The Carbon Sense Coalition has awarded its Inaugural Golden Fleece Award to Kevin Rudd and coal industry leaders for “flagrant fleecing of community savings in futile ‘research’ on Carbon Capture & Sequestration – a costly and complex process designed to capture and bury carbon dioxide gas produced by burning carbon fuels such as coal, oil and gas”.
It is obviously possible, in an engineering sense, to collect, separate, compress, pump and pipe gases, so new “research” is largely a waste of money. Engineers know how to do these things, and their likely costs. But only foolish green zealots would think of spending billions to bury a harmless, invisible, life-supporting gas in hopes of cooling the climate some time in the century ahead.
About 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide are produced for every tonne of coal burnt in a power station. To capture, compress and bury it could take at least 30% of the electricity produced, greatly increasing the cost of the limited amount of electricity left for sale – more coal used, increased electricity costs, for ZERO measurable benefits.
We have come to expect stupidity from politicians, but coal industry leaders who agreed to waste money on this should be sued by shareholders for negligence. Maybe they were just drooling at all the extra coal they would sell in order to produce the same electricity?
Kevin Rudd wins this award for “a Flagrant Fleece of $400 million taken from tax payers to fund the fatuous Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.” There is little to show for the millions already spent except a lot of receipts for high class salaries, consultants, travel, entertainment and “operational expenses”.
Pumping gases underground is sensible if it brings real benefits such as using waste gases to drive oil recovery from declining oil fields.
Normally, however, CCS will just produce more expensive electricity.
This result is not needed as politicians have already invented dozens of ways of doing just that.
More, as well as:
The Warming of the last Century is too Small to Notice
Clean Coal by Wire
The New Cold War
The Great Barrier Reef
A revival of the Medieval Practice of Book Burning
Keywords: Golden Fleece Award, carbon capture and sequestration, London, Los Angeles and Asian smogs, dust, save the Great Barrier
Reef, book-burning academics, climatism waning.
Ray Evans was one of the first Australians to recognise the poor science and dangerous goals of the global warmists. Way back in 2006, Ray wrote a well-reasoned booklet entitled “Nine Facts about Climate Change”. It still stands as a clear summary of the debate.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), President Obama, and hisadministration think that alternative energy sources (like wind and solarpower) and biofuels in particular are the salvation from “climate change,”previously called “global warming.”
They view “carbon pollution” (a misnomer, as they actually mean carbondioxide, CO2) as the root cause of the current economic and environmentalmalaise in general. That’s why they blessed the nation with the “RenewableFuel Standard.”
I think the opposite is true; neither CO2 nor the “carbon footprint” is thecause of today’s many problems. In fact, the world today would be muchbetter off if that nonsense had never become a political football.
By Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser
Dr. Kaiser is author of CONVENIENT MYTHS, the green revolution –
perceptions, politics, and facts
Dr Michael Crawford has written a response to the Finkel Report.
From the introduction:
“I have read your recent report with interest. Over about half a century I have observed that government reports are sometimes dishonest, ideological, obfuscatory, authoritarian, bureaucratised, wanting in courage, illogical and sometimes downright stupid.
“I have to salute you sir. Your recent report appears to have set new heights in this respect.
“Let me take some time to explain why your report so qualifies.
“Dishonesty
“Under section 137.1(1) of the Criminal Code Act 1995, a person commits an offence if they give information to (i) a Commonwealth entity, or (ii) a person who is exercising powers or performing functions under, or in connection with, a law of the Commonwealth, AND the person (the source of the information) does so knowing that the information (i) is false or misleading; or (ii) omits any matter or thing without which the information is misleading.
“As will be seen below, your report appears to meet all of these conditions. Now I know that holding government officials to the same legal standards as apply to other citizens is considered, in official circles, to be unsporting. I also appreciate that the Prime Minister and sundry Ministers and other officials would find it enormously embarrassing were the author of your report to be taken before the courts. So I suspect the chance of you actually having to face charges is pretty slim.
“That does not alter the fact that your report appears in breach of section 137.1(1) of the Act in
a way that would lead to penalties for less privileged mortals.
Dr Michael Crawford has a BSc and an MD in management from ANU and a BA and PhD in organisation theory and management from UNSW. He has undertaken research and teaching on the Executive Programs at the Australian Graduate School of Management.
He is co-author of the book Changing Power: Capabilities That Drive Corporate Renewal, based on a six year study of Australian and New Zealand corporate change.
After graduation Dr Crawford spent 11 years in the Australian public service and two years in the Australian Army including one year in Vietnam.
His consulting activities have covered major projects across a wide range of industries including food processing, mining, banking, IT, community services, healthcare and the public service.
He maintains an interest in the failings of government administration and policy.
The problem with wind power is that electric utilities have to be prepared at any time for their power production to just stop on short notice. So they must keep fossil fuel plants on hot standby, meaning they are basically burning fuel but not producing any power.tutuapp android Storage technologies and the use of relatively fast-start plants like gas turbines mitigates this problem a bit but does not come close to eliminating it. This is why wind power simply as a source contributing to the grid makes very little sense.
Redistributing the wealth of Australia and other Western nations, under the control of the UN, to poorer countries, especially impoverished dictatorships, around the world. According to the 2030 Agenda, ‘poverty’ can only be addressed by undemocratically giving money and power to the UN.
The COP21 Paris climate change agreement, comprising SDG 13, is just one part of the 2030 Agenda. The UN version of climate change though, is about global power and money. As UNFCCC chief Christiana Figueres pointed out, the aim of the UN is tobring abouta “centralized transformation“… “one that is going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different.” Figueres continues: “global society, is moving to the point where we are going to need more and more global governance muscle… Climate change is only the first of the major, major planetary challenges that we are being given, almost as a playground… to go into that playground and exercise our global governance capacity”
Controlling lifestyles, energy use, and consumption by defining which activities are accepted by the UN as being ‘sustainable’. Only the UN can control ‘sustainability’.
Controlling education around the globe to ensure all children become activists promoting the UN sustainability agenda.
The UN 2030 agenda is completely open ended, stating no total costs, and stating no limits as far as loss of sovereignty and enforcement mechanisms are concerned.
The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) advances the interior design profession and communicates the impact of design on the human experience. Laurel & Wolf interior designers in Banglore specialize in every design style, space type and specification. See designer portfolios and styles here!
Reprieve! The “Binding” Paris treaty now voluntary mush
But Obama still wants to send US energy use and living standards backward
By Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek
Nov 2015
Paris climate talks this week descended into madcap all-night negotiations, as delegates desperately tried to salvage some kind of agreement beyond empty promises to do something sometime about what President Obama insists is the gravest threat to our planet, national security and future generations.
In the end, what we apparently got out of Paris is voluntary emission caps, voluntary progress reviews, no international oversight of any voluntary progress, and voluntary contributions to the Fund.
Obligating the United States to slash its fossil fuel use, and send billions of taxpayer dollars annually to dictators, bureaucrats and crony industrialists in poor countries would be disastrous. Thank goodness it did not happen. But we are not out of the woods yet.
Dr. Roger Bezdek is an internationally recognized energy analyst and president of Management Information Services, Inc., in Washington, DC. Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
Every time a north wind blows hot air over Adelaide, some Chicken Little cries “Global Warming”. And when an El Nino predictably causes a hot year like 1998 or 2015/16, some sensation-seeking celebrity will trumpet “hottest year eevah”.
They are watching short-term weather ripples and waves and ignoring the underlying climate tide. Daily, monthly and yearly temperature records will always be equalled or broken. That is what weather does – it fluctuates.
In the medium term, Earth temperature trends are influenced by variations in solar activities as evidenced by sun-spot cycles. These variations affect solar intensity, cosmic rays, clouds and Earth temperature, causing medium-term climatic events like the Little Ice Age and the Modern Warming. There are persuasive signs that recent solar activity has peaked. So maybe we can expect cooler weather soon.
But to see what the climate is doing we must look longer-term and study the glacial cycles. The Milankovitch cycles of Earth in the solar system control these.
See this very informative video by the late Professor Bob Carter:
There are many signs that Earth’s climate is gradually cooling (as Prof Carter shows in the video above).
For example, snow and ice is accumulating.
In the Antarctic, Mawson’s Hut and the Colbeck Hut are being progressively buried in ice.
In Greenland, “The Lost Squadron”, which was forced to land on the Greenland Ice sheet in 1942, was rediscovered 50 years later buried under 268 feet of ice.
Professor David Bellamy OBE died recently at the age of 86 and it’s fair to say he goes down in history as one of the first victims sacrificed on the altar of the new religion of climate change.
David Bellamy was a prolific broadcaster, respected authority on botany of the natural world. He wrote and appeared in, or presented, hundreds of television programs on botany, ecology, environmentalism and other issues. But was ultimately disowned by the BBC, never to appear again within their hallowed halls once his declared stance against the new religion of CAGW became known.
I never met him but we corresponded and both appeared on an Australian TV interview. He was very interested in our green sheep, see:
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