Many people assert that environmental extremists want to take civilization back to a pre-industrial state some 150-200 years ago, but the achievement of a “carbon free economy” would take humanity back at least 125,000 years before the discovery and control of fire, because that is the source of the carbon dioxide emissions that have now been declared “pollution.” Even as the somewhat obscure term “cap-and-trade” is a little more clear when called a “carbon tax”, even more clarity would be achieved by calling it a tax on the use of fire, because that is what it is. In their role as fuels, all hydrocarbons are useless until they are burned, which produces the energy that has fuelled human progress and provided the following benefits, which even the environmental extremists and various “rent takers” take for granted:
1) Light; even kerosene lanterns burn fossil fuel and produce carbon dioxide.
2) Heat; ask the victims of hurricane Sandy or anybody who experiences a power outage about the value of heat. Even primitive people use fire for heat.
3) Communication; all modern forms of communication depend upon the power provided by the energy derived from fire.
4) Rapid travel; what form of travel today isn’t powered by the use of fire? Trains, planes and automobiles are all powered with fire.
5) Escape from countless hours of physical labour. Prior to the discovery and use of fire, especially that used to produce electricity, disparate groups of human being were stuck in separate small communities around the world forced to spend most of their time in physical labour.
6) Inventions such as the modern computer and the rapid, worldwide communication network, which includes cell phones, e-mail and the internet would not have been developed nor could they be sustained by the intermittent, low density energy derived from solar cells and wind mills.
7) Satellites, both communication and weather; how many satellites have been launched into space without the use of fire? Many, but not all, are sent to space by hydrocarbon fuels. (Even those satellites that study outgoing long wave radiation and have futilely been attempting to prove that increasing levels of carbon dioxide are causing catastrophic climate change.)
8) One of the consequences of using fire as an energy source is that it has provided many people with enough time on their hands to debate whether or not fire is a good thing, i.e., the global warming AKA climate change AKA biodiversity AKA sustainable development debate.
(Remember also that environmental extremists not only want to ban the use of fire for energy production; they want to ban the use of nuclear energy and hydroelectric energy as well.)
The vast amount of energy that the use of fire has placed at the disposal of humanity has been used to revolutionize the nature of our existence. The mere fact that fire was a source of light and heat independent of the sun meant that humans could roam beyond the tropics into the damp, cold regions of the north with seasons of snow and long freezing nights. It was fire and fire alone that enabled man to become a creature native to the entire world and not just the tropics. In addition, the heat of the fire, i.e. cooking, brought about changes in our food supply that made otherwise inedible food palatable and nourishing. Fire has not only increased the variety of food that humans can eat, it also powers the diesel tractors used in modern farming. Our food supply has consequently multiplied beyond the wildest dreams of our ancient ancestors. Current world hunger problems are primarily distribution problems not quantity problems.
Nor has the importance of fire diminished with time; rather the reverse. Wood was no doubt the first fuel used in building and maintaining a fire, but coal took primacy over wood in the 17th century. In the 20th century these two fuels were join by gasoline and oil. In the 21st century shale oil and natural gas are gaining importance.
If the “powers that be” really thought that the continued use of fire was causing a climate catastrophe they would ban its use all together, but it would seem that they just want a piece of the action. The cap-and-trade scheme is not unlike property tax in which the government just lays claim to your property and starts charging you rent, i.e. property tax. (If you think that you own your home just stop paying your property tax and see what happens.) The cap-and-trade scheme is the government just laying claim on all fossil fuel resource within its jurisdiction and charging people a fee to burn them as an energy source.
“The power to tax is the power to destroy.” (John Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland 17 U.S. 327)
It could be that humans will eventually run out of things to burn, but that day keeps getting pushed back by innovation. For the present I can’t think of a more efficient way to destroy our society’s prosperity, which has brought us all of the above benefits, than to impose a tax on the use of fire. It leaves me wondering; in what kind of society do we now live in which we have to buy a license to use fire as an energy source, something that has been free for 125,000 years? And who exactly are we paying these fees to in order to obtain the privilege of burning that which nature provides?
Bushfires are normal events in this season in tropical and sub-tropical latitudes of the southern hemisphere – in Australia, Africa and South America. Even Captain Cook noted many fires in Eastern Australia in 1770, long before the era of “global warming” hysteria.
What is unusual is the number and ferocity of recent Australian fires.
Destructive bushfires need three things – a big load of dry fuel, hot dry winds and a point of ignition.
A big load of dry fuel, close to towns and buildings, in this season, is a sign of gross mis-management (seen most commonly in public lands). That fuel should have been raked, dozed or burnt in safer weather conditions.
Hot dry winds are not unusual in this season in these latitudes – no use whinging.
But how do 100+ bushfires start suddenly? Machinery occasionally starts fires but not 120 fires in a short time. There have been no lightning storms so who are the arsonists or idiots starting these fires?
Viv Forbes
Viv Forbes and his wife Judy have spent a lifetime in the bush of Queensland and NT. They were both volunteers in a rural fire brigade for over 25 years. They have fought many bushfires and have seen several fires lit – some deliberately, some naturally, some carelessly. One careless fire burnt out their exploration camp in Arnhem Land, another accidental “fire with nine lives” threatened their grazing property in SE Qld, and a deliberate fire on another property cleared a lot of lantana and leaf litter from their property and also made the adjacent National Park a much safer neighbour.
Below is a true unpublished story about one fire we fought on our grazing property during the Millennium Drought. We hope you find it interesting:
“The Fire with Nine Lives”:
Solar power only works while the sun shines – it is part-time power.
Wind power only works when suitable winds blows – also part-time power.
Batteries only work when charged – part-time power again.
Hydro fails in droughts – more part-time power.
And using full-time power like gas to fill the inevitable supply gaps from part-time power forces backup gas to operate like part-time power.
Moreover, on sunny windy days, wind and solar generators spew out electricity at little extra cost. These erratic surges of part-time power drive short-term electricity prices so low that even low-cost full-time producers like coal cannot operate profitably at those times. They are throttled back and forced to operate as yet another part-time power plant.
24/7 electricity users such as hospitals, trains, factories, refineries, fuel and water pumps, cash registers, infrastructure and mines cannot operate on part-time electricity.
Moreover, every part-time power producer (using sun, wind, batteries, hydro, gas or coal) consumes money full-time for operations, standby, maintenance and replacement. Each also has to fund its own specialised generators, transmission lines, access roads and workforce. Electricity becomes both unreliable and expensive, and consumers suffer.
Using taxes, subsidies, dictates and mandates to replace a full-time power producer like coal with up to five part-time power producers only makes sense in the part-time minds that inhabit Greentopia.
Canberra cannot improve any of this with more laws and regulations – they must REPEAL all the legislation, regulations, subsidies and taxes that created the mess in the first place. State governments too should repeal their silly energy laws, and stop shutting and destroying power stations. More laws and regulations can only make things worse.
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This document aims to contextualise the scientific debate concerning Climate Change (CC) and Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Examining Earth history, it is indisputable that CC has been operating for many hundreds of millions of years, in cycles that span many different time-scales (millennial-plus to decadal), all without human influence. Understanding the causative factors in past CC provides a solid basis for framing the present debate. AGW is a notion which says that human activities, notably the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, are causing an increase in the global heat budget. That higher-energy state of Earth’s environment it is argued sets the stage for damaging CC effects. Political and economic decisions have been influenced by this claim. Some of those decisions harm efforts to better the health and welfare of the world’s population, including both the poorest and those who are better off. If the CC and AGW arguments are incorrectly based, as we outline here, there is a need to re-consider those decisions.
CC in Earth History
Paleo-temperature (of atmosphere and ocean) is taken as a proxy indicator of climate, since climate is a complex concept that includes precipitation amounts and patterns, wind, etc whose history and future cannot be extracted or classified in a satisfactory way
Earth’s equatorial region has had a consistent temperature during the climate swings over hundreds of millions of years, but the polar areas have varied, thus altering the pole-to-equator gradient of heat energy, which is the principal driver of climate on the planet
Causes of CC (changes in temperature gradients) are dominated by orbital and solar effects, with added signals from volcanoes (both dust and chemicals), tectonics and plate motions, and biological feedbacks
Oceans (which cover ~70% of the planet) are the main heat reservoir, but with patterns of warmer and colder water distributions that reveal decadal and longer cyclicity that is not understood
Global Warming
Earth’s temperature has been generally rising since the end of the last ice age, with an apparent acceleration during the last century, but not since
Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have also been rising more uniformly, now reaching 410ppm or 0.04% of atmosphere
CO2 has been identified as a ‘greenhouse gas’, based on an argument that it traps and reflects heat
The physics of CO2 heat retention are over-stated, as only a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (wavelengths of heat energies) can be captured by this molecule
Because CO2 concentration is rising and is implicated in global warming, and because CO2 is a by-product of combustion, energy sources from fossil fuels have been demonised – via social and political suppression of their use, and a push towards 100% renewable energy
There are three key challenges to the idea that CO2 is the primary cause of GW:
Long-term records of CO2 and temperature show good correlation, but the CO2 concentrations lag behind temperature increases by thousands of years. Thus, CO2 increase is the consequence of rising ocean temperature, not the cause
Numerical models of climate systems, which involve simplifying assumptions and methods that are associated with serious artefacts, consistently fail to ‘predict’ the known past temperature patterns. Such models cannot justify the suppression of hydrocarbon fuels.
Average temperatures are no longer increasing despite the inexorable rise of CO2
Human activities are not the driver of global warming (or cooling). Earth’s systems are governed by processes that operate over a wide range of time- and length-scales, many of which far exceed the usual scope of human perceptions. The demonization of carbon is scientifically unjustified.
Notwithstanding a data gap from 1791 to 1859, there appears to have been little or no change in the trends of monthly maximum and minimum temperatures for a period of 230 years, from 1788 to 2018, based on comparisons of two data sets—one recorded by First Fleet officer William Dawes, and one from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM).
Gergis et al 2009, authors of a major study and compilation of the data, conclude that “Remarkably, the records appear comparable with modern day measurements taken from Sydney Observatory Hill, displaying similar daily variability, a distinct seasonal cycle and considerable inter-annual variability.”
This runs counter to the climate alarmism normally published by these authors.
The Green-ants said “You can’t burn coal” – so we sent our coal to China. Then our factories and our smelters closed and followed the coal to China.
The Green-ants said “You can’t eat beef” – so we sent our beef to China. Then burger chains and canneries closed and followed the beef to China.
The Green-ants said “Protect the trees” – so our grasslands went to weeds. Then China’s wool cheques disappeared and graziers went on welfare.
The Green-ants said “Don’t mention nukes” – so we shipped those fuels to China. Then Chinese power costs fell while ours just kept on soaring.
The Green-ants said “You can’t frack gas” – so we sent our drills to China. Then geologists and engineers were fired and followed the rigs to China.
Then blackouts came and jobs got scarce, so our kids chased jobs in China.
Today we import what we need and our cash is shipped to China.
And now we sit in flickering light, dreaming of times when factories and smelters flourished, work was honoured, explorers and builders were heroes, miners and farmers paid the nation’s bills, electricity was cheap and reliable, and to produce things was no crime.
It’s time we sent all of our Green-ants to China – there should be lots of work for them there.
There has been NO significant sea level rise in the harbour for the past 120 years, and what little there has been is about the height of a matchbox over a century.
Along the northern beaches of Sydney, at Collaroy there has been no suggestion of any sea level rise there for the past 140 years. Casual observations from Bondi Beach 1875 to the present also suggest the same benign situation.
A rush to judgement by local councils and State Governments by legislating harsh laws and building covenants along our coastlines now seems misplaced.
The falsehoods and mendacity of the IPCC and climate alarmists should be rejected out of hand, and efforts be made to ensure that science, not propaganda, defines our school curricula in matters of climate and sea levels
By Ian Plimer
The 27th COP event is preceded by breathtakingly shrill predictions of forthcoming disasters from speculated catastrophic climate change. Here are a few cold hard facts:
No one has ever proven that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. For more than two decades I have been asking scientists for this proof. If proven, it would also have to be shown that natural carbon dioxide emissions, 97% of the annual total, don’t drive global warming. This also has never been done. Furthermore, if had been proven that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming, there would be endless citation of the dozen or so seminal scientific papers demonstrating this proof. Instead, there is obfuscation and deafening silence.
Continue reading at Quadrant: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/11/the-biggest-public-policy-disaster-in-a-lifetime/
By Sanjeev Sabhlok Senior leader and overseas coordinator of India’s Swarna Bharat Party
The Modi government has been shovelling scarce taxpayer resources into solar energy, with a further $6.5 billion promised till 2022. This is over and above indirect subsidies that people pay through higher electricity bills because of renewable energy certificates. And while Donald Trump did the right thing by walking out of the Paris Agreement, Mr Modi unthinkingly remains committed to it and Niti Ayog has been touting subsidised electric vehicles.
Our party disagrees with this approach. First, because we oppose subsidies for any industry. But second, because we believe there is a strong case to impose Pigovian taxes on solar energy given the economic and environmental harm it causes.
Solar energy can do a few useful things. It can power a radio in an off-grid location. But it can’t support our day-to-day life.
Just to keep you abreast of what is going on in France…
You may have heard of the Yellow Vests, who triggered our president Macron into embarking on a “Grand Debate”, mainly on the internet. It is mostly a closed questionnaire with circular arguments on the most surreptitious ways to shoehorn the energy transition, without offering to question its legitimacy in the first place. However, looking closely at the fine print, contributors like associations can still express an open opinion.
On our side Rémy Prud’homme is an emeritus professor of economics, former consultant to the OECD, occasionally to the World Bank, and visiting professor at the MIT. As such he is our chief economist within the steering committee of the French Climato-Réalistes. He came up with the attached “ENERGY TRANSITION IN FRANCE: USELESS, COSTLY, UNFAIR”, initially in French of course. See: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/energy-transition-in-france.pdf [PDF, 346 KB]
We thought you may like to know that we Froggies are enduring the same attacks as everywhere in the western world and that we like to voice our concern.
Sympathetically yours,
Pierre Bouteille, on behalf of the French Climato-Réalistes
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