CO2Australia boasts of planting three million carbon credit trees. This is “just the beginning” of a new bubble industry, the CO2.con.

This bubble is set to inflate rapidly. To offset just one day of Qantas operations, CO2 promoters must plant more than 200,000 trees in permanent forests covering 130 hectares. How much land is required to offset all Australian power stations, industry and transport?

Yes these trees will consume carbon dioxide. However CO2 levels today are well below what is ideal for plant growth. While they are growing strongly, these trees will suck the gas of life from the atmosphere, competing strongly with nearby crops and plant life for the traces of carbon dioxide remaining.

Then as the trees mature, growth stops. The aging forest just sits there, some trees growing, some dying and net carbon sequestration ceases. It becomes a sterile shrine to the green religion whose main impact on the biosphere is providing a haven for feral animals and noxious weeds.

Green spruikers claim that they only use land not suitable for anything else. Wrong! Every bit of Australia not covered by road, cities, parks or deserts can support crops, timber-getting or grazing animals. Carbon-credit forests gnaw away at this national land asset every year.

Moreover, CO2.con investors, like all speculators, want quick returns. Their quick return demands rapidly growing trees in arable country – deserts and salt pans are uneconomical. Thus the wheat/sheep belt is shrinking.

No one can demonstrate any climate or environmental benefit from the CO2.con.

Forcing consumers and taxpayers to fund this large scale permanent land sterilisation is clearly unsustainable. All Australians fund this destruction via increased prices for electricity, cement, steel, air tickets and rail fares, and reduced land for food production. The carbon tax will increase their burden.

Like all bubble industries, the CO2.con industry must end in tears, and the sooner it ends the better.

Read on for more, including:

1. Vested Interests in the Climate Debate
2. Solving Three Problems
3. The Rice Video: Carbon Dioxide in perspective
4. Flogging a Dead Horse
5. Two Green Prophets Recant

See: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/co2-dot-con.pdf [PDF, 171 KB]

When Europeans settled Australia, much of the country was covered by grasslands and open forests. In 1770, that great botanist Sir Joseph Banks reported “very few tree species, but every place was covered with vast quantities of grass”. Many other explorers and settlers made similar observations.

The land had been kept in this state for centuries by aboriginal land managers using their main tool, fire. However, since 1788, the use of fire was progressively suppressed by settlers, foresters, city dwellers, bureaucrats and environmentalists.

Trees invade and then suffocate grasslands unless tree seedlings are kept in check by fire or by mechanical or chemical means.

The destruction of Australia’s ancestral grasslands has received a massive boost in recent years by green extremists aiming to remove human activities from rural Australia using national parks, reservations, crown land, heritage areas, Wild Rivers, vegetation orders, logging bans and now Kyoto bans on regrowth clearing.

Prevention of hazard reduction burning (the key tool used by generations of aborigines to maintain Australia’s landscape), lockout of grazing animals and the spread of carbon credit forests is completing the destruction of our savannah lands.

Once the grasslands become infested by woody scrubs, these quickly give protection to noxious weeds such as lantana, groundsel and boxthorn, and vermin such as foxes and wild dogs, cats, and pigs.

The amazing grasses of the world and their seeds feed most of the animal kingdom. The deliberate sacrifice of native grasslands to woody weeds is another suicidal green policy.

For those who would like read some fascinating comments by early explorers and settlers see: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/fire-and-landscape.pdf [PDF, 1.8 MB]

Britain scrambles to avoid future blackouts

Source: http://dailybayonet.com/?p=9131

Chris Huhne, the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change gambled the future of Britain’s energy generation on a massive expansion of giant bird shredders:

February 2007 [before Huhne was in government]:

Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne said: “The doubling of our electricity generation from wind in a little more than a year shows what renewables can do and gives the lie to the need for a new generation of nuclear power. “However, the incentives for wind need to be maintained while the Government is still far short of doing what is necessary to encourage tidal and wave power. “On a windy island surrounded by waves and tides, we should never be short of environmentally-friendly energy sources.”

June 2010:

Huhne expressed his excitement over the findings of a recent report into the value of Britain’s offshore resources. He is quoted saying: “It is right to point out, as that report did, that in due course we may once again be a net energy exporter, as we were during the peak of oil and gas in the North Sea, and that’s a very exciting prospect.”

July 2010:

The Energy Secretary said enabling Britain to be totally self-sufficient thanks to renewable sources – which also included wave power and harnessing tidal streams – would be an extraordinary prize.

September 2010:

I’m pleased that we’ve reached the point where 5GW of our energy comes from onshore and offshore wind – that’s enough electricity to power all the homes in Scotland.

Cartoon by Josh

But wind power is a mirage.

If the promise of wind was real, the UK wouldn’t need to spend £5 billion on new undersea cables linking it to more reliable power from European nations like nuclear-powered France:

The Government plans to spend more than £5billion laying 11 undersea power cables to allow Britain to import electricity from neighbouring countries and prevent blackouts in the next decade. The giant cables would provide up to 10GW of electricity, enough to power 2.4 million homes a year. Ministers are said to be alarmed at Britain’s likely energy shortfall, made worse by the fact the country has less capacity to import power than any other in Europe.

Chris Huhne scattered the land and oceans with anti-avian monuments to stupidity, and all he has to show for it is millions of dead birds and people who can’t afford electricity. Turns out the green dream is more of a nightmare for Britons.

Below are some comments received by “Carbon Sense” in 2011. Originals of all (with full names) are held in our files. Naturally we also get a few brickbats, some too abusive to reproduce, but they are vastly outnumbered by comments like those below. We appreciate all feedback, even critical ones. We learn most by being challenged by intelligent people.

Read here: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/testimonials.pdf [PDF, 183 KB]

The carbon policies of the Australian government will destroy regional industry.

Most regional industry relies on adding value to the products of primary industries – smelters, refineries, processing plants, cement plants, sawmills, flour mills, abattoirs and rail and port infrastructure. These facilities require cheap reliable electricity, which will never be supplied by green energy toys.

Recently Xstrata announced plans to cease smelting and refining copper in Queensland. Then Blue Scope Steel decided to reduce production and shed workers. Now Rio has signalled the sale of its aluminium processing empire. Next we can expect that a large coal fired electricity generator will be unable to repay its debts. Cement plants will be squeezed and rail and port costs will increase.

All of these projects are denigrated in their own country because they have one thing in common – they rely heavily on carbon fuels such as coal and gas and thus are all threatened by the toxic carbon tax. None of these activities will cease because of our carbon tax. They will either pay foreign spivs for “carbon credits” or the business will transfer to other countries who will welcome our trashed industries.

Not one of these operations will survive if forced to use costly and unreliable wind or solar power.

The 74 green lemmings in Parliament have given us “certainty” – the certainty of capital flight and job losses.

Are we prepared for the new green future where jobless Australians survive from backyard vegie gardens, poaching kangaroos and wild pigs from carbon credit forests and cooking with biomass on a wood stove? Of course we will enjoy pirate movies downloaded at the speed of light using the NBN (as long as the sun is shining or the wind blows).

More:

• The Carbon Dioxide Tax Game
• Speaking of elections, Ontario Wind Turbines Slice Liberal Politicians
• Carbon Dioxide and the Politics of the Carbon Tax
• Julia Gillard explains carbon dioxide to students
• Reduce Australian CO2 emissions and provide low cost power by… building new coal plants!

See http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/reaping-green-dividends.pdf [PDF, 213 KB]

Geoff Derrick is an Australian geologist with 47 years of practical experience in acquiring knowledge as to how our planet works and how it provides the resources for modern civilisations.

In this submission to the Australian Parliament on their proposed Carbon Tax Bills, Geoff uses the words and work of others to summarise the main issues that should be considered before the Carbon Tax Bills become law.

He concludes there is absolutely no reason or justification for the introduction of a carbon tax.

See his full submission: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/submission-carbon-tax-bills-derrick.pdf [PDF, 2.8 MB]

The submission by The Carbon Sense Coalition, Australia:

http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/submission-carbon-tax-bills.pdf [PDF, 42 KB]

The Gillard-Green Coalition and their “independent” allies are in temporary control of the Australian Parliament. They are about to sign a death warrant for their parties and for many of their supporters by voting for the Carbon Tax package. It will take decades for their parties to recover from the electoral venom they have unleashed. Despite enormous opposition from the public, especially those outside the capital cities, and despite a specific election promise that “There will be no carbon tax”, we are about to get a carbon tax mess so complex it takes 19 bills and 1,100 pages to document it.

What do we do?

Read on: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/opposition-never-ends.pdf [PDF, 40 KB]

Some image of wind turbine failures.

More images here: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/wind-turbine-failure.ppt [PowerPoint file, 483KB]

The passage of the carbon tax bills today is no reason for celebration. It is a step back towards the dark ages.

Just a few generations ago, humans lived in a “green” world. There was no coal, oil or gas providing light, heat, transport and traction power.

In this green utopia, wood provided heat for cooking fires and forests were felled for charcoal for primitive metallurgy; farmers used wooden ploughs and harvested grain with sickles and flails; the nights were lit using candles and whale oil; rich people used wind and water power to grind cereals; horses and bullocks moved coaches, wagons and troops; there was no refrigeration and salt was the only preservative for meat.

Towns were tiny as the whole family was needed to work the farm. For most people, the daylight hours were filled with heavy labour to produce, preserve and transport food. There was no surplus to support opera, bureaucracy or academia.

Humanity was relieved from this life of unrelenting toil by carbon energy – steam engines and electricity, machines, tractors, cars, ships and planes.

Today the pagan green religion celebrates the first step in their long campaign to destroy industrial society and reduce population.

They should be careful what they wish for.

For example, just a few more bitter winters in Britain will see their wind powered lights going out.

A British observer once said of the Whitlam government: “Any fool can bugger up Britain, but it takes real genius to bugger up Australia”.

The Gillard-Green Government is showing the sort of genius needed to dim the lights in the lucky country.

More:

• UN IPCC – Serious Science or Green Activism?
• Repeal the Carbon Tax? Yes We Can.
• The New Global Warming Crisis
• Green Insanity in Britain
• Green Agenda Unravels

See: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/back-to-the-dark-ages.pdf [PDF, 148 KB]