Senator Bob Brown stated that his Greatest Achievement was blocking the Gordon-below-Franklin Hydro-Electric Scheme

In June 1982, Tasmania’s Parliament passed legislation approving the development of the Gordon-below-Franklin (GBF) scheme for a dam and 300 MW power station which would have generated annually well over 10 million MW hours of electricity, costing then only about 2 cents per KW hour.

The scheme was supported by Tasmanians and passed by both Houses of their Parliament. Construction commenced.

Tasmania’s Dr Bob Brown opposed the scheme based on the false assumption that the scenic Rock Island Bend would be flooded and therefore unseen by canoeists down the river. But this site would have been above the dam water level.

Then Dr Brown circulated a picture of Rock Island Bend, taken by Peter Dombrovski, and a false statement by the Tasmanian Wilderness Society which deluded the public into believing that the scheme should be abandoned. This caused the Federal Government Labor Party to refer the matter to the High Court, where three judges supported and three judges opposed the scheme. However, the seventh judge, Senator Lionel Murphy, opposed it. This enabled the Federal Government to use its External Powers to stop the scheme with the result that all this valuable water flows out to the sea.

The scheme would have obtained most of its water discharged from the Gordon Power Station, powered by water from the Lake Pedder and Gordon Dams which have a capacity of 16 million cubic meters (over three times the capacity of Snowy Hydro’s Lake Eucumbene). There is usually little flow from the Franklin River.

The GBF scheme is very economical and environmentally sound and is well worth supporting. It should be built regardless of the High Court decision and the possibility that it might lie within a World Heritage listed area.

I am deeply concerned by the damage, deliberately inflicted by Dr Bob Brown. To me, Dr Brown should be made to pay for the damage he has caused.

E.C. “George” Fox

PS This ‘blockage’ resulted in the Federal Government having to provide about $500 million for other more costly hydro-electric schemes.

3 August 2010

PDF version: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/greens-oppose-green-power.pdf [PDF, 73KB]

Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
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Australian Environment Foundation
16th & 17th October 2010
Rydges South Bank Hotel, Brisbane

• Opening Address by Senator Cory Bernardi
• The role of wind power in saving the planet – Peter Mitchell AM
• Coal seam gas extraction and the environment – Ian Hayllor Chairman, Basin Sustainability Alliance
• Native vegetation laws in Qld – environmental protection in the national interest or abuse of power for political gain? – Ashley McKay
• Cause and Effect of Native Vegetation law in NSW – Dr John Williams, NSW Natural Resources Commissioner
• Save the Murray: Remove the barrages – Dr Jennifer Marohasy
• The folly of climate modelling – Professor Peter Ridd

More information, and registration forms:
http://aefweb.info/display/conference.html

The Queensland Government has announced plans to create a new category of restricted land called “Strategic Cropping Land” which bans all mining or development.

The Carbon Sense Coalition has lodged a submission opposing the proposal. See: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/coal-or-crops.pdf [PDF, 581 KB]

If Queensland’s politicians were really concerned about food security they would not have sterilised millions of acres of grazing land under scrub clearing bans, conservation zones, heritage areas, wild rivers, national parks and other anti-farming bans.

Nor would they have encouraged the diversion of cropping land from producing food for humans to producing ethanol for cars; or used false global warming dogma to justify covering food producing land with feral forests of carbon credit trees.

It seems that the Queensland government has a secret plan to destroy Queensland’s primary industries, all motivated by suicidal Green hostility to the production of carbon fuels and foods, mainly coal, cattle and sheep.

Queensland has always relied on both mining and farming. To undermine mining on the pretence of helping food production is false and destructive.

This is not about crops or food – it is just another chapter in the Green war on carbon fuels whose goal is to prevent development of new coal mines and power stations.

The hidden tragedy of this silly policy is that we will never know which protected paddock is underlain by a treasure house of coal or minerals.

With modern machinery and knowledge of soils and plants it would be very easy to replace the food lost in the tiny area of crop land likely to be disturbed by coal mining.

The choice is not “Coal or Crops”.

A sensible policy is “Coal AND Crops”.

More:

• The Rise of the Greenshirts
• More Green Aggression
• Don’t get Kloppered by the Carbon Tax
• Bob Carter and the ABC’s Science Show

Read the newsletter: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/coal-and-crops.pdf [PDF, 90 KB]

The Queensland Government is proposing to create a new category of restricted land use called “Strategic Cropping Land”, which is reserved for “cropping” and closed to almost every other type of land development. This would create No-Go zones covering as much as 4% of Queensland, representing an area more than twice the size of Holland and including many areas likely to contain the mineral and energy resources for tomorrow.

This proposal will affect every landowner and every rural industry in some way, almost all negatively, but its most immediate effect will be on landowners and coal explorers.

Read the submission from Carbon Sense: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/coal-or-crops.pdf [PDF, 581 KB]

The ABC 7.30 Report on 23.09.10 featured Tim Flannery, introduced by Kerry O’Brien as Scientist, Writer, Explorer.

It was a blatant example of the ABC’s push to establish a carbon tax. But Flannery himself revealed what it is all about – controlling human populations everywhere.

It is about “changing human nature”.

For instance Dim Tim assured the audience that free markets are the most dangerous spin off from Darwinism. He assured us that markets have to regulated. Free markets allowed some people to become very very rich, but this was at the expense of the rest of the population. He is not in favour of abolishing markets, but, he insists they must be intelligently regulated.

On the subject of climate change he assured the audience that “Yes, there will be a cost to suppressing Carbon, but it is absolutely necessary.”

One of Tim’s heroes is James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis. Lovelock told the Guardian earlier this year that “democracy must be put on hold” to combat global warming and that “a few people with authority” should be allowed to run the planet.

Tim’s manner very positively indicates to us that he will be one of the chosen few to organise and run society.

Ronald Kitching
Frenchville Rockhampton, QLD Australia.

Interested people can read the transcript and hear the disturbing and revealing interview at:

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2010/s3020434.htm

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]

Coal and oil are the key ingredients that have lifted much of mankind from a Stone Age existence to a world of comfort and plenty never before seen.

The Greens would have us close every coal mine and coal power station and their policies would also close most of our oil and metal refineries. And they will subsidise and mandate stupid alternative energy schemes whose main effect will be to boost backup gas consumption, increase electricity charges and increase network instability.

We should be careful what we wish for. Not long ago we were using wooden ploughs and all energy came from biofuels. Labour was cheap but food was scarce and expensive. Is this the green future?

More in this newsletter:

• Crocodile Tears about Cropping Land
• Oil Spills – Myths and Reality
• Cosmic rays control clouds control earth temperature
• The Election

Download here: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/learning-from-history.pdf [PDF, 83 KB]

The use of tools, weapons and fire is the feature that most distinguishes the human race from other species. It is the key to human survival in a changing and often adverse environment. Carbon products are the essential ingredients of these tools. The history of coal and oil explains the creation of the modern world. For a majority of the world’s population, carbon fuels and the tools they create are all that stands between us and hunger or starvation.

Complete article: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/coal-and-oil.pdf [PDF, 624 KB]

The Queensland State Government has announced a plan to create a new category of restricted land called “Strategic Cropping Land” which bans mining or development. This could blight 4% of Queensland, representing an area more than twice the size of Holland and including many areas likely to contain the mineral and energy resources for tomorrow.

Farmers should not celebrate this cynical move by an anti-farming state government to pepper Queensland with more restrictions on their land titles.
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