The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an end to wasteful spending on attempts to change the climate by taxing and rationing carbon.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that man will never control climate.

“Noah did not blame cooking fires for the flood – he built a boat before the rain came”.

Forbes explained:

“It’s time to stop wasting money trying to control the climate – this will be no more successful than slaughtering sacrificial goats, even if tax payers and electricity consumers are to be the goats.

“Man will never control the climate. Wealthy societies can and do improve their local environments of air, land and water. But to think that trading carbon credits, taxing carbon, or subsidising carbon geo-sequestration, wind towers or ethanol production will improve our climate is delusionary…”

More items in this newsletter:

• Greens aim at a black future for all Australians
• Making Things still Matters
• Bio-Bug – the Car for Canberra has been invented
• Bed Bugs for Breakfast?
• Finally, the Voltswagen

Read in full: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/be-prepared.pdf [PDF, 46 KB]

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an end to the massive subsidies to the green car industry and to rich buyers of green car toys.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that to waste taxpayer funds helping foreign car manufacturers to produce cars that consumers don’t want is bad policy.

“Worse still is a policy that encourages people to trash a roadworthy car and buy a trendy new one they do not need.”

Forbes explained:

“To collect, transport and scrap one car and build and deliver another one costs a lot in money, metals, and energy.

“These misguided policies benefit car manufacturers, car dealers, car financiers and some consumers. Everyone else, including the environment, is a loser.

“None of the so called green cars are really green.

“Electric motors, compressed air motors and hydrogen “fuel” are promoted as clean and green, but none of them are sources of energy. All of them need conventional electric power to provide their stored energy.

“Electric cars must fill their batteries from a power point. Compressed air cars must fill their tanks from a compressor which probably uses electricity. And a hydrogen car, if one ever appears, must fill its tank from a refinery using heaps of electricity to produce hydrogen from water or hydrocarbons.

“And where will the electricity come from? In Australia right now 93% of electricity comes from combustion of hydrocarbons such as coal, gas and oil. That will not change dramatically or quickly without putting the lights out. And a dramatic switch to “green” cars plus bans and taxes on hydrocarbon energy increases the chance of that.

“Electric cars are nifty and quiet, and may reduce harmful concentrations of hot exhaust gases in city air, but in Australia they will run mainly on carbon fuel. There will be zero reduction in the production of carbon dioxide (as if that matters anyway).

“The market is the best judge whether diesel, hybrid, electric, petrol or compressed air cars are used. The answer will vary from family to family and from city to country.

“For too long governments have been throwing subsidies at foreign car companies and “green” car buyers. Now they are pushing low cost cars out of the market with their “big bucks for old bombs” giveaway.

“Subsidies always encourage waste of the subsidised product – it is not a sustainable policy. The marginal savings in fuel consumption will never compensate for this extravagance.

“Green car subsidies are dud policies and should be subject to an immediate recall notice.”

Full article: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/green-cars.pdf [PDF, 248 KB]

Mark Lawson

The Federal Government may have dumped (technically deferred) one nutty green scheme (emissions trading) but an equally nutty scheme remains in place – requiring electricity distributors to buy green electricity.

This scheme is nutty because no one has shown that green electricity supplied to an operating power network actually reduces emissions. The government, various green lobby groups and the mass of voters have simply assumed that it does. There are doubts about efficiency losses due to the whole network having to be retailored to accommodate renewables. And more doubts over just how much additional backup generator capacity will be required for intermittent power sources. These doubts are either ignored or dismissed as “myths”.

…

The Australian government has dived head-first into renewables with both eyes shut, and with the general approval of the voters, who mostly have no idea of what they have approved or how much it will cost. The government should drop the whole renewable energy scheme as too complicated and expensive and unlikely to save much carbon.

The full article: blowing-away-money.pdf [PDF: KB]

Mark Lawson is a senior journalist with The Australian Financial Review. He has written: “A Guide to Climate Change Lunacy – bad forecasting, terrible solutions”.
Connor Court – $29.95. http://www.connorcourt.com/ or book stores.

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an end to the massive subsidies distorting all energy markets in the name of global warming.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that if Julia Gillard was honest in her support for a sustainable Australia, she should start dismantling the five unsustainable industries created by climate subsidies.

Forbes explained:

“Today’s buzz word is “sustainable”.

“A sustainable industry cannot rely on government subsidies, market mandates or special deals.

“Warmists and subsidy entrepreneurs have created five unsustainable industries in gullible and guilt stricken western economies – carbon sequestration, ethanol, solar/wind power, carbon forestry and the climate change industry…”

More items in this newsletter:

• Book: Green Hell: How Deep Greens Plan to Control your Life
• Zero Carbon Emissions by 2020 – prices for firewood and candles to boom
• Emissions Trading Scheme reverses Global Warming in New Zealand
• New Danger – Sunset Change
• NASA’s New Goal – better relations with the Muslim world

Read the full newsletter http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/subsidies-unsustainable.pdf [PDF, 57KB]

While Australia is increasing expenditure of consumer and taxpayer money to the renewables industry, governments around the world have decided that “enough is enough”.

Other countries are realising that renewable energy is a massive waste of tax payer funds and has zero or negligible effect on CO2 emissions. They are thus cutting or eliminating subsidies to the grossly inefficient green power generators.

Here are some recently reported examples:

Spain cuts subsidies to wind and solar:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE6611YR20100702

Italy cuts subsidies to wind and solar:
http://www.windfair.net/press/7606.html

Germany cuts subsidies to solar:
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2265976/germany-poised-phase-solar

Denmark to cut subsidies to wind:
http://www.ref.org.uk/PressDetails/163

France to slash solar subsidies:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/182530-european-solar-subsidy-slashing-bad-news-for-investors

Ontario cuts incentives for solar:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/07/07/ottawa-solar-rate-drop.html

Wind power does not reduce CO2 emissions:
http://www.masterresource.org/2010/06/subsidizing-co2-emissions/

Here are a few examples of the ways in which Australian state and federal Governments subsidise or give unfair advantage to renewables:

• Bans on nuclear power
• Renewable Energy Targets
• Renewable Energy Certificates
• Feed in Tariffs
• Direct government subsidies for renewable energy
• Tax and other incentives
• Cost of the electricity grid enhancements that are needed to accommodate the disruptive, erratic renewable energy generators is shared by everyone instead of being attributed to the renewable energy generators.
• Super Profits Tax on coal mining.
• Threats to shut down or in other ways disadvantage coal fired power plants without fair compensation for the investors.

PDF version: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/sunset-for-subsidies.pdf [PDF, 15KB]

The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that the Rudd Resource tax was just another in a long line of taxes helping to depopulate rural Australia.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that depopulation of the outback started with the fringe benefits tax and the removal of accelerated depreciation, both of which penalise companies who provide housing for employees.

“Every government since then has accelerated the drift to the coastal and capital cities.

“The heavy burdens of excessive fuel taxes, coal royalties, rail freights and infrastructure bottlenecks have for years restricted the development of the outback resource industry. Only deposits that are rich or close to the coast can pay their way, which is why the Galilee Basin has been undeveloped for so long.

“The vegetation control bans, water mismanagement and growth of carbon credit forests are depressing agriculture and will depopulate rural towns.

“Humans and their industries are also prohibited from vast areas of our land and sea sterilised by a confusing mixture of exclusion zones. And the lack and high cost of outback infrastructure has fed the fly-in mentality of industry and governments.

“Had the money wasted just on roof insulation been spent on new infrastructure, Australia would be a more decentralised and productive place.

“The climate alarmists urge still more carbon taxes and force the usage of expensive alternative energy. All outback industry relies almost totally on carbon fuels for motive power. None of our quad bikes, cars, trucks, road trains, tractors, dozers, trains, planes or ships are powered by solar panels or wind turbines – they need diesel, petrol, gas and electricity (from coal). And our biggest outback industries are focussed on exploring, developing, supplying or transporting carbon products. Coal, gas, oil, beef, sheep, dairy and timber are all threatened by more carbon taxes.

“The Rudd Resource tax is yet another centralising force, depressing outback industry and stimulating the population of drones around the government honey pots in Canberra. It increases the risk that the belated rush to build infrastructure will leave new trains without freight and new ports without ships.

“Taxes are creating ‘A Nation without a Heart’.”

PDF version: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/taxing-the-outback.pdf [10KB]

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for Sunset Clauses to be inserted in all past and future Global Warming legislation.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that even though the Ration-N-Tax Scheme is on ice, Governments are still wasting billions of dollars to create an artificial global warming industry.

“As an example, the Australian government is spending $800 million per year on climate change research and probably more on carbon geo-sequestration. And every state has its own bloated climate change and energy bureaucracies.

“Next we are promised the “Mother of all Renewable Energy Schemes” to cost untold billions.

“There is no doubt that some enlightened or distressed future government will have the distasteful job of taking the well chewed subsidy bones off these greedy and unstainable industry dogs.

“There is no evidence that man is causing global warming, no evidence that the natural warming we have experienced is dangerous or even unusual, and no chance that politicians can control the climate.

“It is thus essential that every piece of global warming legislation is subjected to an annual cost-benefit analysis and a sunset clause which triggers repeal within five years, or sooner once it becomes obvious to all that man-made global warming is not a problem.

“Such a cautionary clause is needed to warn investors and promoters relying on subsidies, market mandates, tax benefits, ethanol subsidies, carbon credits, renewable energy targets or research grants that unsustainable industries are high risk and can only create sub-prime assets.

“As we have seen with the government roof insulation disaster, it is easier to inflate an artificial industry balloon than it is to let it down gradually.”

Viv Forbes
Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition

http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sunset-global-warming.pdf [PDF, 8KB]

1. Gambling our Future on Sunbeams and Sea Breezes
2. The Great Kyoto Land Grab
3. The Iceland Volcano and Climate Change
4. Oceans, Volcanic Heat and Ice
5. Emissions from Nature
6. No Time for Resting

The full newsletter: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sunbeams-and-seabreezes.pdf [PDF, 111KB]

Adapted slightly from the Introductory Presentation by Viv Forbes of the Carbon Sense Coalition to the Senate Enquiry into Native Vegetation Laws, and Greenhouse Gas and Climate Change Measures, Rockhampton 9 April 2010.

“We oppose pollution, we oppose the waste of resources but we promote the rational and sustainable use of carbon energy and carbon food. We maintain that carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant and there is no evidence that it controls global climate. Our submission addresses the issue of using legislation to control vegetation, greenhouse gases and climate. We do not believe there are any benefits in such proposals, and considerable costs and undesirable consequences. We oppose the seizure of land rights to satisfy Kyoto carbon credit promises. This is a huge subject and we have no chance of covering it all today, so I will just summarise very briefly the likely effect of legislation in five areas – climate, the environment, food production, property rights and values, and Constitutional matters.”

Read the full presentation: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/great-kyoto-land-grab.pd [PDF, 49 KB]

The Carbon Sense Coalition has produced a submission to the Australian Government Enquiry into “The Enhanced Renewable Energy Target Scheme”, April 2010.

From the submission:

“The total justification for this massive upheaval of Australia’s industry and economy is the contention that man’s production of the colourless harmless gas, carbon dioxide, is likely to cause dangerous global warming. But never has the government conducted an open public enquiry to test the truth of this statement. Instead they have relied on an increasingly discredited political body, the UN’s IPCC, or on their own paid employees (who have learned the dangers of contradicting the message of powerful politicians.)”

Read the full submission: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/renewable-energy-targets.pdf [PDF, 83KB]