Nearly twelve months ago “Carbon Sense” predicted that the Ration-N-Tax Scheme was dead in the water, but there was real danger that it would be replaced by a carbon tax.

See: http://carbon-sense.com/2009/07/19/carbon-tax-saddled/

This looks more likely today. Those who seek total control over our lives and our assets will not rest, and a carbon tax will be supported by…

Read more: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/carbon-tax.pdf [PDF, 41 KB]

Our Challenge

Some people think that the global warming scam is finished, that the Ration-N-Tax Scheme is dead, and that there is no further threat to our jobs, our economy and our energy supplies. Unfortunately there is no reason to relax. Public opinion has changed but the politicians have not.

Britons recently had a chance to vote on the “Oh so Green” Labour Party of Gordon Brown. They entered the polling booths holding their noses, pleased to get rid of one lot, but with no enthusiasm for the other lot. The “Conservative” Coalition governing Britain is also deep green, and in love with the Climate Change agenda of green taxes, subsidies and mandates.

Read on: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/press-on.pdf [PDF, 284 KB]

“As things now stand, the advocates representing the establishment climate science story broadcast (usually with color diagrams) the predictions of climate models as if they were the results of experiments – actual evidence. Alongside these multi-colored multi-century model-simulated time series come stories, anecdotes, and photos – such as the iconic stranded polar bear – dramatically illustrating climate change today. On this rhetorical strategy, the models are to be taken on faith, and the stories and photos as evidence of the models’ truth. Policy carrying potential costs in the trillions of dollars ought not to be based on stories and photos confirming faith in models, but rather on precise and replicable testing of the models’ predictions against solid observational data.”

Jason Scott Johnson of the University of Pennsylvania Law School for the Institute for Law and Economics, a Joint Research Center of the Law School with the Wharton School of Economics. Report: http://www.probeinternational.org/UPennCross.pdf [PDF, 399KB]

The Australian government has gone one tax too far, with Rudd’s Super Tax on the resource industry. Either this tax, or the government, will go. This was a desperate grab for money to fund all the silly stimulus packages and the continuing handouts to the Climate Change Industry. It is also a grab to centralise more control of resources in Canberra.

While the Super Tax would slash mining jobs and the value of super funds, it is minor compared to the large, insidious and long term damage that is already being done, and could still become far worse in the misguided war on carbon.

More: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/war-on-carbon.pdf [PDF, 71KB]

I am a director of an innovative company, Aust Pacific Forest Management (APFM) which has developed and patented the world’s first mechanical pruner for plantation trees. To grow knot free timber which has significantly greater value than knotty planks, the lower storey must be pruned to maintain the knotty core at around 100 mm diameter. To date this has to be done with hand tools, a hazardous and tedious operation in which it takes a day for 1 man to prune 100 trees. Our pruning head can trim 2,000 trees in one 8 hour shift, with surgical precision such that the bark of the tree is undamaged. The testing on the pruning head was done some 5 years ago using 100 trees given to us by Queensland Forestry as thinnings from their pine plantations near the Tarong Power Station in south-east Queensland. Fortunately 50 of these trees were taken from an area within a few kilometres from the power station, and the other from near the township of Blackbutt 15 to 20 km distant from the power station.

An interesting observation in revisiting these forestry sites was finding proof that trees in the vicinity of the coal-fired power station are growing more vigorously than similar trees 15 km away. The plantations in both locations had been established for 10 years, would have experienced a similar climate history, and the soil at the 15 km distant location looked quite rich compared to the soil near the power station. We measured the breast height circumference of a number of typical trees at both locations, and found that on average, over 200% more timber growth had occurred in the trees close to the power station as compared to those furthest from this significant source of carbon dioxide. APFM has a record of the measurements taken and photographs of the trees in both areas, and although this is far from a controlled scientific experiment, the huge difference in timber volume between the two locations is quite remarkable and consistent with other scientific reports where plants are grown in controlled greenhouse conditions.

All of our library research and investigations into greenhouse conditions using carbon dioxide enriched air, together with various reports, lead us to conclude carbon dioxide, a gas which is heavier than air, is best left to flow into the forests to encourage plant growth. All of your excellent research and conclusions from many other reputable groups also leads to the conclusion that man-made carbon dioxide is only beneficial to life on earth, and that efforts to trap and store this gas are a colossal waste of time and money.

We are therefore examining ways to introduce carbon dioxide from coal-fired power stations not only into the forests, but into croplands to enhance food productivity.

John McRobert BE (Civ)
Director APFM
Brisbane Q 4001

Carbon is the most valuable and amazing element on our living planet.

It is the building block of all life on earth, and has provided the food, clothing and most of the energy for every human for all of our history.

Yet carbon is being subjected to an unprecedented campaign of demonization focussed on man’s production of carbon dioxide. The main aim of this campaign is to cripple or eliminate the coal industry because combustion of coal produces carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide the key link in the cycle of life on earth.

Most people understand the biological carbon cycle – plants using solar energy extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting it to sugars and proteins, and returning oxygen to the atmosphere. Plant material, directly or indirectly, provides food for all animals. In the process of digesting carbon food, animals extract oxygen from the atmosphere to digest their carbon foods, producing carbon dioxide which is then returned to the atmosphere. More carbon dioxide means more plant growth. This is a sustainable self regulating process.

But there is an even bigger, Grand Carbon Cycle, also involving carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere by volcanoes, natural and man-made combustion of carbon fuels such as wood, coal and oil, and out-gassing from oceans during warm climatic eras. This carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere by biological and chemical extractions into the oceans to form corals, shell fish and massive deposits of limestone, dolomite and magnesite on the ocean floor. In some eras, large quantities of plant material are also locked away in enormous deposits of lignite and coal. During cool climate eras, oceans also take up huge quantities of carbon dioxide into solution.

Vulcanism and combustion are helpful processes returning valuable carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Without them, earth’s precious carbon supplies would slowly become interred and locked away in massive buried deposits of carbon bearing materials such as limestone and coal.

The products of combustion of all carbon fuels are normal and natural components of the atmosphere, and essential nutrients for all life.

This paper looks at the compositions of solid carbon fuels, the process of coal combustion, the exhaust products produced, and the benefits and pollution potential of those exhaust products.

The complete article: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/coal-combustion.pdf [PDF, 791KB]