Complex computer models are continually being used to generate incessant alarms about the future for our environment and resources – climate, weather, minerals, oil, food, water, pollution and the oceans.

Every year the computers get more expensive, and the models more complex, but their doomsday forecasts still fail.
(more…)

Lord Monckton, one of the most well informed commentators on Thermomania and Climategate, is coming to Australia at the invitation of several concerned Australians. He will be giving a series of talks in all mainland capitals and Noosa. We will post details as soon as they are confirmed.

Lord Monckton has also written to PM Rudd on comments the PM made in his talk to the Lowry Institute about the “small number of dangerous, well funded climate-change deniers”. Lord Monckton’s open letter to PM Rudd can be seen here:

1) Web page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/03/climate-change-proposed-personal-briefing/
2) PDF version: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/monckton-rudd.pdf [PDF, 155 KB]

Update on Lord Monckton’s visit to Australia: http://carbon-sense.com/2010/01/13/monckton-australia-2010/

From: Sir Donald Miller. F Eng. FRSE.
Chairman, Scottish Power 1982-92.

Letter to Alec Salmond
09 March 2011

The Right Hon Alec Salmond
First Minister
Scottish Government

Dear Sir

It is I believe becoming clear to a rapidly increasing number of voters in Scotland that the Scottish Government’s concentration on so called renewable energy sources to the exclusion of more reliable and economic sources , such as nuclear , is little short of disastrous. Let us look at the facts:-

1. No wind or marine energy sources can be relied on to provide power when it is needed- the only time when electricity is of any value.

2. Wind and marine need nearly 100% back up from conventional generators. Therefore any expenditure on these is additional to ‘normal’ capital required to secure our electricity supplies.

3. Output from wind turbines varies rapidly, not just locally but nationally, so that conventional back up generation is required to run inefficiently at part load, incurring further costs for the consumer.

4. Wind and wave are such extremely low density sources of energy that costs will always be high and no amount of development will alter this significantly.

5. The cost of onshore wind to the consumer is some £200/MWhr taking into account the ROC subsidy, back up generation and additional transmission costs. This is over four times the cost of energy from conventional or nuclear sources. The cost of off-shore wind is even higher at over £250/MWhr.

6. The claim that Scotland has vast resources of marine energy is based on a failure to appreciate the physics. The actual potential is readily assessed by normal engineering criteria (as in studies by Consulting Engineers Black and Veatch for The Carbon Trust and Robert Gordons University). These show that the total tidal current resource of UK waters from the Pentland Firth to the Channel Isles, neglecting costs and practical limitations such as interference with shipping and fishing and impossibility of servicing such a plethora of installations, would amount to no more than 2.5% to 5% of UK electricity requirements.

7. The costs of tidal energy to the consumer will be significantly higher than offshore wind, even after taking credit for possible developments. Wave energy will be even more costly.

8. Other low carbon technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage are unproven on the scale envisaged, requiring long term sequestration of some 200millions tons of CO2 per year from the UK alone. Taken together with the 25% loss in efficiency of generation, energy costs would more than double.

9. Ofgem has estimated that the UK Government’s energy policy will result in a doubling of electricity prices to consumers within 15 years. The much higher renewable targets of the Scottish Government would, on a stand alone basis, result in even higher prices.

10. The CEO of National Grid in a lecture to the Royal Academy of Engineering in March 2011 stated that the effect of present energy policies would be that the era of having electricity on demand in the UK was coming to an end. The UK Government estimates there is a high risk of power cuts within five years.

11. High energy prices based on subsidies are certain to have an extremely damaging effect on the Scottish Economy as recently quantified in the Verso Economics Report using the Scottish Governments’ own economic model for the Scottish economy. The loss of jobs will far outweigh the few gains, most of which will be of low to medium quality, from renewable installations.

12. Already there has been very significant damage to Scotland’s environment- the massive installation at Doune dominating the route North from Glasgow is a case in point- with consequent loss to one of its greatest assets, the tourist industry. The value of tourism to the Scottish economy is put at £4.2bn a year, far in excess of the value of all the energy produced from wind farms even with the Scottish 80% target for renewables.

13. Prior to privatisation Scotland, with six commercial reactors, produced over 60% of its electricity from nuclear and had a thriving and profitable export trade to England. As a result Scotland benefited from having one of the lowest electricity prices in Europe and this after proper allowances for all the costs involved including waste disposal and decommissioning. Unlike the present energy regime there was no element of subsidy. As distinct from other low carbon generation, nuclear is a tried and tested technology of which we have had excellent experience now for over 50 years. Supplies of nuclear fuel are secure and the cost of energy to consumers from a new generation of reactors would be less than a quarter of that from wind and marine sources.

14. The well being of a modern economy is based on a reliable and economic supply of electricity and will be even more so in future as transport becomes increasingly electrified. If one wanted to go down in history as the politician who did most to damage Scotland’s economy it would be difficult to think of a more effective route than the present energy policy.

15. It is not too late to have a rational and balanced energy policy- but it soon will be. We have only a small window of opportunity- let us grasp it before it is too late.

Sir Donald Miller. F Eng. FRSE.
Chairman, Scottish Power 1982-92.

Windmills and Electricity Supply

Allan Duffy (Press and Journal, August 26), makes a number of assertions and claims which invite challenge.

First, there are far more than a “small number of people” opposing “windfarm sites”.

Second, the cause of this opposition is about more than the potential impact on tourism.

And, finally, they will never generate “excess power” that can be sold to the national grid to enhance Scotland’s economy.

Much of the opposition to windmills relates to their inability to produce electricity when required, combined with their negligible impact on CO emissions because of the expensive associated need for “spinning” back-up from conventional CO-emitting generators.

In his time in Germany, Mr Duffy may have noted that, for all their thousands of windmills, the Germans have not shut down one conventional power station and, in fact, are having to build new coal-fired power stations to meet demand.

If he were to look at the NETA (New Electricity Trading Arrangements) website, he would see that, with all the windmills at present operating in the UK, wind contributes only about 0.1-2% of daily national demand.

Yes, renewable energy must be a component of our future energy mix, but unreliable and expensive windmills are not the answer.

G.M. Lindsay,
Whinfield Gardens,
Kinross, Scotland

Idle Windmills Enrich Some

Yet again, while travelling through the Glens of Foudland, I was struck by a distinct lack of movement by even one of the many wind turbines you drive past.

Another bad day in Scotland’s fight against global warming… sorry, I forgot for a moment that climate change seems to have been adopted as a more appropriate term now.

In the meantime, the landowners, renewable-energy companies – through massive subsidies – and overseas manufacturers of said turbines continue to get rich at the expense of the taxpayer. Strange times indeed.

Chris Davis,
Maryhill, Orton,
Fochabers, Scotland

Source: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1890438/

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…)

This paper provides a factual and objective view of the reality of the effects of some of the world’s greatest oil spills. It particularly deals with the geography of the region in which the spill occurred, the climatic effects on the spill, the probable volume oil spilled, the cleanup actions that followed and the long-term environmental effects.

As an introduction, Part 1 of the paper deals with some of the commonly held beliefs that the world is about to run out of fossil fuels, that oil spills and leaks are universally ‘environmental catastrophes’ and challenges the long term view that the effects are persistent and adverse to the environment. The seemingly endless alarmism that follows each spill is highlighted and the reader is asked to read the remainder of the paper with an open mind, comparing the predictions of doom with the evidence revealed by the reality of hindsight.

It is concluded that the effects of the relatively few spills that have occurred have been exceptionally exaggerated for political purposes by both politicians and environmental activists. Both these alarmist cliques loudly report claims in every case that go far beyond the actual effect of the spill itself. Some of the unfortunate claims by scientists are also exposed as political activism unrelated to scientific method.

Finally the paper provides a ‘prophesy’ (based on the history of previous spills) as to the long-term results and effects of the recent BP Macondo Well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that commenced on 20th April 2010 and was capped on 29th July 2010, 100 days later.

The author writes under a pseudonym to protect his privacy. However any comments or corrections will be passed onto him. He has experience and contacts in this field and is skilled at extracting and documenting facts.

The report is presented in six parts, with subsequent parts appearing over time:

Part 1: A Summary of Oil Chemistry and the Environmental Effects of Oil.
Available as PDF, 73KB: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oil-spills-1.pdf

Part 2: The World’s Largest Oil Spill – The Gulf War, Kuwait, 1991. The spill, the prophets of doom and the reality that unfolded.
Available as PDF, 596KB: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oil-spills-2.pdf

Part 3: The Exxon Valdez Spill, Alaska. A small spill with huge publicity and extensive cleanup activity, much of which probably made things worse.
Available as PDF, 561KB: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oil-spills-3.pdf

Part 4: The Ixtoc I Well Blowout, Gulf of Mexico, 1979. Despite forecasts of disaster for the environment, within five years the effects of this huge spill were undetectable. In fact the fisheries recovered quickly because they were relieved of fishing pressure, and locals swapped low paying fishing jobs for high paying cleanup or oil industry jobs. As in all spills, the biggest loser was the well owner.
Available as PDF, 88KB: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oil-spills-4.pdf

Part 5: The BP Macondo Well Blowout, Gulf of Mexico, 2010. This may be the second largest man made oil spill in history, and at times the slick covered 6,500 sq km. However about 74% of the oil lost evaporated, dissolved, bio-degraded, or was burned, skimmed or captured. Just 5 days after the leak was plugged, the US government agreed that the oil was no longer a problem. Once more the damage was forecast to be catastrophic, once more it was not. The Gulf of Mexico copes with natural leaks of this size every year. The real costs were political and losses by BP shareholders.

Available as PDF, 133KB: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oil-spills-5.pdf

Part 6: Conclusions & Comments. In 2009, President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rohm Emanuel said: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste… it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was a marvellous crisis used by the Obama administration and extreme environmentalists to weaken Big Oil, demonise carbon fuels, and drive the so-called “clean fuel” agenda. Foreign oil producers and the green energy promoters are the beneficiaries. Innocent local businesses and BP were the victims, both of the oil spill but more so of the government actions designed to benefit from the crisis.

Available as PDF, 1200KB: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/oil-spills-6.pdf

Note: This 6 part article can be printed from the 6 PDFs and then bound into one indexed report.

UPDATE 9 April 2013:

Those who wish to check the accuracy of the forecasts in these articles should check this reference:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22075182

Oil is a natural product and the oceans have been coping with it for millennia.

Author’s Profile

The author retired from the Australian Army as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1986. He served in various postings in Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. He is a frequent contributor of book reviews, short stories and the occasional article to several journals. He works internationally as a self-employed project manager and project management trainer and consultant.

He has worked part-time for 9 years in the oil and gas industries in the Middle East (Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi) and in North and Central America, and has made it his business to question the experts. Everything he quotes is on the web (except where it is stated as an opinion.)

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.

More: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/resources-and-security.pdf [PDF, 47KB]

You may have heard of Peter Spencer, the desperate Australian farmer who went on a hunger strike to draw attention to the fact that government bans on clearing vegetation had stolen his assets and destroyed his business. Peter is just one of many Australian farm families reduced to desperation and even suicide by seizure or sterilisation of their land to satisfy the voracious green god.

The most massive injustice occurred a couple of years ago, when, as a sacrifice to the Kyoto god, the federal government conspired with state governments to ban vegetation clearing on all property, even freehold. This was done in an underhand way to allow the government to seize carbon credits from landowners without paying compensation.

Many well meaning people, while not happy with the tactics and the refusal to pay compensation for property seized or devalued, think that there will be some environmental or climate benefits to come from all this.

Generally there are none.

Even if extraction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was a good idea (and it isn’t), no tree can keep extracting it on a long term basis. Every living thing (including trees, grass, cows and humans) borrows carbon from the environment as it grow, stops extracting it at maturity, and hands the valuable carbon back to the environment when it dies and the body rots. Net life time extraction equals ZERO. It is absolute scientific nonsense to believe that trees can have a long term effect on so called greenhouse gases. Like everything politicians touch, short term appearances and secret agendas are preferred to long term reality.

Banning the clearing of scrub regrowth in our grasslands is also a backward step environmentally. Everyone can see and understand tree forests, but no one appreciates the grass forests beneath their feet. Natural fires created our grasslands long before humans occupied Australia. They are valuable environmental landscapes far more important to humans than the stupid carbon credit forests and eucalypt weeds now invading them. With closer settlement and excessive areas locked up by governments, fires no longer protect our grasslands and landowners must use machinery to maintain their grass. Preventing this is like telling a market gardener he is not allowed to chip weeds invading his vegetable patch. Every landowner tries to guard the long term value of his land. No one has a monopoly on knowledge on how to do it. Some properties may need more trees, some less – if more trees are a benefit, landowners will grow them without coercion.

Does anyone seriously believe that a few green politicians and activists can devise one dictatorial land plan for every property from Longreach to Wagga and then use legal bludgeons, land confiscation and a desk bound bureaucracy to enforce the co-operation of landowners?

The Senate is currently carrying out an enquiry into some aspects of this massive land mismanagement. It is a bigger scandal than the home insulation scheme, and few politicians are free of blame. The Senate will be surprised at the injustices that will be revealed by this enquiry.

The Carbon Sense Coalition has (in some haste) made a Submission to this enquiry. We urge you to read it and print it out for friends. See it at:

http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/grasses-trees-climate-food.pdf

Even if you don’t read it, open it and look at the pictures.

We must not let them sweep all this under the table again. We need your help to get this short note to every landowner, every media outlet and every politician. Please help us spread it around.

And remember to tell everyone “Grass is also Green”.

Media Release
21st March 2010

Can’t see the Grass for the Trees?

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the Australian Parliament to repeal the vegetation clearing bans before Australia’s productive grasslands are lost to woody weeds.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that the Kyoto bans were introduced deviously by state governments acting as stooges for the federal government to deprive landowners of potential carbon credits without paying compensation.

“Now they are creating a growing public liability as trees invade ancestral grasslands.

“Every continent in the world had vast native grasslands, often treeless, kept free of trees by lightning fires, and supporting huge populations of herbivores and their dependent predators. The treeless Prairies supported bison and antelope; the Pampas supported deer and camelids; the Veldts supported wildebeest, zebra and antelopes; and Australia’s grasslands supported kangaroos and emus.

“Trees and grasses are in continual competition for soil space and access to solar energy. Old journals, diaries, sketches and photos can attest the fact that there are now more trees in Australian grasslands than there were 100 years ago. Some properties can document the substantial tree invasion even since the first aerial photos were taken in the 1950’s. This invasion has accelerated since governments started meddling in vegetation control.

“Human settlers, both black and white, have learned that fires were essential to re-invigorate the grasslands and control their invasion by trees. But with closer settlement, there are reduced opportunities to use fires to control trees and landowners must use machinery to protect their grass.

“White settlement in Australia has brought two major changes to vegetation. Firstly, in the forests and scrubs along the coast, timber getters and small selectors cleared the fertile soil for crops and farms. Human development and infrastructure ensure that these forests seldom recovered. Secondly, scrubby regrowth and trees have invaded much of the grassland and open forest.

“If governments want to turn back the vegetation clock, they should be removing towns, roads, railways, schools, orchards, housing developments, cultivation and market gardens from the once forested coastal areas to allow coastal forests to re-establish. But this would lose too many votes, so they advocate accelerated destruction of our ancient grasslands. Their hope is that this will gain more votes from tree huggers than will be lost from grass farmers, where there are few votes to lose.

“Today the grasslands support domesticated grazing animals and farms of cultivated grasses and legumes that are essential food sources for humans. Invasion of Australia’s grasslands by eucalypt weeds is destroying our ability to produce food, which will show up in the cities as rising food prices and declining jobs.

“These bans can have no long term effect on greenhouse gases. They will reduce food production and slash property values. They are cynical exercises in vote buying and international grandstanding which should be immediately abandoned.”

“If action is not taken we will soon reach a state where we can’t see the grass for the trees.”

For a fuller discussion of “Grasses, Trees, Climate and Food” see:

http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/grasses-trees-climate-food.pdf

Disclosure: Viv Forbes and his wife own and live on a freehold sheep and cattle grazing property at Rosevale in Queensland. The tree population on this property has increased greatly during their occupation. The property is affected by vegetation management plans prepared without any consultation with the owners.

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.

More, including:

• BRICS or PIGS?
• Australian Tour by Christopher Monckton
• What is really going on with the climate?
• U.S. Supreme Court kicks out global warming
• The Galileo Movement
• Camel Cull Creates Consternation

in the PDF here: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/new-dark-age.pdf [PDF, 73 KB]

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

by Laura Rambeau Lee
Florida

Source: http://moveoverdotcom.blogspot.com/2010/11/is-california-dreaming.html