Carbon dioxide is a harmless, colourless, non-toxic, natural gas that is the key link in the carbon cycle of life.

To call it “pollution” and turn the world upside down in a futile attempt to affect the climate, while ignoring REAL pollution, is an obscenity.

Have a look here at real pollution.

http://www.midwayfilm.com/

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]

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]

Last Friday, I attended a conference for a multinational bank in Oman.

It is an annual event to update the region’s clients about the bank’s latest views on local and global conditions and, of course, to tell us about its latest products.

For the first time, I heard about the Chicago Climate Exchange (http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/)

I had thought that “green derivatives” was just myth or bad idea, not something able to be sold. But I was shocked to learn that the volume of trades has reached to one trillion dollars!

It seems we are just creating another speculative industry, which will attract huge funds, the whole thing far removed from basic and essential social investments.

I am not against real green initiatives that reduce the pollution, make use of energy more efficient, offer cleaner/better water or improve the healthy environment that surrounds us. I am against the linkage between those useful things and “climate change”, which just seems to put restrictions and taxes on some industries just to fund something not real.

“Climate Change” is something universal. It will keep changing and is more powerful than any human actions. This is my own personal view.

The joke of the conference was this:

When one of the attendees asked the instructor: “What if the investment is lost, how I can justify that to my manager?”

The answer: “Tell him that your company was supporting the fight against global warming!”

I wonder if that answer would be enough to keep feed me in future, if I will lose my job, or will I blame the weather for my decision!

I wonder how the carbon taxes collected in past and future will be justified to the future generations, when they discover that they were used to fund unnecessary and non-productive expenditures like trading on the Chicago Climate Exchange?

R H, Our Middle East Correspondent

By Geoff Derrick.

Our Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull lives on the southern shore of Sydney Harbour, and is in a favoured position to observe the climate moods and weather of the Sydney area in the 21^st Century.

However, he should be aware that a considerable database exists that scientifically documents the climate history of Sydney Harbour and adjacent beaches, mainly temperature and sea levels, at least from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. When Captain Philip arrived in 1788 and landed at Sydney Cove, he quickly established a weather recording framework to help him better understand what the climate trends might be in this new colony.

Over a three year period from 1788 to 1791, two officers Bradley and Dawes recorded temperatures in the fledgling colony 6 times a day. A log of this data was found in 1977 in a remote corner of the Library of the Royal Society of London, and the data were analysed and plotted by Gergis, Karoly and Allan in 2009. They compared the First Fleet data with BOM data from the Sydney Observatory for the period 1859 to 2014, using monthly averages for T_maximum and T_minimum. A graph comparing the First Fleet data set 1788-1791 with the BOM data set 1859 to 2014 is shown below, for T_max.

Remarkably, the First Fleet data (red circles), are almost totally coincident with the later BOM record 1859 to 2014 (green dots); the same result is seen also for average minimum temperatures, and so Malcolm could justifiably claim that in the Sydney area there has been no change in trend of maximum and minimum temperatures over 256 years.

Data from the Fort Denison tide gauge in the harbour also shows an almost stable sea level trend for 129 years from 1886 to present day. In addition, a fisherman’s hut built in 1875 along the high water mark at Long Reef, Collaroy has been photographed in 1907, 1936, 1950 and 2014; remarkably, it exists in precisely the same position now as in 1875, and Malcolm could also justifiably claim that in the Sydney northern beaches there has been no documented sea level rise for about 140 years.

Read the whole story on Sydney’s non-alarmist stable harbour and coastline here: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/turnbull-and-sydney-climate.pdf [PDF, 4.4 MB]

Biographical note:

Geoff Derrick is a consultant geologist who believes in the integrity of scientific observation, rather than flawed outputs from computer models. Prepared 29 Nov 2015

The Australian Climate Commission says Australia needs to reduce emissions “to nearly zero by 2050”.

Such a reduction can only be achieved if the Climate Commission has a secret plan to use nuclear power or for a massive expansion of hydro power.

If they do not have such a plan, their “nearly zero” emissions target would force the shut down of most of the energy, transport and industrial infrastructure developed since James Watt invented the steam engine.

Imagine Australia with “zero emissions” – which means zero production of carbon dioxide from human activities and industries.

This would mean zero usage of coal, oil, petrol, diesel or gas, zero production of cement or steel and the shut-down of 92% of Australia’s electricity generators.

Sunbeams and sea breezes cannot supply 24/7 electricity – the only feasible non-carbon options for Australian grid power are nuclear or hydro. Has the Climate Commission joined the nuclear power lobby? Or do they have a secret plan for big hydro developments on the Snowy, the Franklin and the Tully-Millstream?
And how do we keep our diesel-fuelled transport fleet operating? Using big, big batteries and even more nuclear or hydro power to recharge them at every roadhouse in the outback? (But once they eliminate our grazing animals and their emissions, we will not need road trains.)

And how do we keep planes operating? Are they suggesting that we divert most of our sugar production to producing power alcohol?
(more…)

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]

Extreme conservation policies are sterilising so much of Australia’s resources that it is becoming a threat to our national security.

Most wars are about land and resources.

In the colonial era, aggressive Europeans swarmed into Africa, the Americas and Australia attracted by underused land, minerals and timber. More recently, Hitler invaded Eastern Europe and Russia in the search for “living space” and access to Black Sea oil and Japan went to war attracted by the resources of South East Asia and Australia.

Australia is the odd man of Asia – a huge land mass with a small population.

Our populous and rapidly developing northern neighbours need the primary products that Australia has in abundance – food, fibres, minerals and energy. So they note with disbelief the way in which Australia is sterilising these valuable resources.

More: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/resources-and-security.pdf [PDF, 47KB]

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.
(more…)

It was the year 1799, during the “Dalton Minimum” when the sun was quiet that George Frederick Bollinger led a group of early pioneers from North Carolina to establish early settlements in Missouri. They hoped to cross their largest obstacle, the Mississippi River, on the ice, frozen solid in mid-winter.

The pioneers and their wagon train moved westward a few miles each day, making and breaking camp each night, fording the small streams and floating across the larger ones on rafts which they made from the nearby trees, following roads that were barely trails through forests and valleys.

They arrived on the east bank of the Mississippi River opposite St. Genevieve in late December, pitched camp and explored potential river crossings. St. Genevieve is located about a 100 miles downstream from St. Louis. Winter had come early and the Mississippi river was already covered with ice. It was bitterly cold. They determined the ice was not yet thick enough to support a crossing of ox-carts and covered wagons. Daily the thickness of the ice was measured and then on Dec. 31, a chopped hole in the ice indicated thickness well over two feet. They tested the ice by making a few trips across on foot and horseback. The believed the ice was thick enough to support a loaded wagon.

As a test, a wagon was selected to be driven across with no one riding and the driver would walk ahead watching the ice and leading his team. The trip across and back to camp was made without the ice cracking and preparations were made for an early crossing New Year’s Day.

The next morning final preparations were made to break camp and all supplies were loaded. The weather remained bitter cold with dark skies overhead and light snow falling, but the decision had been made to cross and there was no turning back. The group was devout German Reformed Protestants and they gathered together in the early cold gray dawn to seek guidance from their God for a safe crossing.

The cracking of whips like pistol shots rang out over the heads of the oxen to coax them out onto the ice; the crossing had began. All that were able, walked to lighten the loaded wagons, keeping a safe distance from the wagons, which were also spaced far apart to lessen the danger of breaking the ice. The crossing was made successfully with no mishaps, except extremely cold hands and feet.

The townsfolk of St. Genevieve had built a large fire to welcome and warm these new settlers. Safely across the Mississippi, they were relieved of their crossing fears and enjoyed the local hospitality. They exchanged news from the East for information of what they might expect ahead. Needed supplies were purchased and even the weather abated a little as the sun broke through the clouds. They settled along the Whitewater River where the soil was rich.

We are transitioning into Solar Cycle (SC) 24 and the sun has become fairly quiet. During most of the last century (SC 16-23) the sun has been in a Grand Maxima. As a result the Earth has experienced warming. But with SC 24 the sun is again changing states. From the peak year 1998, the lower Troposphere temperatures globally have already fallen around 1/2 degree Celsius. This is despite the fact that during that same time period, atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen 5% from 367 ppm to 386 ppm. Several solar scientist are predicting the sun will slide into a “Dalton Minimum” event in SC 25, about a decade from now. If that happens, the Earth will experience some bitterly cold winters for several decades.

The winters may once again resemble the winters 200 years ago during the time of the early pioneers. Imagine for a minute the west fork of the White River near Bloomfield freezing into a block of ice two feet thick.

James A. Marusek
Bloomfield USA

First published Greene County Daily Word, 19 Mar 2009.

http://gcdailyworld.com/story/1510388.html