
We skeptics are not winning the debate
The climate scientists are not winning the debate
The politicians are not winning the debate.
NATURE is winning the debate.
And as it gets colder you people just look more and more ridiculous.
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The 25,600km2 array in one spot was not meant to be literal. I was making the point in relation to brc saying “staggeringly large areas”. So divide into 10,000 locations, then 2.56 km2 each, one square mile. Global population 7bn/10,000 = one solar plant servicing 700,000 people, incl all industry and fuels (ie solar H). OK lets call it 2 square miles tops, we use more as our wealth increases and when appliances are even more cheap to operate (and to manufacture)..Jevons… Surely we’d find one to two square miles of sky space close enough to every 0.7M population in latitudes +/- 40 ? Wouldn’t this level of decentralisation match, or even reduce, the distribution needs/costs of coal-fired power? And why not (some) rooftops and skyscraper walls of living/working spaces if the technology becomes cheap enough, a smart-grid-internet of generating capacity.
Your arguments about centralisation and thence distribution inefficeincies apply equally or greater to large nuclear plants. And Hiroshima radiation half-life was shorter, it was not from heavy metals like Cheronobyl. What’s the nuke futures concept then? How many people does one plant the size of Fukushima service? And thus how many plants to provide 7bn population with all its energy needs? Would you readily find land near population centres to build them on? One goinng “pop” every year or even every decade or so? What would the insurance costs add to to the power bill? And the costs of nuclear police, the militarist regimes and State controls that would be needed control proliferation.. waste management for millennia… It’s really not a good option. Australia has got too far ahead of the rest of the world on a C-tax, and we would do well to not be doing the same again with nuke power.
I think that’s neglecting the main point of my argument, which was that solar H & PV will become cheaper than any other energy source within a few decades. Coal boilers will become chic retro novelties. Did you read my link in post 87? That 15 year old paper is tracking well. 90% of the worlds coal need never be mined for sound economic reasons.
No ideological barrows here, just a lesson of history; markets find technical substitutes as resources become scarce. I’m certainly not advocating shutting down the coal or steel industries in the lead-up to the eventual C–>H switchover. We’ll need to use coal electricity and LNG for some time, maybe ultimately CTL. The bulk of the Gillard C-tax is if course the socialist part, but if the techno-stimulus part was wisely used on technological progress research rather than pink-batted up the wall on Flagship Projects built of tomorrow’s typewriters, it could get us faster to the switching point (cheaper cleaner power) faster. That’s a worthwhile investment wouldn’t you think? I fear we won’t get much value from the Climate Change Authority though, just more Fabian guff.
In the immediate term, new power plants in Australia must of course be coal and gas. Making that investment harder is, as you say, toe-shooting, though committing huge resources to a single nuclear plant now would be a knee chop. And I agree domestic solar is still too expensive to promote widely, though the manufacturing and installing jobs and industry should be kept alive:- solar H technology is where the oil industry was in the 1850’s. In all probability China and/or India (Brazil) will be making the cheapest PV hardware and thus control the supply business. In Australia we’ll need to focus on the software and the wetware, ie IP and industry to service and install. We are even fortunate enough in the Lucky Country to have the option of trading raw materials to become self-sufficient for our future energy needs.
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Hey brc@92, you and MattB@94 are riding the same wave ! Tell me more about fearmongering after the two of you come back from your fishing holiday in eastern Japan. I’m trying to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out. “clear-thinking evidence based, rational thinkers who look at the numbers” … I think my posts demonstrate that much, rather than the “uncritical embrace” which you have given to nukes. Did you look at the paper I cited in 87?
So MattB, what will insurance and distribution costs be, c/kWh, on my power bill, if I lived in an Australian capital city and had nuke power pumped to my doorstep. Where would the power plant be? C’mon lets have your educated guesses.
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But of course you do, Blimey — that’s the perfect description of how you “reason”. Argument from (cherry-picked) authority is the only arrow in your logical quiver.
What’s really funny is how you have taken to referencing your own blog to back up your arguments. Perhaps you thought we wouldn’t notice?
I’m not complaining though; reference away — It’s a relief not to have your logical hacks clogging up the threads. Besides, you can spam your own blog to your heart’s content and nobody will care (or even bother to read it).
I have to admit, I do admire you for enabling comments. Perhaps you will someday find yourself in agreement with Joanne about spammers hijacking the comment threads. I think it more likely that you will go the RealClimate route instead and shut down criticism. We’ll see.
(Don’t worry about getting any comments from me, however — I don’t give personal information to anonymous bloggers.)
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mullumhillbilly – the costs of delivering nuclear power to a capital city household = a bit more than coal at present, and a lot less than your renewable dream. Not to be shy but I discuss nuclear energy at Bravenewclimate. This site is
where I can act like a lunatic troll to these deniersexplore the sceptical side of things.10
mullumhillbilly – your last example re bayswater is still forgetting the sun doesn’t shine all day, and not every day is sunny. In winter, higher demand correlates with colder and cloudier days and nights. This problem cannot be designed around. You either have some type of thermal storage system and double the size of your array, or you install a coal or gas fired generator alongside. The first double the cost and size, the second doubles the cost and begs the obvious question of why not let the coal/gas generator just run all day and scrap the solar panels.
This is why solar has inherent problems that make it a technical blind alley for mainstream, large scale power generation.
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I always appreciate an accurate and informative article, which is the case with this one. It confirms to me the lessons I learned in life and death situations that flexibility and adaptability are winning qualities.
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Monckton says even the socialist party leaders and people of Scotland are fed up with the windmills and the daylight robbery of carbon taxes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11vGoETThFA&feature=player_profilepage#t=665s
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[…] fails utterly even assuming it accomplishes its stated goals. As Australian scientist Joanne Nova noted recently, the tax, if fully successful, would yield the following […]
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Jo, Under “Base data” your article says:
I presume that $9.2 billion does not include the $10 billion already committed to renewable energy and energy efficency programs by the Rudd and Gillard governments up to May 2010.
http://www.budget.gov.au/2010-11/content/overview/html/overview_26.htm
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I misread, it’s always baffled me. What’s the difference between a Big Polluter ( one of the 500 say) and lots of little Polluters like us in our cars for instance.
What’s the rationale for just hitting Big Polluters, and what if the were to break up into lots of smaller Polluters, or just move overseas ?
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2 things:
1.
below is a link monckton fans may be interested in. it is the 1st video in a series (of 5) showing misquotes, misunderstanding (or deliberate misuse) of science, cherry-picking data, etc by monckton
http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54#p/u/14/fbW-aHvjOgM
i am interested in hearing anyone’s thoughts on it, but particularly those who enjoy moncktons work (as i once did)
2.
im undecided about the carbon tax as i am undecided about the existence or extent of AGW. HOWEVER, those who point to cold weather in the current day/year/decade may want to find out why the climate changes naturally, and over what time scales these effects occur. i do get frustrated by simplistic arguments coming from both those predicting the end of the world and those who think a cold year proves GW doesnt exist
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Emma, the character assassination videos of Monckton are a testament to how much the other side are desperate to stop people listening to him. The obsessive cherry picking they do must have taken months. The tiny snippets of quotes are spliced from talks that were sometimes years apart.
If they could find the evidence they keep pretending is overwhelming I guess they could debunk his science, since they can’t, they go out of their way to smear him. Apparently they are so apoplectic, they write to researchers with false statements about what Monckton said, so they could get their outraged replies. http://joannenova.com.au/2010/07/abraham-surrenders-to-monckton-uni-of-st-thomas-endorses-untruths/. As far as I know Lambert has still not published what he wrote to Pinker with either. http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/lamberts-pinker-tape-ambush-pr-stunt/ Monckton has contacted those researchers and asked what his errors are so he can correct them. But there are no corrections so far.
Me thinks you need to look at the evidence on the climate instead of at biographies.
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