Solar power fails every day from sunset to sunrise as well as during rain, hail, snow or dust storms. No matter how much land we smother in subsidised solar panels, they will still fail.
Wind power fails often and unpredictably, sometimes for days, especially in quiet cold winter weather. It also shuts down during cyclones, heavy winds or icy conditions. No matter how many hills we uglify with their subsidised roads, transmission lines and bird-slicers, they will still fail.
No one notices when green energy fails (as it often does) because coal, gas and hydro keep our lights and heaters on, trains running, petrol pumping, batteries charging and dairies, abattoirs and hospitals operating. (more…)
The Australian Minister for Promoting Useless Energy thinks that hydrogen fuel, carbon capture and storage, soil carbon and biofuels are priorities for energy policy and greenhouse gas reduction.
If that’s the best our leaders can come up with, Australia should have voted Green last election to speed the inevitable recession and blackouts that will eventually kill this tsunami of energy nonsense.
“Hydrogen” does not supply net energy – burning it can return some of the energy used to produce it from hydrocarbons or electrolysis of water. It is an expensive explosive gas that makes less sense than Snowy 2 – more energy in than out!
Moreover, we have no infrastructure that can safely store, distribute or use hydrogen in our transport fleet, energy network or smelters. Governments should not force energy consumers or tax payers to promote Canberra’s thought bubbles – let the “green hydrogen” entrepreneurs risk their own or shareholders’ money.
“Carbon capture and storage” is another dumb idea. To capture CO2 emissions from coal, gas or biomass power stations consumes a lot of energy to separate, store, pipe and pump it underground (hoping it will stay there). It would be far better leave non-polluting CO2 in the lower atmosphere and surround every power station with crops and forests hungry for the CO2 plant food so essential to their growth.
Trying to extract CO2 from the atmosphere is even dumber because the mighty oceans will quickly release CO2 from their huge stores to restore equilibrium between atmosphere and oceans. Even if it could be done, it is a bad idea – why steal plant food from grass, crops and forests?
“Soil carbon” is green-speak for what every sensible pastoralist tries to do – increase the humus and biological activity in soil. The quickest way to do this is via keyline/contour ripping to retain water in the soil (as shown in Australia by P A Yeoman), and by managed periodic heavy impact of grazing animals to promote pasture growth (as shown in Africa by Alan Savory). But it is total nonsense to turn “carbon farming” into a costly rural rort run by a bureaucracy of soil samplers and modellers who think it will cool the climate.
“Biofuels” are another way to waste energy, food crops and trees to do jobs better done by coal, gas and oil – a crime against humanity and the environment.
If our Minister for Promoting Useless Energy is determined to sequester and store carbon, there is only one sensible way – restore the forestry industry. Harvest mature forest trees for poles, posts, sleepers, paper, cardboard or dance floors. Then replant with new trees. Young trees grow rapidly and extract much CO2. But old trees reach a stage of carbon equilibrium when the CO2 they extract in summer is equal to what they lose as leaves, branches and trunks fall to frosts, droughts, bushfires and termites.
P A Yeomans, 1965: “Water for Every Farm”, K G Murray Publishing.
“The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all of the carbon dioxide within a metre of the ground in about five minutes.” Freeman Dyson – a prominent scientist specialising in physics, mathematics and astronomy.
Viv Forbes is a geologist, financial analyst, weather watcher and pastoralist with long experience at maintaining the health of pastures and soils. He and his wife have used a Yeoman ripper for about 30 years and have studied and practiced Savory animal management techniques for a similar time. He is Executive Director of the Saltbush Club.
Climate alarmists believe the world is warming, and that this is caused exclusively by man-made carbon dioxide. ‘Global Warming” is now stretched to Climate Change”, but it must be stressed that carbon dioxide can only produce warming: the deceptive change of name does not change the alleged process.
To demonise carbon dioxide further it is supposed to cause ‘acidification’ of the oceans. They claim that anthropogenic carbon dioxide causes the ocean to become more ‘acid’, which dissolves carbonate. This despite the fact that the oceans are alkaline, and have never been acid throughout their existence on Earth. We are implored to reduce the production of anthropogenic carbon dioxide to ‘protect’ the ocean. In this article I show that such claims are baseless, and indeed that carbon dioxide is beneficial to the ocean.
The 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.
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.
The seas and oceans to the east of Australia forms the largest body of water on Earth. This broadly connected vast body of water presents a genuine sea level. The Sydney Fort Denison Recording Station provides stable, accurate and genuine mean sea level data. The following table shows mean sea levels at 10 year intervals and these levels are related to Chart Datum which is at the lowest spring tide level.
The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the Australian government to stop wasting money on IPCC activities – “no submissions, no delegates, no funds”.
The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that the repeated failures of the IPCC theories and climate models shows that the money spent on these activities would be better spent on disaster-proofing public infrastructure – “whatever we spend on IPCC activities is too much”.
Quote:
The science debate is over. They lost.
Decades ago the IPCC proposed a theory that Earth’s temperature is controlled by the 0.04% trace of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
This theory was used to make predictions by at least 73 computer models.
Thirty years of observations has proven every prediction wrong.
Therefore their theory is wrong. That is how science works.
Now, faced with collapse of their theory and de-funding of their activities, the alarmist crew have switched to politics.
The IPCC Summary document released last week with all the hoopla of a political convention is a political document produced by consensus. It was negotiated by a faceless committee of international bureaucrats for their government masters, most of whom have a vested interest in proving there is a continuing problem needing international taxes and controls.
Consensus is the tool of politics. Public opinion is where the next climate battle will be fought.
They will lose again. It is time to stop wasting money on a lost cause.
For those who would like to read more on how sanity is being restored, one by one.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds;
it will be seen that they go mad in herds,
while they only recover their senses slowly,
and one by one.” Charles Mackay
DEARBORN, MI—The Ford Motor Company announced on Wednesday that it has developed a new SUV that will be powered exclusively by gasoline, a 100% reliable, oil-based energy source. “We’re very proud to introduce the Ford Petrola, a vehicle that runs on a specialized fuel derived almost entirely from naturally occurring organic compounds,” said Raj Nair, the company’s vice president of global product development. “Whether you’re commuting to work or heading out for a little adventure on the weekend, just fill the Petrola with gasoline and you’ll be ready to go. Best of all, this pure hydrocarbon fuel source is currently available at more than 100,000 filling stations across America.” Nair also noted that prototypes of the new vehicle have been able to travel more than 300 miles on a single “power charge” of gasoline.
Opinion piece by Prof. David Bellamy
28 June 08 Cows and Sheep May Safely Graze?
As a youngster in a post war London I was brought up on lamb and anchor butter from New Zealand.
My first dabble into TV commercials was with WOOLMARK NZ, in what became a successful attempt to slow down the ingress of synthetic fibre into the carpet market. I still meet sheep farmers around the world who greet me their thanks and a pint of beer.
I still delight in your butter and lamb which I can buy in my local supermarket, the latter at half the price of the local product sold in our village butchers shop.
What a strange world we live in now bombarded with the rhetoric of food miles let alone tourist miles. (more…)
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was a Swedish scientist who first claimed that the burning of hydro-carbons like coal, oil, gas, peat and wood may cause global warming.
In 1895 he calculated (incorrectly) that a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration would lead to a 4-5 oC rise in global temperature.
However, Arrhenius suggested that this increase could be beneficial, making the various climates on Earth “more equable” and stimulating plant growth and food production. (more…)
The Australian electricity market has become a stinking swamp covered with a tangled net of treaties, laws, rules, obligations, prohibitions, targets, taxes and subsidies. The swamp conceals the rubble of demolished coal generators; another plant destined for destruction (Liddell) is gradually sinking into the green ooze.
The swamp is slowly claiming paddocks of subsidised solar panels that, at best, only work for six hours per sunny day. The scene is uglified by spec-built regiments of ailing wind turbines that are often idle, but sometimes whirling madly. To distract the gullible media from this mess, big diesel generators charge a gigantic battery which pumps water uphill and then lets it run down again. A garbage dump of dead lithium batteries fills a nearby gully and the swamp is fenced by locked green gates.
The stagnant water is stirred on sunny days by luxury launches carrying academics-with-models, green media evangelists, climate alarmists, emissions inspectors and power regulators. Speculative sharks constantly patrol the swamp snapping up every smelly subsidy morsel scattered by politicians in posh yachts fishing for votes.
While Australia is increasing expenditure of consumer and taxpayer money to the renewables industry, governments around the world have decided that “enough is enough”.
Other countries are realising that renewable energy is a massive waste of tax payer funds and has zero or negligible effect on CO2 emissions. They are thus cutting or eliminating subsidies to the grossly inefficient green power generators.
Here are a few examples of the ways in which Australian state and federal Governments subsidise or give unfair advantage to renewables:
Bans on nuclear power
Renewable Energy Targets
Renewable Energy Certificates
Feed in Tariffs
Direct government subsidies for renewable energy
Tax and other incentives
Cost of the electricity grid enhancements that are needed to accommodate the disruptive, erratic renewable energy generators is shared by everyone instead of being attributed to the renewable energy generators.
Super Profits Tax on coal mining.
Threats to shut down or in other ways disadvantage coal fired power plants without fair compensation for the investors.
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