(The Repairman)

(SCENE: Front door of BRYAN’s home. Door bell rings. BRYAN answers door. It is JOHN.)

John: G’day. I’m here about the climate.

Bryan: What climate?

John: Your climate. Our climate. THE climate. I’m here to fix it.

Bryan: What’s wrong with it?

John: It’s buggered. Absolutely buggered.

Bryan: No it isn’t. I was using it this morning.

John: What for?

Bryan: For drying the washing out the back.

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Heartland Institute is sponsoring the Sixth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-6) to take place in Washington, DC from breakfast Thursday, June 30, to noon Friday, July 1, at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. This event will be more modest than in the past, yet as informative and, perhaps, even more challenging to the orthodoxy. The principal speakers are S. Fred Singer, Craig Idso, and Bob Carter – all major contributors to the NIPCC reports. Of course, SEPP is a co-sponsor. See: http://climateconference.heartland.org/

Peter Lang
21 May 2011

This paper presents a simple analysis to estimate the amount of CO2 emissions avoided by wind generation and the cost per tonne avoided as wind penetration increases from 0% to 20%. The carbon price implications are discussed.

For wind power to be viable in Australia the price for electricity would need to be about $120/MWh. The current average wholesale price of electricity is about $30/MWhi. So wind energy must be subsidised by about $90/MWh. If we have a carbon price of $25/MWh then the Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) need to reach $65/MWh to make wind viable. (That means the consumer must subsidise wind by $90/MWh, or three times the current wholesale price of electricity.)

The paper concludes that as wind energy penetration increases from 1% to 20% the CO2 avoidance cost increases from $100 to $2,500 per tonne of CO2 production avoided.

Wind energy is a high cost way to avoid CO2 emissions.

For a print-friendly copy of the full article see: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/lang-wind-and-emissions.pdf [PDF, 49 KB]

Volcanoes emit huge quantities of the main greenhouse gases – water vapour and carbon dioxide. They also affect wind patterns and put large amounts of other gases like sulphur dioxide and particles of ash, smoke and dust.

All of these have a dramatic effect on the weather events and the biosphere.

For an article on this subject by Wyss Yim of the University of Hong Kong, see: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/yim-volcanoes-water-vapour.pdf [PDF, 418 KB]

“In climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

– IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR; 2001), Section 142.2.2, page 774

The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that Australia’s proposed carbon tax will favour foreigners at the expense of Australians.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense” Mr Viv Forbes said that with the Kyoto foolishness collapsing, it was unwise of the Gillard government to impose more costs than our competitors will face.

“Coal produces the cheapest electricity in most areas of the world, especially in the modern clean power stations being constructed in Asia and India. Many of these plants will rely on imports of high quality Australian coal and the cheap power they produce will be supplied to Asian manufacturing and processing plants competing with Australian industry.

“The aim of the carbon tax is to increase the domestic cost of carbon fuels like coal, oil products and gas. This is designed to force Australian industry and consumers to use high cost non-carbon energy options like wind and solar power. In many industries such as transport, green energy is not feasible and the carbon tax will thus merely add to the costs of fuel.

“The Green/ALP carbon tax coalition is thus asking Australian industry and exporters to use expensive energy while we supply cheap energy to their competitors.

“This policy of cheap energy for foreigners but not for locals is a path signposted with promises of paradise, but paved with poverty for those forced to tread there.”

More: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/tax-favours-foreigners.pdf [PDF, 76 KB]

Philip Wood has a degree in Arts Law, experience in international finance, is an ex-merchant banker and now Managing Director of a minerals processing and industrial waste recycling company.

Companies like this are depend heavily on reliable cheap energy, which has led Philip and his team become directly interested in the science, economics and politics of alleged man-made climate change, a hypothesis that increasingly burdens the energy sector. In so doing, Philip has become deeply doubtful of today’s regular doomsday headlines and futile expensive solutions to the non-existent problem of global warming.

For a series of dramatic graphs that cover all aspects of the climate debate, see, copy and spread around this presentation by Philip: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/a-cool-look-at-global-warming.pdf [PDF, 3.7 MB]

Barnaby vs Oakeshott

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“Welcome to the neo-medieval world of Britain’s energy policy. It is a world in which Highland glens are buzzing with bulldozers damming streams for miniature hydro plants, in which the Dogger Bank is to be dotted with windmills at Brobdingnagian expense, in which Heathrow is to burn wood trucked in from Surrey, and Yorkshire wheat is being turned into motor fuel. We are going back to using the landscape to generate our energy. Bad news for the landscape.

“The industrial revolution, when Britain turned to coal for its energy, not only catapulted us into prosperity (because coal proved cheaper and more reliable than wood, wind, water and horse as a means of turning machines), but saved our landscape too. Forests grew back and rivers returned to their natural beds when their energy was no longer needed. Land that had once grown hay for millions of horses could grow food for human beings instead — or become parks and gardens.”

By Matt Ridley

See the full article at: http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/6954843/a-green-dark-age.thtml

The first industries of Australia were farming and mining and these two have been the backbone of the nation ever since. Both are threatened by the taxaholics in Canberra.

Shorthorn and Brahman cattle arrived with the first fleet and coal was discovered by convicts at Newcastle in 1791, just three years after the First Fleet arrived. The first Merino sheep arrived in 1797 and coal mining started in 1798. Since then mining and farming have earned the majority of Australia’s income.

Wool and wheat, gold and silver, butter and cheese, copper and lead-zinc, leather and tallow, iron and steel, sugar and wine, coal and hydro-carbons, meat and mutton, aluminium and uranium, timber and fish, nickel and titanium – these comprise Australia’s Magic Pudding.

But the Gillard/Green/Garnaut Carbon Tax Coalition hate our primary industries because they all depend on carbon fuels and produce the carbon dioxide that feeds our crops. Our backbone industries are seen as dreaded “polluters” and treated like noxious weeds and serpents to be removed from the green Garden of Eden.

Full article: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/value-adding.pdf [PDF, 681 KB]