Last week while driving, I happened to hear part of the farewell speech of Senator Nick Minchin. We will sorely miss people like this stalwart senator. It struck me that this one sad event was like the bell tolling for the new Dark Age to come. In the next few weeks, unless a miracle occurs, and for the first time ever, dark greens and their fellow travellers will gain control of the both houses of parliament in Australia.
No doubt we have won the battle for the minds of the Australian people – every poll shows a strong majority is opposed to the tax on carbon dioxide. And there is growing scepticism for the claim that man causes climate change. But the green elite, who have never won majority support in their own right, are determined to pursue their destructive goals.
Their long-term agenda is to destroy human industry and reduce human population. Thus they are opposed to farming, mining, fishing, forestry, exploration and cheap power.
Their preferred strategy is to divide and conquer. Their tactics are to grab any real concern and magnify and divert it into another reason to destroy or hobble the industries they hate – cattle, sheep, mining, oil and gas, uranium, farming, forestry, fishing and land developers. Their greatest success is achieved when they harness and inflame one industry and use it to ram another – use farmers to destroy the gas industry, use animal lovers and meat workers to destroy live exports, use small business to attack big business, make all industries compete against one another for a dwindling supply of emission permits, get farmers to fight food retailers, cry crocodile tears about the loss of fertile land, and then lock up grazing land in trees, heritage areas and other sterilised ground. And all the time they use their domination of the government media and education empires to spread their half-truths.
Pollution is the transfer of unusual or harmful matter or energy to another person’s property without their consent. Thus I should not allow smoke, ash particles, industrial effluent, noise, noxious gases, bad smells or light from my property to annoy anyone else unless we have negotiated an agreement.
Burning of carbon fuels has been part of the natural cycle of the earth since the first plant was set on fire by the first lightning strike. All the products of burning natural carbon fuels are easily and beneficially absorbed by the atmosphere, dissolved by rain and go to fertilise the soil.
However there are some emissions that are annoying or dangerous in concentrated amounts, for example nitrous oxide, hydrogen chloride, sulphur dioxide. And others such as soot and ash that are not so dangerous, but visible and annoying. Bush fires produce all of these, but usually not in troublesome amounts.
Burning coal or oil in power stations can produce continual pollution in a small area, so modern clean plants remove almost everything from the emissions except water vapour and carbon dioxide, which are disseminated into the atmosphere via a tall stack. These two are normal beneficial atmospheric gases not pollutants. Taking them out of the emissions would be a silly and very expensive exercise for no benefit.
When I was a kid, Mum did the washing in a copper of boiling water over an open fire in the back yard. We collected the wood from the back paddock with a horse and dray. It was all very “green” (but we thought it was just hard yakka).
Greens want us to return to this primitive method for generating heat, and even electricity.
It is sensible for industrial plants such as sugar mills to burn readily available organic waste such as bagasse to generate power. But to deliberately build power stations to run on wood chips is a step back to the BC (before coal) era when forests were clear-felled to produce fuel and charcoal to feed boilers and furnaces.
Coal is an energy-dense fuel, and often has huge deposits in a concentrated area. Long-life power stations can be built close to the coal deposits, thus minimising transport costs and land disturbance.
Wood, however, has very low energy density and biomass energy is always spread over large areas of land. The fuel gathering operation must move every day, with enormous waste of transport energy and displacement of plants and animals.
Burning coal or burning biomass produces exactly the same harmless combustion gases, and a switch of fuels will have no measurable effect on climate.
Even more stupid than wood power are Green dreams to feed power stations with low grade fuels such as wheat stubble or fowl manure. The collection and transport costs for such inferior fuels will exceed the value of electricity produced. It also robs the bio-sphere of valuable mulch, fertiliser and humus.
Burning biomass to generate electricity is Green madness. Speculators should be free to fritter their own funds on such nonsense but public subsidies, carbon credits and market mandates should not be used to support them.
Here is a new slogan for true environmentalists: “Don’t Burn the Bio-sphere”.
There is nothing unusual about current climate and today’s warming is not significantly different from past warming eras.
Earth and its oceans have be coping with prodigious quantities of carbon dioxide from volcanoes since the world began. Oceans are not threatened by carbon dioxide – they are very efficient at removing excess carbon dioxide into massive deposits of limestone and other carbonate rocks.
Earth has about 1,000 active volcanoes above the sea and far more beneath the sea. Most measuring stations for carbon dioxide on land are sited near volcanoes, which makes calculations of figures on average atmospheric content suspect. It is likely to be lower than reported.
Even earthquakes release large quantities of carbon dioxide, and all of this carbon dioxide is identical to the small amount generated by puny humans burning coal, oil and gas.
Because these volcanic and earthquake releases of CO2 are not monitored and are identical to carbon dioxide formed by burning of hydrocarbons, there is thus no basis for estimating the proportion of CO2 attributable to humans. It is likely to be far lower than the computer models have assumed.
For a summary of these matters by Professor Plimer see his presentation to the European Institute for Climate and Energy, December, 2010:
Dr David Evans’ address to the Anti-Carbon-Tax rally, Perth Australia, 23 March 2011.
Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen.
The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools and liars out of our politicians.
Let’s set a few things straight.
The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now cheat and lie outrageously to maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.
Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.
Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century. (more…)
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.
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…)
Beginning January 1, 2011, energy prices will skyrocket in California, due to the required use of renewable energy sources as established in AB32. This will add tremendous stress to an already struggling economy. With more money being spent to pay for basic necessities, less money is available to spend on discretionary items. This will hurt small businesses that will also be paying higher energy bills. Prices will have to be increased to cover the higher overhead costs. The loss of money in the economy combined with the rising cost of operating a business will result in many businesses having to close their doors. There is no better prescription for job killing legislation than this.
Alternative sources of energy are dramatically more expensive than conventional coal power. An article in The Morning Bell from The Heritage Foundation on October 21, 2010 reveals the prices of energy that President Barack Obama’s very own Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects for various sources of electricity per megawatt hour in 2016 (based on 2008 dollars) as follows:
• Conventional Coal Power $ 78.10
• Onshore Wind Power $149.30
• Offshore Wind Power $191.10
• Thermal Solar Power $256.60
• Photo-voltaic Solar Power $396.10
Wind power is very dilute, and thus a large area of land is required to gather significant energy. Wind energy needs a wide network of roads, transmission lines and turbines which degrades any area containing wind farms. It has a huge land footprint.
The operating characteristics of turbine and generator mean that only a small part of wind energy can be captured.
Wind power is also intermittent, unreliable and hard to predict. Therefore large backup or storage systems are required. This adds to the capital and operating costs and increases the instability of the network.
Wind farms are uniformly hated by neighbours and will not be willingly accepted without heavy compensation payments. Their noise, flicker, fire risk and disturbing effect on domestic and wild animals are well documented.
The wind is free but wind power is far from it. Its cost is far above all conventional methods of generating electricity. Either taxpayers or consumers will pay this bill.
Wind farms are promoted as a way to decarbonise energy generation. This is supposed to reduce global warming. There is no evidence that there is any need or benefit in chasing this rainbow.
There is no justification for continuing the complex network of subsidies, mandates and tax breaks that currently underpin construction of wind farms in Australia. If wind power is sustainable it will be developed without these financial crutches.
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