Ross Garnaut’s 2008 climate report contained egregious errors that could not be easily explained away as simple incompetence.

However, unless Garnaut was misquoted, his recent pronouncement in relation to Cyclone Yasi was so absurdly outrageous that it falls under Clark’s Law: “Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice”.

Under a headline “You ain’t seen nothing yet”, Garnaut was quoted as saying:

“With strong mitigation, we at least rule out, or reduce to low probabilities, the potential for catastrophe”.

Fair enough, if he was encouraging better building standards or discouraging people from living in cyclone or flood prone areas, but he is advising the government on a carbon price mechanism, and the implication of the article was that putting a price (tax) on carbon will rule out the potential for catastrophes of the sort that have beset mankind since the Great Flood – a big call indeed!

Even were Australia to reduce its CO2 emissions to zero, it would have a negligible effect on global emissions, but according to Garnaut it’s not even necessary to reduce our emissions! To accomplish that, a “carbon price” would have to be so high as to drastically discourage use of fossil energy, but Garnaut claimed that the impact on electricity prices of his “carbon price” would be “not very big”; hence, the reduction in CO2 emissions would also be not very big.

Therefore, Professor Garnaut is selling the modern-day equivalent of Papal Indulgences.

Dub Zivkovic
Canberra Australia

“The madness of the Government’s new carbon tax is that New Zealanders will be the only people in the world paying it. It will drive up the costs of living and undermine the competitiveness of New Zealand business for negligible environmental gain.”

– Nick Smith, Opposition Leader NZ, Parliament November 25, 2005.

Exactly four years later, on November 25, 2009,that the same Nick Smith, now a government minister, made this ‘madness’ law in New Zealand.

To the head of BHP, Mr. Kloppers, a doubling of the price of electricity and massive rises in the price of fuel and groceries wouldn’t worry his household budget. It’s understandable that he would support a new tax on carbon or an ETS.

However, it’s a shame that Mr. Kloppers has not properly thought through his support of the Greens/Labor Carbon Tax.

If he properly considered the consequences of his proposal he would have realized that forcing Australian pensioners and families to pay more money in tax to the Federal and State governments will not stop the world’s climate from changing.

Even if you accepted the lie that man made carbon is changing the world’s climate for the worst, and even if all Australians shed themselves of every carbon producing material or activity, (we could go back to living in caves, wearing animal skins and burning candles) it would not change the climate one degree.

Even the Green zealots and Labor loonies who refuse to acknowledge the natural cycles of the earth’s orbital patterns (Milankovich Cycles) and the significant climatic variations (Ice ages and countless Earth Warming events) which follow, would have to acknowledge that Australia only produces 1% of the world’s man made carbon.

Mr. Kloppers must realize that the rest of the world has abandoned the idea of a Carbon Tax. If you look at the 6 August edition of The Economist, the world’s most respected magazine, you will find that an ETS style of scheme in America is dead.

Under the sub-headline “The Democrats abandon their efforts to limit emissions through legislation”, the writer of the article said:

“Harry Reid, the majority leader, having earlier abandoned as hopeless an effort to limit America’s emissions of greenhouse gases through a cap-and trade scheme, is proposing nothing more substantial than subsidies for home insulation.”

Obviously Mr. Kloppers isn’t aware of the political situation in America when he made the statement; “We do believe that such a global initiative will eventually come..”

If we follow Mr. Kloppers, the Greens/Labor plans for a carbon tax, then we will be embracing a job-killing stealth tax and abandoning our only advantage over the rest of the world – cheap reliable power (unless we become a nuclear nation).

Is this the real agenda for those who want to put a price on carbon, and who urge us to explore “other” sources of base load energy?

Kloppers, Turnbull, Greens and Labor need to be upfront about their agenda and plans for Australia and not intellectually hide behind the crazy cult of carbon.

Rob Messenger MLA
Member for Burnett
Queensland
17 Sep 2010

The Carbon Sense Coalition said today that to introduce a carbon tax would be to wage war on consumers for the benefit of vested interests.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, also accused Australian PM Gillard of deceptive advertising in her support of a carbon tax.

“When our PM says “we need a price on carbon”, she is just sprouting another misleading Wongism like “we must reduce carbon pollution”.

“Most forms of carbon already have a price – coal, oil, gas, petrol, diesel, beef, bread, butter, diamonds and whiskey – all have a price (which usually includes a few taxes).

“What Ms Gillard wants, but dares not say, is another tax on our usage of many carbon products.

“Who wants a tax on carbon?”

Read the full article for more: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/who-wants-carbon-tax.pdf [PDF, 105KB]

Also these topics are covered:

• Climate Fools Day
• Coal – Australia’s Industrial Heart
• A Few Facts about Wind Turbines

Facts about termites and carbon dioxide:

• Termites produce more carbon dioxide each year than all living things combined.
• Termites alone produce ten times as much carbon dioxide as all the fossil fuels burned in the whole world in a year.
• Pound for pound, the weight of all the termites in the world is greater than the total weight of humans.
• Worldwide, termites may release over 150 million tons of methane gas into the atmosphere annually. In our lower atmosphere this methane then reacts to form carbon dioxide and ozone.
• For every human on Earth there may be 1,000 pounds of termites.
• On the average termites expel gas composed of about 59% nitrogen, 21% hydrogen, 9% carbon dioxide, 7% methane, and 4% oxygen.
• There are 2,600 different species of termites, and it is estimated that there are at least a million billion individual termites on Earth, that they emit two and four percent of the global carbon dioxide and methane budget, respectively-both mediated directly or indirectly by their microbes.
• The Science magazine reports that termites annually generate more than twice as much carbon dioxide as mankind does burning fossil fuels. One termite species annually emits 600,000 metric tons of formic acid into the atmosphere, an amount equal to the combined contributions of automobiles, refuse combustion and vegetation.
• The most socially destructive and dangerous termites (white ants), in Australia are the Laborous/Greenus variety infesting The Canberra Kremlin.

Maybe we need to tax them?

Ronald Kitching
North Rockhampton. QLD 4701. Australia.

Suddenly we are in the real battle against a Big New Carbon Tax. We must also expect that more silly de-carbonisation initiatives will come from the cocksure coalition of Greens and Union Leaders now controlling Australia. Worse still, they will be supported by some misguided leaders in Big Business such as BHP and Origin Energy, and some in the Liberal Party.

For more comment on the latest proposal by BHP for a carbon tax see:

http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/stop-the-carbon-tax.pdf [PDF, 116 KB]

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an end to deceptive advertising regarding Global Warming Policies.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that those calling for a “Price on Carbon” should speak the truth and call it a “Tax on the Production of Carbon Dioxide”.

“Similarly the CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) had nothing to do with pollution but everything to do with imposing taxes and rationing on economic activity.”

Forbes explained:

“The new green mantra chants: “We need a price on carbon”.

“Carbon is the most useful substance on earth and there is already a price on every product containing carbon – coal and oil, bread and butter, beef and bacon, oil and ethanol, beer and whisky, coffee and tea, cotton and wool, diesel and fire wood, methane and carbon dioxide, petrol and rubber – all are carbon products with an established market price.

“Those who chatter about “a price on carbon” are hiding their real aim which is to reduce human activity by taxing the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The Office of Fair Trading should be investigating this deceptive election advertising.

“If this tax attempted to cover all releases of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it would indeed be “A Monster New Tax”.

“Every man and beast, every car and train, every ship and plane, every cement plant and blast furnace, every power station using coal, oil or gas, every wood stove and gas barbeque, every swamp and termite nest – all emit carbon dioxide and thus recycle carbon. Carbon feeds, powers and clothes our world. Any attempt to stop that is suicidal.

“Every producer of carbon products is already taxed – income tax and payroll tax, royalties and resource rent tax, excise and levies, permits and quotas.

“Another carbon tax would just add to the costs of everything, increase poverty, bloat the bureaucracy and send more jobs to China. The only people promoting more taxes on carbon are the anti-growth crowd and the vested interests in the alternate energy promoters.

“We didn’t want the deceitfully labelled Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, and we don’t want a new tax labelled “A Price on Carbon”.

Viv Forbes
Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition

For a brief report by Ray Evans on the unholy alliance of “Baptists and Bootleggers” supporting more taxes on carbon see: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/07/the-price-of-carbon

PDF version of this article: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/carbon-price-means-tax.pdf [PDF, 62 KB]

The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that the Henry Tax review, designed to provide Australia with a more efficient tax system, had completely failed in the carbon tax area, with three complex carbon taxes now and more being promoted by Climate alarmists.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that a philosophy of centralisation, a developing budget crisis, electoral considerations and climate alarmism were now driving tax policy…

Other items in this newsletter:

• Re-Paint the Silver Lining?
• Whitewash the Hills?
• Famous Forecasts that Failed.
• The Week That Was – News you will not see or hear on the ABC.

Read in full: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/more-carbon-taxes.pdf [PDF, 44 KB]

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]