Coal, not candles, should be the symbol of Earth Hour.

It was coal that produced clean electric power which cleared the smog produced by dirty combustion and open fires in big cities like London and Pittsburgh. Much of the third world still suffers choking fumes and smog because they do not have clean electric power and burn wood, cardboard, unwashed coal and cow dung for home heat.

It was coal that saved the forests being felled to fuel the first steam engines and produce charcoal for the first iron smelters.

It was coal that powered the light bulbs and saved the whales being slaughtered for whale oil lamps.

It was coal that produced the steel that replaced shingles on the roof, timber props in the mines, wooden fence posts on the farms and the bark on the old bark hut.

In Australia today, coal provides at least 75% of our lighting, cooking, heating, refrigeration, rail transport and steel. Without it, we would be back in the dark days of candles, wood stoves, chip heaters, open fires, smoky cities, hills bare of trees and streets knee deep in horse manure.

Coal is fossil sunshine as clean as the green plants it came from, and often less damaging to the environment than its green energy alternatives.

Earth Hour candles are green tokenism for rich status-seekers and nostalgic dreamers.

We should spend Earth Hour saluting the real people who produce the coal on which most people on earth depend.

The Real Agenda of Earth Hour

“We must make this place an insecure and inhospitable place for Capitalists and their projects – we must reclaim the roads and plowed lands, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers, and return to the wilderness millions and tens of millions of acres of presently settled land.” – Dave Foreman, “Earth First”

For those who would like to read more:

Clearing the smog of Beijing with “Coal by Wire”: http://carbon-sense.com/2008/08/04/clearing-the-smog/

Return to the caves: http://carbon-sense.com/2010/05/06/earth-day-blackout-night/

Hail to Electricity: http://carbon-sense.com/2010/04/01/hail-to-electricity/

The Road to more Blackout nights: http://carbon-sense.com/2010/03/26/earth-hour-2010/

Earth Hour – a Dissent: http://carbon-sense.com/2011/03/25/mckitrick-earth-hour/

There is more in the PDF version of this post: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/earth-hour.pdf [PDF, 82 KB]

Ocean acidification is like the Castle Ghost – everyone is scared of it but no one has seen it.

Dozens of learned articles and millions of media words tell us that ocean acidity has increased alarmingly since man started using carbon fuels. The worry is that the carbon dioxide being generated by man’s industry is dissolving in the ocean thus creating acidic water. And the computer models forecast that, by some future date, sea shells and corals will be dissolved or killed by the acidic ocean and/or the associated global warming.

However a close look at the chemistry of the oceans and the evidence provided by past records and present observations reveals that the open ocean is alkaline and never acidic, except locally near active submarine volcanic vents. It is deceptive to suggest that sea life is threatened by “the rising acidity of the oceans”. The oceans are still quite alkaline. Nothing unusual or abnormal has yet been detected. Other conclusions are:

• The pH of the oceans varies naturally from place to place and time to time, depending on temperatures and the activities of plant and animal life. It is impossible to determine a meaningful figure for “average” ocean acidity (pH). It is also impossible to say with any certainty that average ocean pH has changed because of man’s use of carbon fuels. Such “measurements” are an exercise in guided guess-work. (“What would you like the answer to be?”)
• It is a myth that acidic waters necessarily kill aquatic life. Rain water is slightly acidic and many fresh water lagoons, swamps and reed beds are also acidic. Nevertheless, aquatic life flourishes in these wetlands.
• The oceans have a huge capacity resist being destabilised by changes in temperature or composition of the atmosphere. Whenever there is a change, the reactions of other chemicals or life in the sea act to moderate and even reverse those changes. Oceans cover about 71% of the Earth’s surface and the hydrosphere contains over 300 times the mass of gases in the atmosphere. The oceans thus have a huge capacity to buffer any variations in heat content or gas content emanating from the thin veil of atmospheric gases. The effect of man’s supposed 3% contribution to the tiny 0.039% of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s thin atmosphere would not register a long-term effect in the massive oceans.
• Cold ocean currents from the deep ocean periodically up-well to the surface. These currents are rich in dissolved carbon dioxide and other chemicals and decayed organic matter. Where this cold nutrient-rich water surfaces, there is a staggering profusion of aquatic life.
• Oceans have an unlimited ability to remove carbon dioxide from their waters and store it in thick beds of shells and corals, limestone, chalk, dolomite, magnesite, siderite, marls, methane hydrate and oil shales. Fresh water swamps and lakes on land have also laid down massive deposits of coal and lignite formed from carbon dioxide extracted from the atmosphere. Many of these deposits were laid down when the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was far higher than it is today.
• Carbon dioxide present in the oceans is essential to plant life and current very low levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the ocean are limiting plant growth. All animal life depends on these plants. Man’s mining and industrial activities are harmlessly recycling some of this valuable carbon dioxide from natural limestones and hydrocarbons buried in the dead lithosphere, back to the living biosphere.
• Corals are hardy and adaptable and have survived for 500 million years. During that time they have had to cope with warm eras, ice ages, extinction events, eras of massive volcanic activity, dramatic rising and lowering in sea levels and eons of time when levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide were far higher than today.
• A very recent extensive study of the Great Barrier Reef concluded that the changes forecast under the “business as usual greenhouse gas emissions” were unlikely to cause great harm to the reef.
• Any change in global temperature or the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere will cause life on land and in the ocean to adjust and adapt. However, on balance, a warmer world with more plant food in the atmosphere and a more vigorous water cycle is very beneficial for the biosphere. The killer climates are associated with ice ages when the atmosphere is cold and dry, the sea levels are much lower and much of Earth’s fresh water is locked up in vast lifeless sheets of ice.
• There is no justification to use the baseless fear of “acidification of the oceans” as an excuse for a massive dislocation of our transport, food and energy industries. We should instead be focussing on real pollution problems (such as man’s rubbish floating in the oceans) and/or on preparing to cope with real and likely natural disasters (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, floods, fires, cyclones and droughts).

To see a full report on “The Acid Ocean Bogey Man” by Viv Forbes with illustrations and explanations see: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/acid-ocean-bogeyman.pdf [PDF, 1.2 MB]

Further reading: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/25/ocean-acidification-natural-cycles-and-ubiquitous-uncertainties/

Why do taxpayers have to subsidize this? Why do environmentalists give it a free pass?
By Ron Arnold

It uses tons of fossil fuels every day, emits a greenhouse gas that’s like CO2 on steroids, can’t do the job it’s made for, costs taxpayers exorbitant fees, and makes the federal government look mentally ill for giving it outrageous subsidies. It also chops up birds, bats and scenery with roads and monstrous 400-foot-tall machines. “It” is wind power, of course.

These harsh facts were condensed into a preliminary draft study of wind subsidies by researcher Teresa Platt, who circulated it to specialists for vetting. I obtained a copy of the extensively footnoted working draft, which gave chilling reality to the truth behind wind industry claims.

“Every year since the 1980s,” Platt’s study said, “the 5,000 turbines at NextEra’s Altamont Pass in California kill thousands of slow-reproducing red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls, kestrels, as well as iconic golden eagles, and bats.” The birds Platt mentions are raptors – birds of prey – particularly valued for their agricultural role in killing mice and other crop-damaging rodents. Eagles, both golden eagles and bald eagles, have long impressed Americans for their majesty, and the bald eagle was selected by our Founding Fathers as our national emblem.

I asked Bob Johns, spokesman for the American Bird Conservancy, about wind farm eagle mortality. He confirmed Platt’s study and told me the Altamont operation alone has killed more than 2,000 golden eagles. But that’s not all. “Nationwide, the wind industry kills thousands of golden eagles without prosecution,” Johns said, “while any other American citizen even possessing eagle parts such as feathers would face huge fines and prison time.”

Huge is right. Violate either the Migratory Bird Treaty Act or the Eagle Protection Act, and you could get fined up to $250,000 or get two years imprisonment.

Not a single wind farm operator has yet been prosecuted for killing birds, yet in 2009 ExxonMobil got whacked with a $600,000 fine for killing 85 common ducks and other birds that flew into uncovered tanks on its property. Other similarly outrageous revenge-style penalties have been assessed on oil companies by the viciously ideological anti-fossil fuel Obama administration.
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By Paul Driessen 30 Apr 2011

We are constantly bombarded with information – much of it inaccurate, misleading, even deliberately so.

We are frequently told we must reduce carbon emissions, support “carbon disclosure” and invest in “carbon trusts” – to prevent catastrophic global warming, global climate change or global climate “disruption.” News stories, advocacy and lobbying activities, and corporate “ethics” promotions frequently use “carbon” and “carbon dioxide” almost interchangeably; some occasionally talk about “dangerous carbon monoxide emissions.”

Torn by misplaced hydrocarbon guilt, wanting to do right ecologically, and often scientifically challenged, people are naturally confused. Because so much is at stake – for our energy supplies and prices, jobs, economies, living standards, budget deficits and environment – clearing up that confusion is a high priority.
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Speech by Hon Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic. March 4, 2008.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,

I would like first of all to thank the organizers of this important conference for making it possible and also for inviting one politically incorrect politician from Central Europe to come and speak here. This meeting will undoubtedly make a significant contribution to the moving away from the irrational climate alarmism to the much needed climate realism.
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Unsustainable cow manure
By Paul Driessen 21 Sep 2010

From http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulDriessen/2010/09/21/unsustainable_cow_manure/page/full/

Seek a sustainable future! Wind, solar and biofuels will ensure an eco-friendly, climate-protecting, planet-saving, sustainable inheritance for our children. Or so we are told by activists and politicians intent on enacting new renewable energy standards, mandates and subsidies during a lame duck session.

It may be useful to address some basic issues, before going further down the road to Renewable Utopia.
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The Carbon Sense Coalition (“Carbon Sense”) based in Australia is supporting an International Conference on the Science of Global Warming in New York next week (2-4th March 2008).

This conference, sponsored by The Heartland Institute of Chicago, is co-sponsored by 19 other organisations all over the world including the Carbon Sense Coalition.
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A statement by Viv Forbes, Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition.
[PDF version of this document is here; 32KB]

As the TV turns nightly to Beijing, we can expect chilling pictures and doomsday comments about the “Asian Pollution” and the “Beijing Smog”. This will induce media and political scaremongers to use these images to sell dud products like the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”.

It is not carbon dioxide from burning coal that pollutes the skies of Asia and Africa. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a naturally occurring, clean, invisible, beneficial gas. CO2 is an essential part of the natural world but a very minor trace constituent of our atmosphere.
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By Alan Caruba

Every so often The New York Times slips up and lets some truth appear on its hallowed and vastly over-rated pages.

Such was the case on May 2nd when reporter John M. Broder wrote “Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus.” As he put it in the first sentence, “The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is ‘global warming.’” This is a very real problem, especially when the word is getting out that the planet has been cooling for a decade.

The problem worsens for them as word leaks that the ice at the North Pole is a lot thicker than earlier suspected—something that does not happen if it’s supposed to be melting. And the same holds for the South Pole whose ice is growing, along with many of the world’s glaciers.
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Minister Combet’s announcement that they are going to compensate working families for the cost of carbon tax should confirm one thing; a carbon tax is going to cost working families.

The fundamental issue here is that a carbon tax is not going to change the temperature of the globe or change the climate in any shape or form. It is merely a gesture. A gesture that means that those who are already finding it extremely difficult to get by are going to have that difficulty exacerbated by a pointless tax with a deceitful inference that it will the change global climatic conditions.

What is the point of taking money off people, spinning it around a bureaucracy and giving people back a bit of their own money and expecting be thanked for it? Why don’t you just let people keep their own money and go away?

In the meantime you put up the price of the fundamental mechanism of commerce, power, so what is now our competitive advantage? Obviously we don’t want lower wages so ultimately there will be fewer jobs.

Is Australia going to be reduced to a country that digs up red rocks and black rocks, iron and coal and sends them over to where they don’t have a carbon tax so they can produce the things we used to produce?

Doesn’t the government get it? The people don’t want this tax and surely the have some right in being respected on this decision.

Even on the CFMEU website, the majority of the workers don’t want a carbon tax. I’m sure that this is not a National Party stronghold, so my advice to the Labor party is, listen to your own people otherwise it will end up in tears, like the NSW election.

Senator Barnaby Joyce
LNP Senator for Queensland, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate
13^th April 2011