The editor,

Did you know there is a “St. Andrews Sustainability Institute”? (I suppose before global warming alarmism became a fungible activity, their role was recovery of – er, lost balls.) See this link:

St Andrews golf course ‘could sink into sea by 2050’

Now, I’d like to see a “Cinque Ports Sustainability Institute”, which will show that rising sea levels will restore 14th century Rye (now stranded inland on the Romney Marshes, about 5 miles from the Sussex beaches of southern England) to its status as a sea port, doing what it used to do best — smuggle in French Brandy and Burgundy wines under the noses of HM Customs! A positive effect for catastrophic global warming at last!

Any takers?

Malcolm Ross
Annandale, Virginia, USA

Before governments can improve oil security for their people they need to learn how markets work, or their policies will do more harm than good. This submission discusses the effects of suppliers, consumers, traders and governments in the oil market, why “Peak Oil” is a mirage which recedes as you approach it, how methane hydrates may provide the next energy revolution, how governments reduce oil security, why biofuels and alternative energy will not fuel our transport fleet, the hydrogen myth and why “Hands Off” is the best policy.

Read the full submission [PDF, 49 KB] to the Queensland State government.

A response to the Green Paper on Climate Change – a comment by Viv Forbes, Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition. 16 July 2008

The Climate will fluctuate.
It always has, it always will.
Get used to it.

The Government Green Paper completely ignores the main question – should Canberra try to control the weather, or is it better to foster a strong Australia able to cope with whatever climate change brings us?

The Government also justifies the need for action on completely worthless long term forecasts of Australia’s weather.
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Dear Professor Garnaut,

I note that your review has been commissioned to “examine the impacts of climate change on the Australian economy, and recommend medium to long-term policies and policy frameworks to improve the prospects for sustainable prosperity”.

As written, this is a straightforward if challenging task. Unwritten, however, is that the term “climate change” today carries connotations of human causation, thanks mainly to lobby group pressure and media propaganda. This transforms a straightforward task into one of immense complexity, because of the existence of both many unresolved, controversial scientific issues and the fierce environmental politics that becomes involved.
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By Rocky Wood

Australian of the Year Tim Flannery attempted to scare the horses recently by baldly claiming greenhouse gases are now at levels far higher than has ever been publicly admitted before. Is this a cry of warning from an eco-warrior or yet another blast of climate-porn from one of the world’s leading climate pornographers?

Traditionally pornographers produce material their audience may regard as obscene, or at least titillating. Climate pornographers produce material that is obscene, regardless of your viewpoint – extremist, alarmist and designed to frighten regardless of the facts, or the reasonable conclusions to be drawn from the information to hand.
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For years David Bellamy was one of the best known faces on TV.

A respected botanist and the author of 35 books, he had presented around 400 programmes over the years and was appreciated by audiences for his boundless enthusiasm.

Yet for more than 10 years he has been out of the limelight, shunned by bosses at the BBC where he made his name, as well as fellow scientists and environmentalists.

His crime? Bellamy says he doesn’t believe in man-made global warming.

The article continues here.

Gordon Brown and Kevin Rudd want to stimulate the climate conscience of the under-developed world with bribes of $122 billion PER YEAR stolen from western taxpayers and consumers (The Australian 8 July).

Naturally the UN approves. Having failed so spectacularly to combat terrorism, genocide and dictatorship they now see a job they can do – handling the climate change slush fund.

At best, this money will subsidise our competitors in India, China, Russia, Brazil and South Africa to modernise their factories and power stations. More likely, it will evaporate in a carbon credit scam, feed the climate change industry, or disappear into some Swiss bank account.

Our overheated, carbon burning, world travelling PMs needs to do what global warming is doing: pause and cool down.

Viv Forbes

I am a director of an innovative company, Aust Pacific Forest Management (APFM) which has developed and patented the world’s first mechanical pruner for plantation trees. To grow knot free timber which has significantly greater value than knotty planks, the lower storey must be pruned to maintain the knotty core at around 100 mm diameter. To date this has to be done with hand tools, a hazardous and tedious operation in which it takes a day for 1 man to prune 100 trees. Our pruning head can trim 2,000 trees in one 8 hour shift, with surgical precision such that the bark of the tree is undamaged. The testing on the pruning head was done some 5 years ago using 100 trees given to us by Queensland Forestry as thinnings from their pine plantations near the Tarong Power Station in south-east Queensland. Fortunately 50 of these trees were taken from an area within a few kilometres from the power station, and the other from near the township of Blackbutt 15 to 20 km distant from the power station.

An interesting observation in revisiting these forestry sites was finding proof that trees in the vicinity of the coal-fired power station are growing more vigorously than similar trees 15 km away. The plantations in both locations had been established for 10 years, would have experienced a similar climate history, and the soil at the 15 km distant location looked quite rich compared to the soil near the power station. We measured the breast height circumference of a number of typical trees at both locations, and found that on average, over 200% more timber growth had occurred in the trees close to the power station as compared to those furthest from this significant source of carbon dioxide. APFM has a record of the measurements taken and photographs of the trees in both areas, and although this is far from a controlled scientific experiment, the huge difference in timber volume between the two locations is quite remarkable and consistent with other scientific reports where plants are grown in controlled greenhouse conditions.

All of our library research and investigations into greenhouse conditions using carbon dioxide enriched air, together with various reports, lead us to conclude carbon dioxide, a gas which is heavier than air, is best left to flow into the forests to encourage plant growth. All of your excellent research and conclusions from many other reputable groups also leads to the conclusion that man-made carbon dioxide is only beneficial to life on earth, and that efforts to trap and store this gas are a colossal waste of time and money.

We are therefore examining ways to introduce carbon dioxide from coal-fired power stations not only into the forests, but into croplands to enhance food productivity.

John McRobert BE (Civ)
Director APFM
Brisbane Q 4001

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an end to the massive subsidies to the green car industry and to rich buyers of green car toys.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that to waste taxpayer funds helping foreign car manufacturers to produce cars that consumers don’t want is bad policy.

“Worse still is a policy that encourages people to trash a roadworthy car and buy a trendy new one they do not need.”

Forbes explained:

“To collect, transport and scrap one car and build and deliver another one costs a lot in money, metals, and energy.

“These misguided policies benefit car manufacturers, car dealers, car financiers and some consumers. Everyone else, including the environment, is a loser.

“None of the so called green cars are really green.

“Electric motors, compressed air motors and hydrogen “fuel” are promoted as clean and green, but none of them are sources of energy. All of them need conventional electric power to provide their stored energy.

“Electric cars must fill their batteries from a power point. Compressed air cars must fill their tanks from a compressor which probably uses electricity. And a hydrogen car, if one ever appears, must fill its tank from a refinery using heaps of electricity to produce hydrogen from water or hydrocarbons.

“And where will the electricity come from? In Australia right now 93% of electricity comes from combustion of hydrocarbons such as coal, gas and oil. That will not change dramatically or quickly without putting the lights out. And a dramatic switch to “green” cars plus bans and taxes on hydrocarbon energy increases the chance of that.

“Electric cars are nifty and quiet, and may reduce harmful concentrations of hot exhaust gases in city air, but in Australia they will run mainly on carbon fuel. There will be zero reduction in the production of carbon dioxide (as if that matters anyway).

“The market is the best judge whether diesel, hybrid, electric, petrol or compressed air cars are used. The answer will vary from family to family and from city to country.

“For too long governments have been throwing subsidies at foreign car companies and “green” car buyers. Now they are pushing low cost cars out of the market with their “big bucks for old bombs” giveaway.

“Subsidies always encourage waste of the subsidised product – it is not a sustainable policy. The marginal savings in fuel consumption will never compensate for this extravagance.

“Green car subsidies are dud policies and should be subject to an immediate recall notice.”

Full article: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/green-cars.pdf [PDF, 248 KB]

By Cliff Ollier, 2009.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the “Climate Challenge” conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. The aim of this small two-day conference was to throw a challenge to the science of the main Copenhagen conference. We had a few experts who presented their views and evidence.

Niklas Morner, world expert on sea level, showed that sea levels are not rising at an alarming rate anywhere, including the Maldives and Tuvalu.
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