Viv Forbes

In a lifetime of observing and participating in politics, the world wide campaign by the international green movement (aided by the power-seeking UN bureaucracy) to monitor, control and tax every food, energy and transport business in the world is the most dangerous development I have ever seen. It has the potential to blight the lives and investments of the majority of Australians who are unable to find a safe place for themselves on the government payroll or in the protected Climate Change Industry.

Full article. [PDF, 87KB]

Viv Forbes

Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction.

Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.

– Ludwig von Mises Socialism.

The above passage was written by the great economist and political philosopher, Ludwig von Mises, in German, in 1922. His massive book “Socialism” demolishes the whole idea that centrally planned economies can ever produce prosperity or freedom.

Read more. [PDF, 53KB]

The Government will probably reintroduce the Renewable Energy Targets Bill (The RENT Scheme) very soon. The Liberals are unlikely to stop it – they are too engrossed in considerations of survival, and too many are hostage to Green dreamers, Green Industry speculators and vested interests lined up to profit from suffering electricity consumers.

This bill has nothing to commend it.

Firstly, the whole idea of the Emissions Trading Systems beloved by the Lib-Lab party and the merchant banking speculators is that it allows the market to determine the cheapest way to reduce emissions. It is totally negated when politicians mandate or subsidise certain energy systems. Thus the Rent Scheme should be shelved until the fate of the Ration-N-Tax Scheme is finally decided.

Secondly, it would be foolish in the extreme to force Australian industry to pay elevated electricity costs before it is clear what is coming out of the IPCC talkfest in Copenhagen in December, and what our international competitors are doing.

Thirdly, there is no chance that a force fed program to force solar/wind to supply 20% of Australia’s power will succeed without the risk of disruptions to power supplies and rapidly escalating costs for electricity and gas (which will be needed to back up unreliable green power).

And finally, the environmental “benefits” are very doubtful. When the massive land dislocation, and the minerals, energy and emissions resulting from the manufacture and installation of thousands of wind towers and solar panels are fully accounted for, we may find that Green Power is not so green after all.

This bill should be postponed until a full sensible assessment is made.

Viv Forbes

PDF version of this article. [PDF, 29KB]

By A. E. McClintock BA, MSc, PhD

Temperature readings in isolated Australian locations show no increases for 100 years.

Weather observatories in Australia, dating back 100 years or more show cities getting hotter as they get bigger but country towns have generally NOT been warming up. Some have actually been cooling down.

Read the full document, with additional graphs here. [PDF, 796 KB]

The chimera of the “danger” of carbon dioxide is absolute nonsense.

Carbon dioxide is a harmless but essential gas on which all life on earth depends. It is only 385 parts per 1,000,000 of the atmosphere.

An increase to say 5,000 parts per 1,000,000, would do no harm whatsoever to all animal and fish life, but would be of great benefit to plant life.

Any increase over the present content of atmospheric CO2 enables plants to take greater advantage of photosynthesis and grow quicker using less water.

Who can imagine that Russia, Brazil, China and India are going to burden their economies and their people with the nonsense that both Rudd and Turnbull are proposing?

Who would think that all of the Central and South American nations are going to burden themselves with climate change trading schemes or taxes?

Who would think that any country in all of Africa is going to burden their industries and people with the ridiculous proposals of Rudd and Turnbull?

I have been observing politics and politicians long before most of our politicians were born.

The present crop are the worst we have ever had and need weeding out. They need to be replaced by sensible men and women.

Ronald Kitching

A statement by Mr Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, Australia.

The Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, Mr Viv Forbes, today called for an audit by the Productivity Commission into PM Rudd’s Green Jobs Plan.

Forbes explains:

“Whenever politicians claim to create jobs, close examination usually finds that the jobs were created in another country and their policies have merely created more welfare recipients.

“Much of the tax funded subsidy money being thrown at “alternative energy” is creating jobs in China making the hardware. Then it employs a few short term people installing the stuff. In the end, the only real jobs created are repairing wind towers and cleaning dust off solar panels. Even these are not real jobs because the moment the government stops forcing electricity companies to use their expensive and unreliable green power, these jobs will also evaporate.

“Real jobs are those that produce unsubsidized goods or services that can be sold in open
markets at a profit.”

Read the full statement. [PDF, 267KB]

The Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, Mr Viv Forbes, today claimed that the plan by Australian PM Rudd to cull one million camels may have unexpected carbon tax consequences.

Forbes explains:
“PM Rudd proposes to spend $19 million shooting one million wild camels.

“A big camel probably weighs about a tonne, so Mr Rudd is going to let a million tonnes of valuable meat rot under the Centralian sun.

“Each camel probably has about 190 kg of carbon sequestered in its body. As it rots and absorbs oxygen, this carbon will increase into about 700 kg of carbon dioxide which will then dissipate into the atmosphere.

“If the Australian Senate is silly enough to pass the Wong carbon dioxide Ration-n-Tax Scheme this shootout will thus trigger a huge carbon tax liability.

“At a carbon emission price of say $40 per tonne of carbon dioxide, the carbon tax on one million rotting camels would be about $28 million.

“If we add to that the actual cull costs of about $19 million and the carbon tax due on helicopter emissions and other activities, the total cost of the cull is about $50 million.

“This illustrates the dangers of costly unexpected consequences resulting from complex poorly designed bills being rushed through both Australian and US Legislatures by Mr Rudd and his buddy Mr Obama. Luckily Senators in both countries will probably reject this nonsense.
(more…)

[An abbreviated version of this article first appeared at Quadrant Online: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/08/viv-forbes]

Most of human history has been a struggle for food and energy.

The abundance of food in the western world during the last century or so is not the normal human condition. Snow and ice, drought and famine have been regular and persistent visitors to mankind.

We are lucky to live in a time of recent natural global warming. Warmth increases plant growth rate, lengthens the growing season, expands plant habitat and makes more land arable. As the oceans warm, they expel some of their vast reserves of carbon dioxide, the essential atmospheric plant food. Warm oceans also produce more evaporation, and thus more precipitation for adjacent land masses. Man’s recent production of carbon dioxide from burning coal and oil and calcining limestone has also helped to unlock buried carbon and restore valuable carbon dioxide to the biosphere.

Warmth, water and more abundant carbon dioxide have been the main causes of the 20th century Green Revolution which has enabled farmers to feed the growing millions on earth.

All these beneficial developments are threatened by two things – the distinct possibility of a return to natural global cooling, and silly government policies all over the western world that will slash food production.

Read the full document here [PDF, 50KB]

Climate alarmist, Al Gore, who has been predicting for the last two decades that we are all going to experience runaway global warming, was dealt a blow last month when his home town Nashville Tennessee experienced July’s coldest day on record since 1877. http://www.wsmv.com/weather/20116659/detail.html

His string of failed predictions were supported by the British Met office’s sixty six million dollar (AU) computer modeling. They both incorrectly predicted 2009 would be one of the five warmest years ever. The world has just experienced two of the coldest and snowiest winters in decades.

Even Dr Michael Mann of “hockey stick” fame has done a back-flip stating that global temperatures will continue to decline for another decade – then we will experience the warmest years ever. Even though Al Gore, the Met Office, Dr Mann and his “hockey stick” graph have been proved wildly wrong, Kevin Rudd’s propaganda machine will now move into overdrive selling the Emission Trading Scheme. The ETS is the most expensive piece of fiction in the history of Australian politics and will achieve absolutely nothing.

John McLeish

In February 1997, Dr. Terence Kealey published his book titled The Economic Laws of Scientific Research. He was then lecturing at Cambridge University as a Clinical biochemist.

He points out that nearly all of the great leaps of classical science – astronomy, newtonian physics, the massive development of alternating electricity, relativity, atomic theory and practice we made by individuals or privately funded research efforts.

The purpose of the book assesses the myth that government-funded science works economically. Terence Kealey argues that the free market approach rather than that of state funding is what produces results which benefit humanity.

The European edition of the Wall Street Journal wrote: “It is the first book by a practising scientist to challenge the orthodoxy for decades, and should be read by those who are involved in science or merely wish to promote it.”

Today Dr. Terence Kealey is Vice Chancellor at the University of Buckingham.

The University of Buckingham is the only degree-awarding independent university in the United Kingdom. The university has the highest ranking in the UK for student satisfaction. The university’s five main faculties are Law, Humanities, Business, Science, and Medicine. Each of these is presided over by a Dean of Studies, an academic leader in their field.

The book shows the fatal flaws of the states indulgence in research through its own agencies such as the CSIRO.

Ronald Kitching