Why do taxpayers have to subsidize this? Why do environmentalists give it a free pass?
By Ron Arnold

It uses tons of fossil fuels every day, emits a greenhouse gas that’s like CO2 on steroids, can’t do the job it’s made for, costs taxpayers exorbitant fees, and makes the federal government look mentally ill for giving it outrageous subsidies. It also chops up birds, bats and scenery with roads and monstrous 400-foot-tall machines. “It” is wind power, of course.

These harsh facts were condensed into a preliminary draft study of wind subsidies by researcher Teresa Platt, who circulated it to specialists for vetting. I obtained a copy of the extensively footnoted working draft, which gave chilling reality to the truth behind wind industry claims.

“Every year since the 1980s,” Platt’s study said, “the 5,000 turbines at NextEra’s Altamont Pass in California kill thousands of slow-reproducing red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls, kestrels, as well as iconic golden eagles, and bats.” The birds Platt mentions are raptors – birds of prey – particularly valued for their agricultural role in killing mice and other crop-damaging rodents. Eagles, both golden eagles and bald eagles, have long impressed Americans for their majesty, and the bald eagle was selected by our Founding Fathers as our national emblem.

I asked Bob Johns, spokesman for the American Bird Conservancy, about wind farm eagle mortality. He confirmed Platt’s study and told me the Altamont operation alone has killed more than 2,000 golden eagles. But that’s not all. “Nationwide, the wind industry kills thousands of golden eagles without prosecution,” Johns said, “while any other American citizen even possessing eagle parts such as feathers would face huge fines and prison time.”

Huge is right. Violate either the Migratory Bird Treaty Act or the Eagle Protection Act, and you could get fined up to $250,000 or get two years imprisonment.

Not a single wind farm operator has yet been prosecuted for killing birds, yet in 2009 ExxonMobil got whacked with a $600,000 fine for killing 85 common ducks and other birds that flew into uncovered tanks on its property. Other similarly outrageous revenge-style penalties have been assessed on oil companies by the viciously ideological anti-fossil fuel Obama administration.
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The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the Australian federal government and the opposition to abolish all renewable energy targets, certificates and subsidies.

The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that it was time for those who worship wind turbines to pay their full cost, and not force electricity consumers and tax payers to pay for a costly, unreliable and obsolete method of generating electricity.

“Wind power has been around since Don Quixote and it belongs in an industrial museum not in a modern economy.

“For too much of the time, the wind just sucks subsidies when it should be turning turbines.

“The 20% renewable energy target is unachievable without perpetual government mandates and subsidies and should be abolished.”

Read more: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/wind-power-sucks-subsidies.pdf [PDF, 66KB]

By Graham Williamson, April 2012

There is overwhelming evidence that the political climate change agenda has dragged many scientists down into the world of political spin and deception. In fact, the CSIRO have been seen to be complicit in continually repackaging, recycling, supporting and perpetuating the politicised corrupted and exaggerated claims of the discredited IPCC. Further, the CSIRO has continued to support these corrupted politicised IPCC claims even after the IPCC has been discredited by scientists from around the world, by the IAC review, and by the release of climategate emails. The CSIRO has shown no public concern about the unscientific practices of the IPCC or the implementation of reforms to strengthen the scientific procedures of the IPCC. The CSIRO has even been seen to be reinforcing the IPCC’s campaign to lower the standard of acceptable evidence by disguising AGW uncertainties to make them more acceptable.

The determination with which the CSIRO has endorsed the government’s call to “put a price on carbon” is also most disturbing since this advocacy is clearly not scientifically sustainable unless and until the science confirming human causation and reversibility is settled. But the CSIRO admit the science is not settled and natural climate variability cannot be reliably differentiated from human caused climatic changes. Although there is no clear scientific evidence of an imminent human caused climatic catastrophe and no scientific evidence that current mitigation techniques have the ability to control climate and sea level, CSIRO have nevertheless proceeded to endorse a “treatment” of unknown efficacy and cost for a problem which is yet to be proven real.

Full report:
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/the-decline-of-csiro.pdf [PDF, 999KB]

Who Are You Going To Believe – The Government Climate Scientists Or The Data?
By Dr David M.W. Evans

We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message — here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention.

Continue reading:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/

Media Statement by Viv Forbes

Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition.

Any quotes taken directly from this statement may be attributed to Mr Forbes

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the federal government to reduce the burden of the Climate Industry on all taxpayers and consumers.

The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that the biggest national scandal today was how the whole government apparatus, including the nationalised research and media industries and parts of the opposition, was totally captive to a religious belief that a destructive war on carbon energy will somehow provide benefits to some future generation of Australians by cooling the climate and preventing extreme weather events.

“This is a delusion.”

Quote:

It was the great Milton Friedman who said “There is only one tax on the people and that is government spending”.

Cutting expenditure, not re-arranging expenditure, must be the total focus of this budget.

And the first candidate for spending cuts must be the totally useless Climate Change Industry.

Every department, program, research grant, travel grant or salary with climate, warming, carbon, sustainability, renewable, sequestration, clean coal, ethanol or IPCC in its title or mission statement should be abolished forthwith together with its staffing. This list must include but not be restricted to:

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) and its dependants, saving about $3.2 billion.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation, saving about $10 billion.

The Emerging Renewables Program, saving about $126 million.

The Clean Technology Innovation Program, saving about $200 million.

Subsidies to Coal-fired electricity generators, saving about $5.5 billion. (This has to be the ultimate madness – the government levies a crippling carbon tax on coal-fired electricity generation to force them to close and then pays huge subsidies to the same generators to delay their closure).

All Climate Change “Research” focussed on carbon dioxide, saving about $300 million.

“Contracts for Closure” – payments to ensure closure of some electricity generators (unbelievable – surely the carbon tax will do this).

The Coal Sector Jobs Package – payments to coal mines to offset the cost of the carbon tax- just abolish the tax.

Coal Sector Assistance Package – Subsidies to some Coal Mines (another stupidity – repaying some of the carbon tax they took in the first place).

Everything funded under the Clean Energy Future Plan.

All renewable energy subsidies.

The Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund.

The Ethanol Production Grants Program – a subsidy per litre of ethanol produced.

All climate change officials, lawyers, inspectors and auditors everywhere, maybe 13,000 of them saving, say, $2 billion per year.

The offices of the Climate Commissioner and the Clean Energy Regulator – whatever they cost is wasted money.

The whole Carbon Capture and Storage empire – The National Low Emissions Coal Initiative, the CCS Flagships Program, the National Carbon Dioxide Infrastructure Plan, and the Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.

Support for all the International Climate Forums and Conferences via APEC, CEM, G20, IEA, IEF, IPEEC, IRENA, IPCC and all the travel costs associated with attendance.

All handouts under the Green Precincts Fund – $15M spent to date.

All government advertising, market research, media monitoring, media advisers and logo designers promoting the carbon tax, the Department of Climate Change, smart meters or other climate and green energy initiatives.

Donations to Green Friends such as the Climate Institute, the Australian Conservation Council, Climate Works Australia, Green Cross Australia, and the ACTU – $3 million spent already.

To “balance” all of these reduced expenditures the government must also abolish the carbon tax and all fuel taxes not related directly to public road usage and applied to road construction and maintenance.

Note: The above list probably includes errors, double counting and omissions, but such is the confusion and proliferation of the alphabet soup of what poses as “Climate Policy” that it is doubtful if anyone could prepare an accurate and comprehensive list. The only feasible solution is to start cutting, biggest first. None of them will be missed, except with relief by taxpayers and consumers.

Viv Forbes,
Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition
www.carbon-sense.com
Rosewood Qld Australia
forbes@carbon-sense.com

“Global climate changes have been far more intense (12 to 20 times as intense in some cases) than the global warming of the past century, and they took place in as little as 20–100 years. Global warming of the past century (0.8° C) is virtually insignificant when compared to the magnitude of at least 10 global climate changes in the past 15,000 years. None of these sudden global climate changes could possibly have been caused by human CO2 input to the atmosphere because they all took place long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions began. The cause of the ten earlier ‘natural’ climate changes was most likely the same as the cause of global warming from 1977 to 1998.”

Professor Don Easterbrook

Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/global-cooling-is-here/10783

Ref: Alley, R.B 2000 The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19: pp 213-226.

The Carbon Sense Coalition has awarded its Inaugural Golden Fleece Award to Kevin Rudd and coal industry leaders for “flagrant fleecing of community savings in futile ‘research’ on Carbon Capture & Sequestration – a costly and complex process designed to capture and bury carbon dioxide gas produced by burning carbon fuels such as coal, oil and gas”.

It is obviously possible, in an engineering sense, to collect, separate, compress, pump and pipe gases, so new “research” is largely a waste of money. Engineers know how to do these things, and their likely costs. But only foolish green zealots would think of spending billions to bury a harmless, invisible, life-supporting gas in hopes of cooling the climate some time in the century ahead.

About 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide are produced for every tonne of coal burnt in a power station. To capture, compress and bury it could take at least 30% of the electricity produced, greatly increasing the cost of the limited amount of electricity left for sale – more coal used, increased electricity costs, for ZERO measurable benefits.

We have come to expect stupidity from politicians, but coal industry leaders who agreed to waste money on this should be sued by shareholders for negligence. Maybe they were just drooling at all the extra coal they would sell in order to produce the same electricity?

Kevin Rudd wins this award for “a Flagrant Fleece of $400 million taken from tax payers to fund the fatuous Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.” There is little to show for the millions already spent except a lot of receipts for high class salaries, consultants, travel, entertainment and “operational expenses”.

Pumping gases underground is sensible if it brings real benefits such as using waste gases to drive oil recovery from declining oil fields.

Normally, however, CCS will just produce more expensive electricity.

This result is not needed as politicians have already invented dozens of ways of doing just that.

More, as well as:

• The Warming of the last Century is too Small to Notice
• Clean Coal by Wire
• The New Cold War
• The Great Barrier Reef
• A revival of the Medieval Practice of Book Burning
• The Beginning of the End

Read the full report: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/golden-fleece-award.pdf [PDF, 133 KB]

Keywords: Golden Fleece Award, carbon capture and sequestration, London, Los Angeles and Asian smogs, dust, save the Great Barrier
Reef, book-burning academics, climatism waning.

Proposed rules would raise electricity costs, bring no environmental benefit, harm human health By Willie Soon

Regulatory actions being debated in Florida should raise bright red flags for Sunshine State residents, other US states, and even other countries.

On May 24, the Environmental Assessment and Restoration Division of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) issued a seriously flawed draft report, proposing much stricter limits for mercury in Florida’s river, stream, lake and coastal waters. The FDEP claims the rules are based on sound science and will improve environmental quality and public health.

However, my studies of mercury (Hg) and its biologically toxic form, methylmercury (MeHg), over the past ten years make it clear that the new limits are not scientifically defensible.

Not only would they raise electricity costs, while bringing no health or environmental benefits. The new standards, along with statements made by the DEP in public forums, would actually harm people’s health.

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There is a persistent green myth that coal-fired power generation causes city smogs. It does not.

City air pollution is nothing new. King Edward I complained about London pollution in 1306, as did Queen Elizabeth I in 1578, long before the first steam engine operated.

Let’s look at the causes of some famous smogs – London/Pittsburgh, Los Angeles/Santiago, the Dust Bowls and the Asian Smogs.

The London smogs were caused by open-air combustion of newspapers, wood and cheap high-sulphur unwashed coal in domestic fires, stoves and boilers; by coal-burning blacksmiths, brewers and ironworkers in smoky forges, furnaces and coke plants; and by many smoky steam locomotives; all with inefficient combustion and no pollution controls. The smog was slowly eliminated by clean air regulations and by changing to “clean coal by pipe” (town gas) and “clean coal by wire” (electricity).

The Los Angeles smogs were caused mainly by backyard incinerators, vehicle exhausts and natural air inversions. They were reduced by using cleaner fuels, better engines and compulsory pollution-control equipment. Santiago has undergone a similar clean-up.

The Dust Bowl conditions of the Great Plains in USA were caused by drought and wind erosion of newly cultivated soils. Gobi Desert storms produced the Yellow River and the Yellow Sea and contribute to the Asian Brown Cloud today.

Today’s Asian smogs have many sources – forest fires in Indonesia; open air cremations in India; dust from volcanic eruptions and desert storms; soot, ash and other pollutants from millions of domestic rubbish fires, mosquito fires, cooking fires and heaters using anything combustible – cow dung, wood, paper, cardboard, plastic or cheap unwashed coal; and soot and unburnt hydro-carbons from millions of vehicles, many with engines needing maintenance and no pollution controls. Beijing today combines the 1950’s problems of both London and Los Angeles.

The Asian smog is NOT caused by producing electricity in modern power stations with closed boilers, pollution controls and using high-quality washed coal such as exported by Australia to Asia. The “power station pollution” pictured so eagerly in ABC and Green propaganda is actually steam from the cooling towers.

The main products released by modern coal-fired power stations are water vapour and carbon dioxide – both are essential life supporters. Neither one is dangerous. Both make our climate more liveable, but the contribution of carbon dioxide to climate is tiny. And the carbon dioxide produced by burning coal has done more to encourage the growth of plants and the greening of planet Earth than Greenpeace will ever do.

“Clean coal by wire” into every home is the one thing that could solve much of the Asian air pollution.

Disclosure: Viv Forbes has a science degree and long experience in Australia’s primary industries. He is self-employed, owns a farm and holds shares in a small Australian coal explorer which will benefit when Asia decides to solve their energy and pollution problems using “clean coal by wire”.

Further reading:

Gobi Desert Dust Storms: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-track-asian-du

Desert Dust, Dust Storms and Climate: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/miller_01/

Is Coal Dirty? http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/is-coal-dirty.pdf

Coal combustion products: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/coal-combustion.pdf

Carbon & Carbon dioxide – Clearing up the Confusion: http://carbon-sense.com/2011/05/02/carbon-dioxide-confusion/

The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said he was surprised that a group supposedly protecting the environment are so viciously attacking the energy source that has done more to protect the environment than any other.

“Without coal, humans would have stripped every tree from every populated area to provide heating, cooking, building materials, steam power, and charcoal for smelting metals.

“Their silly opposition to coal in Britain means that now one large UK power station (Drax) is converting to burn wood, harvested in North American forests, and shipped to Britain to be burnt. Their selective blindness does not compute the net energy waste involved in this stupidity.

“Does Greenpeace support burning the forests?

“Green policies have also caused such high power prices that poor consumers in Europe’s bitter winter were stripping forests for firewood, even burning old books to keep warm.

“Does Greenpeace support high power prices, wood-poaching and book-burning?

“Green promotion of wind power is defacing the rural environment with networks of roads, power lines and whirling scythes that slaughter millions of bats and raptors all over the world. And causing duplication of generating equipment for the 70% of the time wind turbines do not deliver planned power.

“Does Greenpeace support this environmental destruction and waste of community resources?

“Greenpeace probably also believe that coal-fired power generation causes city smogs. It does not.

“Air pollution is nothing new. King Edward I complained about London pollution in 1306, as did Queen Elizabeth I in 1578, long before the first steam engine operated.

“The Asian smog is not caused by producing electricity in modern power stations with closed boilers, pollution controls and using high-quality washed coal such as exported by Australia to Asia. The “power station pollution” pictured so eagerly in ABC and Greenpeace propaganda is actually steam from the cooling towers.

“The main products of burning coal are water vapour and carbon dioxide – both are essential life supporters. The carbon dioxide produced by burning coal has done more to encourage the growth of plants and the greening of planet Earth than Greenpeace Pirates will ever do.”

Bayswater Power Station at Full Production.
The wispy white vapour is steam, from the cooling towers, as harmless as what comes out of a boiling kettle. The tall stacks are the Exhaust Stacks, emitting mostly invisible harmless natural gases including nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen and argon. They all came from the atmosphere in the first place. Where is the pollution?

“Today’s Asian smogs have many sources – forest fires in Indonesia; open air cremations in India; dust from volcanic eruptions and the Gobi desert; soot, ash and other pollutants from millions of domestic cooking fires and heaters using anything combustible – cow dung, wood, paper, cardboard, plastic or cheap unwashed coal; and soot and unburnt hydro-carbons from millions of vehicles, many with engines needing maintenance and no pollution controls.

“Clean, silent, non-polluting, low-cost electricity (“Clean coal by wire”) into every home is the one thing that could solve most of the Asian air pollution. Greenpeace will be believable when they can demonstrate that they use nothing made by coal energy and they can survive with their pleasant western lifestyle in world bereft of carbon energy from coal, oil and gas.”

PDF version: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/greenpeace-selective-blindness.pdf [PDF: 30KB]