Any politician interested in preserving Australian jobs must vote against “The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”. It will not change the climate, it will do nothing useful for the planet and it will destroy real jobs faster than green jobs can be created. This deceptively misnamed bill is not about “carbon” nor about “pollution reduction” – it is designed to Ration and Tax human production of carbon dioxide (CO2). It is correctly named “the Carbon Dioxide Ration and Tax Scheme” or “the RAT Scheme” for short.

Read the full article and newsletter here. [PDF, 101Kb]

As an interesting fact on solar, I had a quote done for my house in Florida for a 2.5kw array (not enough to power the whole house, about 1/3 of the average requirement). The cost benefit worked out as follows:

Cost to purchase and install: $25,000 – this yielded a return of less than 1% on investment (about 0.7%)
Federal tax credit of $7,500
State rebate of about $9,600
Yield after subsidies (if qualified) – a total net cost of $7,900 with a return on my investment of just over 6%.

In other words the state and federal governments (taxpayers) would pay $17,100 in subsidies to support an overall yield on the total investment (theirs and mine) of 0.7%.

Every scrap of the product installed is of foreign manufacture sending the bulk of the taxpayer money overseas.

As a business person, if my company invested in 0.7% return projects, I would be out of business. I wonder if that applies to the Feds and States?

John in Maryland, USA

Be careful what you wish for.
Deep in their hearts, a large and growing number of people all around the world are coming to the conclusion that runaway global warming is very unlikely. However a disturbing number seem to think “OK, but even if all of this proposed legislation has no climate benefits, it may curb our extravagant consumption, reduce pollution and bring us a more sustainable lifestyle.”

Read the full article. [PDF, 372KB]

By Viv Forbes

“Emissions Trading” is a fancy name for a tax on all carbon based emissions produced by human activities. It should be called “The Carbon Dioxide Tax”. But the ETS also creates permits to emit hot air. These will become new toxic assets for under-employed speculators looking for profitable new trading toys. This makes it “The Great Carbon Dioxide Tax and Trading Game”.

Read the full document here. [PDF, 134KB]

By Viv Forbes

“I have not gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” – Douglas Adams

The current hysteria about man-made global warming, which is focussed almost exclusively on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, exceeds by a large margin any political movement any of us have experienced in our life time. Originating with a few long-term Green extremists and serial doom merchants in USA and Europe, it now engrosses the world’s politicians and media. Huge funds are being diverted to the cause, and the smell of easy money from carbon taxes, energy subsidies, carbon credits, mindless construction jobs and research funds has corrupted science, politics, industries, aid agencies, the media and whole nations.

Three specific incidents motivated me to get involved in this battle.

Read the full document. [PDF, 116KB]

By Alan Caruba

Every so often The New York Times slips up and lets some truth appear on its hallowed and vastly over-rated pages.

Such was the case on May 2nd when reporter John M. Broder wrote “Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus.” As he put it in the first sentence, “The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is ‘global warming.’” This is a very real problem, especially when the word is getting out that the planet has been cooling for a decade.

The problem worsens for them as word leaks that the ice at the North Pole is a lot thicker than earlier suspected—something that does not happen if it’s supposed to be melting. And the same holds for the South Pole whose ice is growing, along with many of the world’s glaciers.
(more…)

Robert D. Brinsmead
August 2008

We appear to have entered a new age of unreason… It is from this, above all, that we really need to save the planet. Nigel Lawson

It is widely believed that the carbon emissions of our modern industrial civilization will cause catastrophic global warming. It is called anthropogenic [man-made] global warming (AGW). Media headlines and political chatter have become obsessed with carbon. There is endless talk of carbon emissions, carbon pollution, carbon footprint, carbon offsets, carbon rationing, carbon tax and carbon trading.

We need a new word to encompass all this alarmism about carbon. The word that readily suggests itself is carbophobia. It means “an irrational fear of carbon.”

Read the full document. [PDF, 163 KB]

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the Australian Federal Parliament to stop playing Global Warming politics and focus instead on the irresponsible damage being contemplated by the Cap-N-Tax promises.

In testimony this week to the New Zealand Parliamentary Enquiry into the ETS, the Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that it was impossible to achieve the gigantic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions suggested by various western governments without a crash program of Carbon Capture and Burial (CCB). He expanded on those comments today:

“There is no evidence that CCB would provide any climate or environmental benefits whatsoever – just a huge misuse of investment capital and a massive increase in the cost of living for any society silly enough to tread this path.”

Read the full document here. [PDF, 28KB]

Here is the Carbon Sense Coalition’s submission addressing two Terms of Reference of the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme Review Select Committee: those
referring to “the impact on the New Zealand economy” and “the
relative merits of a mitigation or an adaptation approach”.
Download the report here. [PDF, 26KB]

The Carbon Sense Coalition has delivered its submission to the Australian Senate Standing Committee on Climate Change in response to the Exposure Draft of the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009″.

The recommendations are:

1. The Senate must reject the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill” on the basis of its “Two Fatal Flaws” – the science and the economics. It is not supported by independent scientific assessment, nor does it present any credible cost benefit analysis. Moreover, at a time when politicians are calling for better financial disclosure and discipline, this Bill is alarming in its deceptive advertising, shows contempt for good practice by omitting independent expert reports, and stands condemned for failure to disclose the numerous vested interests supporting its claims.
2. The Bill should also be rejected for promoting the risky and repugnant idea that Australia can or should lead the world into universal acceptance of a massive program of wealth distribution administered by bodies such as the United Nations. This shows a lack of appreciation of the fact that popular opinion all over the world is turning strongly against the global warming hysteria, and many significant industrial nations such as China, India, Brazil and Russia are motivated solely by what they see will promote their own national interest and industrial strength.
3. Finally the Bill should be rejected because of the naivety of people who tell us that a nation which generates 90% of its electricity from coal, and which also prohibits nuclear power, can maintain energy supplies for its people while cutting per capita production of carbon dioxide by 30% over the next decade or so. This cannot be done without either significant cuts in living standards or reduced population.
4. However, the Carbon Sense Coalition supports every initiative to reduce pollution of land, air or water. We also support energy conservation, and oppose any subsidies that encourage waste and overuse of any energy type.

However neither of these worthy goals have anything to do with the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming. Unproven climate scares should not be used to promote secret agendas to introduce massive new consumption taxes on top of the rash of taxes already there such as Goods and Services Tax, Income Tax, Payroll Tax, Coal and Oil Royalties, petrol excise, vehicle and stock levies and so on

The full submission is available here. [PDF, 818KB]