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The Looming Collision between Electric Vehicles and Green Energyby Viv Forbes Two green-dream fantasies are heading for a massive and costly collision. Firstly they dream of generating all grid power from wind/solar propped up by battery storage (such as lots of giant Tesla batteries and pumped hydro). Secondly they dream of replacing all petrol/diesel/gas cars, trucks and buses with electric vehicles, powered by more batteries. (more…) Reliable Infrastructure before Green GrandstandingTwo messages for Canberra: Firstly, Australia does not have a problem with too much carbon dioxide going to the sky – we have a problem storing enough of the water coming from the sky. Secondly, Australia does not have a shortage of wind and solar “farms” – we have a shortage of water, stock feed and low-cost electricity on real farms. Politicians fritter our money on dubious “research”, climate propaganda, foreign adventures and handouts for trendy, vote-seeking green causes. But they have not built a serious water supply dam since the 1980’s, and the last big coal-fired power station was opened 11 years ago. For a country with a growing population, abundant supplies of coal and uranium, and a history of severe droughts, these are serious omissions. The Snowy Mountain Scheme (opened nearly 50 years ago) was a visionary project that produced large volumes of low-cost water for irrigation plus reliable hydro-power for industry. The new Snowy 2.0 Scheme is a fraud – it will produce no extra water and will be a net consumer of power. Its sole purpose is to try to plug the holes and fluctuations in electricity supply caused by a bi-partisan love affair with expensive green energy toys producing unreliable, intermittent electricity. Cease this baseless war on carbon fuels. Carbon dioxide does not drive global warming – it is driven out of sea water by ocean warming. Australia should cancel Snowy 2.0, withdraw from all Paris and Kyoto Climate Treaty obligations, dump the NEG “plans”, remove all green energy subsidies and start building some real power stations and real water supply dams and pipelines. No matter what the weather does, we will need more cheap, reliable water and electricity.
[Compiled by Mike Williamson from Australian Government Statistics.] More: How to Drought Proof a Dry Continent: Reliable Infrastructure before Green Grandstanding: The Idiocy of the Turnbull Energy Policy: Time to Drain the Energy Swamp: The Real Snowy Mountain Scheme: A Nosedive in dry Australia’s dam water capacity per head of population: Of Cabbages, and Kings, and Tariff Feed-ins“The time has come,” the Walrus said, The Walrus and The Carpenter, Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872 Once upon a time there was a land where cabbages were very popular. People used them for all sorts of things. There were central farms where they were grown, and distributed to supermarkets from where people bought them. The subjects in this land could buy the cabbages for about 17 cents each. One day the King decided that it was a bad thing for the cabbages to be produced by these large farms. He said it hurt the environment to have them transported all the way to the supermarkets. He also said too much water was used on those farms. Chasing a Will o’ the Wisp while Ignoring a real Monster in the SkyState and Federal Governments should stop wasting community resources on useless schemes for carbon trading and carbon sequestration and focus on some real world pollution crises. The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that the government and media focus on carbon dioxide emissions was totally misdirected and counter-productive. “All it will do is delay the spread of coal powered electricity to many areas now desperate for clean invisible power. It will also give an enormous boost to the demand for uranium fuel, whose mining and use is deterred by politicians in Australia. “There is already a groundswell of opposition from well informed scientists and engineers to the whole basis of the Greenhouse Religion. Even the PM’s own backbench contains well informed sceptics, and the ranks of scientific sceptics are growing all over the world. “This irrational and hysterical focus on carbon dioxide is diverting attention and resources from real pollution which is altering local climate and affecting many areas of the world. “For example, the “Asian Brown Cloud”, a haze of pollution about 3 km thick and sometimes covering an area as big as Australia, is causing real human health and safety problems. At times this cloud drifts right across the Pacific Ocean and is noticed in America. “China now emits more sulphur dioxide (SO2) than anywhere else in the world. This chokes their people, causes acid rain and damages buildings. This brown haze is already affecting local climate and melting glaciers in China and the Himalayas. In Arctic areas, soot is covering snow and absorbing more heat from the sun. Soon the brown haze will obscure the sun in some polluted Asian cities. “This pollution is caused by millions of cow-dung cooking fires and open-air cremations in India, cooking with wood, coal and cardboard all over Asia, forest fires in Indonesia and millions of small obsolete and dirty wood, charcoal and coal stoves and furnaces all over Asia and Africa. Similar problems are obvious in places in South America. “The western world went through this pollution phase fifty years ago, and although improvements can still be made, we have banished the notorious smoke pollution of places like London, Manchester and Pittsburgh. “London smoke pollution was so bad that the city became known as “The Big Smoke”. Children developed rickets from the lack of sunshine, plants and animals died and lung disease was widespread. During its last and worst ever pollution event, “The Black Fog” of 1952, caused by a temperature inversion over London, visibility was reduced to less than a foot and 4,000 Londoners died from SO2 poisoning (50 in one small London park alone). This shock brought action – cooking and heating with open fires of wood and coal was banned in big cities. Clean electric power saved the forests and cleared the air. “The world’s worst pollution is caused by open air combustion of wood, dung and coal which produces not only the harmless greenhouse gases of water vapour and carbon dioxide, but also real pollutants such as soot, smoke, ash, dust and chemicals containing sulphur, chlorine, nitrogen, fluorine, and metals. In dilute quantities, these trace elements are not a problem, but when concentrated in city air, they can be toxic. “Ignoring this real monster threatening human health and the environment, the media and politicians are chasing the CO2 mirage. “Carbon dioxide puts the bubbles in your beer, the fizz in your soda water, the holes in your bread, the dry ice in your Esky and the gas in your fire extinguisher. It is colourless, odourless, and non-toxic and does not form polluting smog or acid rain. It encourages the growth of all plant life on land and in the oceans. The whole plant world breathes in CO2 during the growing season and releases much of it again when the leaves fall. It is the key recycler of organic matter for the whole food chain, including the human race. “Man’s emissions of CO2 are a miniscule factor in determining Earth’s temperature. But while are we are wasting time and money trying to catch and imprison this harmless Will o’ the Wisp, an ominous brown smelly choking cloud of real pollution is growing in our northern skies. “Removing most of the pollutants from combustion emissions is difficult but not impossible. Removing or burying all carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of carbon fuels is an impossible dream. “Zero emissions” and “carbon sequestration” for key carbon fuels like coal, oil, gas and wood are nonsense goals, and their pursuit is diverting attention and truck loads of money from a worthy goal such as “Zero Pollution”. “The western world has largely beaten its pollution with inventions such as the chimney, the stove, but most of all by a clean, silent, invisible energy called electricity, generated in clean, concentrated and remote power stations while delivering lighting, heating, cooling, cooking and motive power into the most humble home in the poorest suburb. “To fly over a clean modern coal-fired power station at say 10,000 m is to put it into perspective – a puny cooling tower or two emitting wisps of water vapour and a small amount of (invisible) carbon dioxide and which is dwarfed by any passing cloud, no matter how small. “This third world problem presents a real opportunity for Australian energy companies to make profits and clean up the environment by promoting clean non-polluting modern power stations burning high quality Australian coals. This will allow cow dung to be used for soil improvement and allow re-afforestation of areas denuded by centuries of scavenging for fire wood. “Invisible energy from coal has already banished most of the terrible pollution that affected cities such as London, Manchester and Pittsburgh, and allowed the regrowth of American forests. “The public has been misled on this issue by an unholy alliance of environmental scaremongers, funds-seeking academics, sensation-seeking media, vote-seeking politicians and profit-seeking vested interests. “Anyone with the real interests of ordinary Australians, Australian industry or the environment at heart would divert public attention and political action from the non-problem of carbon emissions and towards the world’s real pollution problems. “History shows that people cannot and will not live without energy in their homes. Unless we allow coal to supply clean silent invisible energy, they will continue to burn dung, wood, cardboard, trees, oil, charcoal or reject coal to get their warmth or cook their food. “Just one well designed, well-scrubbed, modern Australian designed coal power plant running on natural fossil sunshine from the Sunshine State could provide the light, heating, cooling and entertainment silently and invisibly to the front door for about 3 million Asian homes, housing maybe 10 million people.” Mr Forbes called on government and opposition to cease political grandstanding on the Greenhouse issue, where carbon taxes and carbon emissions trading will adversely affect most Australians, and focus on goals that will really benefit all of Australia and the environment. “Do we wait for the re-appearance of rickets and lung disease before acting?” [First released in August 2007] How many errors can there be in 23 seconds of an advertisement?What follows is an expanded version of a complaint sent to the ACCC. (The ACCC complaint form limits the amount of text than can be entered.) I wish to complain about the Australian Government “Climate Change” advertisement currently showing on Australian TV (August, 2008). The text of the advertisement is as follows: Party Time for ClimateersThe climate warriors have held yet another Global Warming Jamboree in Bonn. As expected we were treated to an orchestrated flood of frightening forecasts to support their alarmist agenda. Naturally most of them did not use carbon energy to get there.
Image credits to www.carbon-sense.com For 23 years they have maintained these shindigs with no effect on the climate but causing great harm to many ordinary people – soaring costs for unreliable subsidised green electricity, loss of manufacturing and mining jobs, and increased food costs caused by high power prices and using food for ethanol/biodiesel. Climate alarm is just a cover story. The glittering goal they seek is world government directed by unelected officials and funded by a global carbon tax. What has kept these unproductive conferences alive for so long? The money is great, the parties are fun, and the prize is power. To comment on this article visit: Further Reading: An Avalanche of Global Warming Alarmism: http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/03/an-avalanche-of-global-warming-alarmism-is-about-to-hit/
Climate Policy Is: Redistributing The World’s Wealth: What we need to do – Drain the Canberra Swamps like they are doing in Washington:
6 Nov 2017 The Gorbel PrizeThe Carbon Sense Coalition has created “The Gorbel Prize for Green Policies that have Inconvenient Outcomes”.
Copyright Steve Hunter http://stevehunterillustrations.com.au/political-cartoons/ The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that so many green policies that appear to have useful environmental goals fail to analyse properly the long-term unforeseen consequences. Quote: Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of green politics, where laws designed to help the environment are harming the environment. To publicise this stupidity, the Carbon Sense Coalition has created “The Gorbel Prize for Green Policies that have Inconvenient Outcomes”. The winner of the Inaugural Gorbel Prize is the UK government whose green policies aim to make it uneconomic to burn coal. So the tax-payer funded Green Investment Bank has loaned £100 million to help convert the huge Drax coal-burning power station in Yorkshire to burning “sustainable biomass”. This is part of a huge finance package of one billion pounds to get the biomass green tick, earn renewable energy subsidies, and avoid the need to buy carbon credits. Where do they plan to get the “sustainable biomass”? Each year 7.5 million tonnes of wood chips will be imported from North American forests to replace 4.5 Mt of coal. The land required to produce wood at this rate is immense – about three million acres of forest per year. Also, wood is less dense than coal with less energy per tonne and a greater volume per tonne. Thus a greater tonnage and a far greater volume of wood have to be handled to get the same energy. This huge volume of wood has to be harvested, hauled, chipped, dried, trucked, shipped and stored using more carbon fuels – all to produce more expensive electricity. There is one real benefit from the scheme. When the whole process is considered, using wood will put more carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere than using coal. This will make the forests grow faster. The same goofy green policies that have pushed Drax into burning forests also apply in Australia. Maybe wood chips from our carbon credit forests will soon fuel Yallourn or Hazelwood power stations? Such green stupidity will take us back to the BC era (before coal) when forests and hillsides were stripped bare of trees to fuel stoves, heaters, boilers, charcoal makers and smelters. We would all be better off if Drax burned coal, produced cheap electricity, saved those forests and, to satisfy green dogma, planted a token forest of new trees. For those who find the above unbelievable, here is one reference: And here is a detailed report on combustion products from carbon fuels: Nominations are invited for future recipients of the Gorbel Prize. Meanwhile, Al Gore gets $100 million from Big Oil. See: More:
Read the full report: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/gorbel-prize.pdf [PDF, 147KB] Keywords: Gorbel Prize, Drax burning wood for electricity, costs of green energy, announcing climate disasters, gas giants gazump greens, electricity costs, heat wave alarms, energy blessings, Christopher Monckton. Recycling Burps and Farts[An excerpt from the newsletter: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/farmer-fred.pdf (PDF, 269KB)] Yesterday morning, before the frost had left the grass, I was sitting quietly beside my fashionably-green wood-burning heater reading the latest explanation in “The Green Gospel” on why the Arctic ice had not yet melted. Suddenly Flora burst into the room like an Arctic Blizzard with a look on her face that said I was in big trouble. “Did you tell that awful Professor Percival he could cut holes in Maria’s belly and leave her with a bum bag and a rubber sausage strapped to her back?” Can’t believe this is happening? See the sheep torture paddock: And see here where a whole team of apprentice professors are also torturing cows: “It’s all right dear” I explained patiently, “The Prof has a new job researching how to stop sheep from adding carbon compounds to the atmosphere.” (Which means, translated crudely – “how to stop sheep from burping and farting”.) “Well tell him to torture that awful Dorper ram that butts me, not my darling Maria. Where are those animal cruelty people when I need them”? The Prof had coached me on the settled-science story which I now relayed confidently to Flora: “Sheep and cows release lots of carbon-rich gases from both ends. The science says this will affect the atmosphere, heat up the globe, melt the ice caps and we will all drown.” “He is being paid big bucks to postpone that watery judgement day.” OIL SPILLS – Myth & RealityThis paper provides a factual and objective view of the reality of the effects of some of the world’s greatest oil spills. It particularly deals with the geography of the region in which the spill occurred, the climatic effects on the spill, the probable volume oil spilled, the cleanup actions that followed and the long-term environmental effects. As an introduction, Part 1 of the paper deals with some of the commonly held beliefs that the world is about to run out of fossil fuels, that oil spills and leaks are universally ‘environmental catastrophes’ and challenges the long term view that the effects are persistent and adverse to the environment. The seemingly endless alarmism that follows each spill is highlighted and the reader is asked to read the remainder of the paper with an open mind, comparing the predictions of doom with the evidence revealed by the reality of hindsight. It is concluded that the effects of the relatively few spills that have occurred have been exceptionally exaggerated for political purposes by both politicians and environmental activists. Both these alarmist cliques loudly report claims in every case that go far beyond the actual effect of the spill itself. Some of the unfortunate claims by scientists are also exposed as political activism unrelated to scientific method. Finally the paper provides a ‘prophesy’ (based on the history of previous spills) as to the long-term results and effects of the recent BP Macondo Well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that commenced on 20th April 2010 and was capped on 29th July 2010, 100 days later. The author writes under a pseudonym to protect his privacy. However any comments or corrections will be passed onto him. He has experience and contacts in this field and is skilled at extracting and documenting facts. The report is presented in six parts, with subsequent parts appearing over time: Part 1: A Summary of Oil Chemistry and the Environmental Effects of Oil. Part 2: The World’s Largest Oil Spill – The Gulf War, Kuwait, 1991. The spill, the prophets of doom and the reality that unfolded. Part 3: The Exxon Valdez Spill, Alaska. A small spill with huge publicity and extensive cleanup activity, much of which probably made things worse. Part 4: The Ixtoc I Well Blowout, Gulf of Mexico, 1979. Despite forecasts of disaster for the environment, within five years the effects of this huge spill were undetectable. In fact the fisheries recovered quickly because they were relieved of fishing pressure, and locals swapped low paying fishing jobs for high paying cleanup or oil industry jobs. As in all spills, the biggest loser was the well owner. Part 5: The BP Macondo Well Blowout, Gulf of Mexico, 2010. This may be the second largest man made oil spill in history, and at times the slick covered 6,500 sq km. However about 74% of the oil lost evaporated, dissolved, bio-degraded, or was burned, skimmed or captured. Just 5 days after the leak was plugged, the US government agreed that the oil was no longer a problem. Once more the damage was forecast to be catastrophic, once more it was not. The Gulf of Mexico copes with natural leaks of this size every year. The real costs were political and losses by BP shareholders. Available as PDF, 133KB: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oil-spills-5.pdf Part 6: Conclusions & Comments. In 2009, President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rohm Emanuel said: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste… it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was a marvellous crisis used by the Obama administration and extreme environmentalists to weaken Big Oil, demonise carbon fuels, and drive the so-called “clean fuel” agenda. Foreign oil producers and the green energy promoters are the beneficiaries. Innocent local businesses and BP were the victims, both of the oil spill but more so of the government actions designed to benefit from the crisis. Available as PDF, 1200KB: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oil-spills-6.pdf Note: This 6 part article can be printed from the 6 PDFs and then bound into one indexed report. UPDATE 9 April 2013: Those who wish to check the accuracy of the forecasts in these articles should check this reference: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22075182 Oil is a natural product and the oceans have been coping with it for millennia. Author’s Profile The author retired from the Australian Army as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1986. He served in various postings in Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. He is a frequent contributor of book reviews, short stories and the occasional article to several journals. He works internationally as a self-employed project manager and project management trainer and consultant. He has worked part-time for 9 years in the oil and gas industries in the Middle East (Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi) and in North and Central America, and has made it his business to question the experts. Everything he quotes is on the web (except where it is stated as an opinion.) No Climate EmergencyBy Viv Forbes Leaders of the Clintel Group of world scientists and professionals will attend the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) which starts in Madrid today (2 December) and runs for twelve long days. (The Climate Summit was shifted suddenly to Spain after Chile cancelled because of violent riots in Santiago.) Clintel will present their “No Climate Emergency” petition at the Climate Reality Forum. This petition has already been presented to the UN Secretary General, the European Commission and the European Parliament. (more…) |
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