The Australian media has been concentrating on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) of late. Today is the day that the draft (or should that be daft?) Garnaut Report on Climate Change is released.
ABC News: Garnaut urges emissions trading scheme ‘without delay’
A reminder of how insignificant Australian CO2 emissions and an ETS are:
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
223 days since the lemmings voted for Rudderless to lead them over a cliff.
873 days left for him to trash the economy and consign himself and the ALP to oblivion.
“(or should that be daft?)”
Nothing like a little pre-judging to set the scene I guess.
Follow the link to read all 13.23 MB (smeg-abytes!?) or 548 pages.
Well takings at my local pub are down, people just dont have the cash for a night out – on top of rising % rates this is going to be very hard to sell to those who are not on good incomes – the voter
Can we be sure this available PDF copy is not expurgated ?
Noticed that full economic modelling will not be available to August so full impacts, cost, justifications not known until after the public reaction of this draft. Seems a bit like the IPCC put out the summary before the detail.
Good to see that forestry is to be included ASAP, in Tasmania forestry and slowing land clearing has led to a massive reduction from 14.3 Mt CO2 e in 1990 to only 8.5 Mt in 2006 that’s a massive 40% reduction since 1990. It would seem that all that is needed is for the other State’s (the World) to follow Tassie’s lead.
(Note: for those that read the States GHG inventories I use the 1990 figure originally published in 2005 STATE AND TERRITORY GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, in 2006 there seems to be an unexplained change in base year figures)
At least Whitlam was merely incompetent when it came to economics. This bunch are deliberately setting out to wreck the economy – all for nothing.
“It would seem that all that is needed is for the other State’s (the World) to follow Tassie’s lead.”
There’s no rocket science in any of this. All we need is for people to stop:
– using electricity
– driving cars
– heating their houses
– travelling overseas
– working
– eating
– and so on…
http://www.iceagenow.com/Which_one_day_of_the_week_do_you_want_to_live.htm
Is that too much to ask to “save the planet”?
Prof. Ross says there will be “winners and losers,’ eh?
The Labor certified technocrats will decide who they are. The c-trading will result in a multi-billion dollar windfall for our labor guvs to redistribute…fairly.
Prof Ross suggests we give 50% of the c-tax windfall back to low income households so that they won’t have the same economic incentives to limit their c-footprint as the other 70% of Australian households. Fair enough, if you have a special agenda beyond the AGW mandate, but it might limit the overall effectiveness of the project.
Only 20% would go to R&D, which further illustrates a certain ideological priority. Teach a man to fish and he can feed himself…..or distribute fishes? Hmmm. Distributing fishes endows patronage and dependence upon the distributor. Let’s go with redistribution!
AGW carbon credit policy looks like an absolution to move towards a command economy with a rather specific socio-economic agenda, one that is familiar enough to students of 20 th century mass movements.
Ross would punitively redistribute much more than wealth. He gives government bureaucrats massive powers they are likely to relish and ultimately abuse.
The really Orwellian bit, is all the clever talk about “a carbon market” as if the free and egalitarian forces of the marketplace were being unleashed to solve the problem, when really the concentration of power in the hands of a few is the ultimate outcome.
For example, Prof Ross isn’t worried about burdening Australian businesses with extra costs as they try to compete on the global market. Simple. His solution: tax incentives—code for trade barriers and tariffs.
It might work. Carbon emissions could fall, such economic policies are historically well known for collapsing growth and increasing poverty.
Welcome to 1930. Perhaps the outcome will be different this time around?
Oh Lookee, Grendel is here, he makee comment! Oh great are the comments of the El Labertians and Quiggins representatives of the Grendle Climate Change Federation!
The sophist Lords are close to gaining control!
That’s mighty mature of you Louis.
And who is Jennifer B. ?
Me Lookee at El Lambertian scrolls for inspiration!
“And who is Jennifer B. ?”
Single-issue thought police, Louis.
Don’t make any comments that can be vaguely interpreted as sexist or you will feel the wrath.
“Distributing fishes endows patronage and dependence upon the distributor. Let’s go with redistribution!”
There is nothing new in this of course — Australia is a world-leader in ‘tax-churn’.
According to a 2006 study: “At least half of the $175 billion of tax revenue spent on the welfare state last year will probably find its way back to the people who paid the money in.”
http://clubtroppo.com.au/2006/01/25/tax-churn-how-bad-is-it-2/
Another survey from 2005 claims “40 per cent of middle-class Australians receive more in welfare than they pay in tax”
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2005/1449156.htm
So you can see the attractiveness of ‘tax-churn’ to our lords and masters:
– you steal money from everyone, and then give half the people back pretty much what you stole from them in the first place, and they think you’re a straight-up guy.
– you give the so-called swinging voters back a little bit more than you stole from them, and they think you’re alright as well.
– the rest: well they can get stuffed because they were never going to vote for you anyway.
If tax-churn was an Olympic sport, Australia would undoubtedly be the gold medal favourite. An ETS or Carbon tax is just the mother of all ‘tax churn’ frauds, so it’s not surprising that our politicians would be leading the world in this race.
Beats me that people are stupid enough to put up with sort of nonsense. Pass the Soma please.
Robin Hood, Ned Kelly, Uncle Tom Cobbly et al were just thugs, but the romanticism of looting someone else’s property never dies … and if you can do it while saving the planet – collectivist bliss ! Of course the burden will not be equally shared.
Fortunately, Howard’s superannuation changes for oldies (ie. 65+) are not retrospectively trashable, although they may be sunsettable. Basically, this means the Watermelon collectivists can’t take it.
Some people here may note that I had posted on the LaTrobe power generators before they were in the tabloids. No AGW zealot had the courage to go anywhere near this. Bye Bye Melbourne.
If you want to know what the driving force behind environmentalism is, read this article
http://www.taxtyranny.ca/images/HTML/Maurice-Strong/article1.html
These guys really do want to destroy industrialised civilisation but the AGW mob will deny it most shrilly.
“Strong, naturally, is on the board of the World Economic Forum. “What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude the principal risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?…
In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring this about?”
Ivan,
“All we need is for people to stop:
…”
You forgot
– breathing
The Sierra Club used to push this aspect, along the lines of … yes, sadly, a few billion people need to die but heh, there’s no time to lose. No sign that I can find of that now on their website, which is a worry. They think they are being taken seriously?
From the draft report: –
“Observations show that global temperatures have increased over the last 150 years (Figure 5.1). The data also suggests that the warming was
relatively steep over the last 30–50 years. A comparison of three data sets shows that they differ slightly on the highest recorded temperatures— data from the Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom shows 1998 as the highest year, while data from the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration and the National Climatic Data Centre in the United States show 2005 as the highest year.* All three data sets show that
seven of the hottest 10 years on record have been in the last nine years between 1999 and 2007. There has been considerable debate in recent
months on the interpretation of the global temperatures over the past decade. Questions have been raised about whether the warming trend
ended in about 1998. To throw light on this question, the Review sought assistance from
two eminent econometricians from the Australian National University to investigate the question. Trevor Breusch and Farshid Vahid have specific expertise in the statistical analysis of time series—a speciality that is well developed in econometrics. They were asked two questions:
• Is there a warming trend in global temperature data in the past century?
• Is there any indication that there is a break in any trend present in the late 1990s, or at any other point?
They concluded that:
It is difficult to be certain about trends when there is so much variation in the data and very high correlation from year to year. We investigate
the question using statistical time series methods. Our analysis shows that the upward movement over the last 130–160 years is persistent and not explained by the high correlation, so it is best described as a trend. The warming trend becomes steeper after the mid-1970s, but there is no significant evidence for a break in trend in the late 1990s. Viewed from the perspective of 30 or 50 years ago, the temperatures recorded in most of the last decade lie above the confidence band produced by any model that does not allow for a warming trend (Breusch & Vahid 2008)”.
What a crock. Apparently no discussion as to attribution of the temperature increase between 1978 & 1998 & look at the last sentence in the quote above. How could we expect anything else in 10 years unless temperatures took a sudden & continuing dive from 1998.
Do we have to wait another 5-10 years of reducing temperatures for this last statement to be overturned? In the meantime we go into an ETS which in retrospect will have no value & only a huge & soul destroying cost.
Look at the second sentence “The data also suggests that the warming was relatively steep over the last 30–50 years”. “Relatively”, well excuse me, look at Fig. 5.1. The increase in temperatures between 1910-1940 is as steep as that over this latter period, in fact if you take his “50 years”, it is steeper.
Any proper analysis would include risks on the upside. Did Garnaut ask the question “what if I’m wrong and CO2 sensitivity is as low as 0.5C” and analyse what the cost/benefit in such an case would be. No, this wouldn’t give the right answer & send the “correct” message would it?
Wake up people you are about to be fleeced big time. Judging by his recent statements on this Rudd is so puffed full of ego & determined to leave his legacy that he is blinded to the risks. He will leave a legacy all right but not what he will like.
I can only hope that the Australian people wake up to this before it’s too late.
For me this is a call to arms. I have closely followed the science on this for 7 years; passively till now, read dozens of papers and taking in all sides of the argument. Not any more. This is too important an issue to stand idly by.
AGW is not falsifiable, as it makes no testable predictions, only what-if guesses. All results and measurements to date have not fallen outside known natural variation. An arbitrary time of about 30 years is set as “climate”, and this definition is never justified because it permits exclusion of contrary geological climate data.
My view is the old Scottish verdict: “Not proven”
People have said that Rudderless won’t risk his chance at a second, and beyond, term. What if he doesn’t care ? A distinct possibility when one considers the appeal in the glory of moral vanity.
Well dudes – the answer is very simple – it’s called democracy – simply get the libs and nats to run another line, and get them elected.
Garnaut repeatedly said that the implementation of his report is up to executive government. He has made his independent opinion – if they don’t like – well don’t use it.
But have a look at your style – you guys talk like a bunch of rabid frothing rednecks –
So your ranting simply convinces those on your side that you are correct. And it even more convinces the warmers that you really are criminal scum intent on destroying “creation”.
Don’t get up me – just listen to yourselves – it’s oldies night down the pub.
So if you want to convert the middle ground you going to have to stop telling porkies, talking shit, making shit up, acting like rednecks and get organised.
You have some choices to make – boot the whole climate change thing out of the arena and go business as usual, or do an adaptive McKibben style approach, or favour renewables and conservation. Are you going to persist with clean coal research or just let it rip out of the smokestack.
What’s the alternative energy policy?
How do you intend to run climate science policy. Put Louis Hissink in charge and publish in E&E forever? How are you going to deal with a large science effort that doesn’t agree with your perspective.
On the other hand of course maybe the rest of world guns it to the transition. Moves heavily into carbon sequestration – nuclear – a range of solar renewables – creates thousands of new jobs in new industries with considerable export opportunity while we sit back in a Howard 1950s economy, now relying on the quarry more than the farm.
But for heavens sake do something about your PR – you sound like a bunch of mad bastards.
Actually warmers would love to see you run Mott as your spokesperson – that would lose you the debate by lunchtime.
There goes El Luko dipstick bratmouth again. What a surprise. What a style, like a rancid, splenetic firecracker.
Nuclear power ? Yes, please
Solar renewables ? The smartest electronic R&D companies in the world have been looking for storage solutions for over 50 years – needed when the sun doesn’t shine (like at night, or in persistent rain and fog)
Windmills ? Run the hospitals on that sort of reliability. Preferably when AGW zealots are undergoing by-pass surgery.
Generate thousands of new jobs ? With whose risk capital – yours ? You’re too parasitic for that.
Now answer the question, dipstick – what is your alternative energy supply for Melbourne’s 12GWh ? Remember, answer the question. Show some guts.
Anyone know if Quiggin helped Garnaut?
From what I heard Quiggin was pushing the union line against the NSW privatization while he was on a union retainer to support the case against.
It would be interesting to know if he was working with Garnaut.
As Quiggin himself implies: follow the money trail.
Thanks for playing rabid redneck Ianl – that’s one.
ARC
I would guess Quiggin would say so on his website.
luke; it would help in this era of manufactured crisis, if you could point to one place on this pleasant globe where alternative energy sources are up and running successfully. I note that Kuwait and some other oil producers are building coal-fired power plants because it is profitable for them to sell oil and import relatively cheap coal; Chine is building 2 new coal-fired plants a week; unfortunately these plants will emit sulphur dioxide which, as I’m sure you know, will interact with sunlight to produce suphur trioxide which produces acid rain, which was going to destroy the world 30 years ago; so, as well as the debacle from ethanol, we are seeing a further problem directly attributable to AGW. I have already linked to Nordhaus’s analysis showing the cost of this is going to be $22Trillion, aren’t you the slightest bit concerned?
Ivan,
You mentioned lemmings, but I’d suggest a better reference would be to Gadarene swine. Far more analogous.
Ian,
You left out another problem with solar power–the greens.
You see, the greens are now protesting against solar power because the technology requires, literally, putting other things “in the shade”. That is to say, solar panels absorb sunlight which would otherwise reach Mother Nature’s Living Things.
Which is to say, solar panels disturb Her Uniformly Beneficent Will.
Can you imagine the havoc which would be wreaked by paving the wilderness with photovoltaic cells? The disaster is completely beyond [insert Armageddonist froth here].
Would the debacle, with unknown side-effects which experts believe could not be fully known until as much as a millennium later, be as horrific in its results as the cuisinarts-for-birds which some euphemistically call “windmills”?
Would it not be better to clog our shores with tidal wave generators? Those things which disturb ocean currents and cetaceans, with completely unknown, long-term, unsustainable side-effects which will doom our children’s grandchildren to generations of toil to undo our sacrilegous environmental policies?
Would it not be better to build nuclear power plants? Surely not–the waste, though buried in wastelands, will release an endemic scourge heretofore unknown; the creeping devastation of mutated creatures slaking their blood-lust on those enfeebled by all-devouring cancers.
Would it be a better world if there were no gang-greens bent on stifling human progress at every turn?
Yes.
Luke says: –
“What’s the alternate energy policy”.
What it is would certainly not based on the demonisation of CO2. This will almost certainly lead us down a very expensive & ruinous cul-de-sac.
If energy security is the issue on hand then make it the centrepiece of your policy- not via a distraction like AGW.
Luke the average person in Australia, in my experience, has very little understanding of the climate change issues. Expect this to change over the next couple of years as their minds become more focused on the science, as their hip pocket is exposed and actual observations continue to overturn the AGW hypothesis (i.e. Climate Sensitivity = 3C +/- 1.5C). I wouldn’t like to be a politician standing in the way of this.
“So your ranting simply convinces those on your side that you are correct. And it even more convinces the warmers that you really are criminal scum intent on destroying “creation””.
Luke stop & look at yourself in the mirror. Why would you expect anyone in the middle of this argument would listen to you with such intemperate & ridiculous language?
I understand you are very committed to environmental issues- well all power to you. However do you have any comprehension of the damage this may do to the environmental movement?
“Luke stop & look at yourself in the mirror. Why would you expect anyone in the middle of this argument would listen to you with such intemperate & ridiculous language?” – Geoff Lawson
Just curious Geoff, but is Schiller Thurkettle’s language in previous post any less intemperate and ridiculous? Both sides are guilty I think.
“Thanks for playing rabid redneck Ianl – that’s one.”
Now there’s real guts for you. Nowhere near the actual question
My initial assessment months ago was spot on.
You really are a coward.
This is quite stupid, pointless. Watermelons have never addressed Applied Science issues with any real insight, they just run away.
True dipsticks.
Garnaut has one element right – it’s beyond rational policy making.
Schiller’s post pales by comparison with Luke’s though he does tend to excite the watermelons a little more than the rest here.
What a load of whiney “can’t do” rednecks. So according to Schiller the greens have stopped development of the world. Are you actually mental. No wait – we know you are.
So Ianl comes back with a tiresome watermelon tirade with is what you’d expect from a banjo-plucking redneck hick.
There will be no diesel generators in hospitals. You’re going to die during surgery. Bullsheeeet !
Love the way you morons portray things are “either or” – you can have a bloody big coal fired power station with Schiller sucking smokestack fumes or a big windmill. That’s it – no alternatives – no mix.
EITHER – OR. EITHER – OR
You can all live in caves or have a bloody big coal fired power station.
Cohenite throws an utter bullshit googly – that SO2 scare would “destroy the world”. What crap – a local effect – and dealt with.
You guys are so immersed in spin you’ve disappeared up your bums and think you’re seeing daylight.
Nordhaus and $22 gazillion schmoolas. All bunk – just cooked books with bullshit economics. No mix of costs, benefits and risks.
So for a mob that invented the stump-jump plough through black box flight recorders to gene shears you’d think we could have a bit more innovation and “can do” as a nation.
Who knows what interesting combinations of clean coal, solar, geothermal and pebble nuclear we might come up with given the right price signals.
Creation of massive export opportunities and new jobs.
But no – we have to suck on smokestacks and die during heart surgery. Lordy me.
Anyway dudes – get onto Brendan and Malcolm and tell them to vote “no”. Send the place back into the 1950s and give us all a big prozac until you guys see the world go past us and wake up.
Meanwhile the smarties have already shot through – why hang around in this backwater with turds like you lot – see http://www.ausra.com/
I reckon you lot are anti-technology anti-capitalist anti-innovation anti-science at heart. 1950s Howard supporters that need to piss off and get out of the way.
“Creation of massive export opportunities and new jobs.”
Of course we have a long history of that …
Massive export opportunities … for China and Asia.
New jobs … for China and Asia.
History would suggest that anyone that develops a new technology will get so frustrated by the bureaucracy that they will take the technology overseas & commercialise it.
I can just see the scenario: “No – there’s no way in hell you can build a factory and consume electricity to develop and build this widget. Sorry – carbon footprint, you understand.”
So now it all moves on from Guano’s diabolical to Rudd’s dilemma, although it was just yesterday he said “that in this business there is one thing we cannot do and that is make it rain.” So one has to assume with some carbon taxes across the board he can make climate. Gawwd, what a goofball.
…………Creation of massive export opportunities and new jobs…………..
You idiot. You think a cap and trade is necessary for innovation?
Are all these alarmists total economic illiterates.
If cap and trade is going to spark innovation why stop there, why don’t we just raise taxes across the board. That’s sure to make us techno. rich.
Garnaut’s dire prophecy’s…… Mother Shipton is alive and well.
Have just put today’s SMH fron page article, in a sealed tube, marked ‘not to be opened until year 2100’; and have locked in the safe.
Reckon my decendents will get a bit of a laugh.
Innovation – this is a problematical term because the lefties I know use it incessantly as the panacea for all sorts of government created problems.
For instance – land access for mineral exploration in WA is one bureaucratic nightmare, especially concerning Native Title issues.
The person I was discussing this is high up in the DOIR (Department of Industry and Resources) and asked me what could be done. I replied that one thing would be to get rid of the native title red tape.
The answer? Innovate! You have these bureaucratic shackles that are not coming off, so learn to innovate.
So with emission trading, which is just another tax of course, and tailight Luke’s suggestion is to innovate. This sounds much like the operation of a command economy.
If the game plan is to establish a eco-socialist state by stealth, and it looks like that is where we are heading, then tailight’s premise that we could innovate new ways of producing energy from coal and all the other patently uneconomic energy solutions as a response to the right price signals, is proof indeed of ecnomic illiteracy.
The problem with socialist economies, (there are no markets) is the absence of economic calculation.
However what intrigues me more is the polarisation of the debate on this issue – its watermelons and lefties versus capitalists, except now its climate alchemists versus climate realists. Itriguingly it’s the same capitalists who are the sceptics, and the political left who are the Alchemists. Of course if you read Quiggin’s pontifications we are delusionists!
Having progressives in every government in this country does not bode well for the future, but tailight obviously thinks Rudderless can innovate new jobs after destroying the existing old energy companies.
However I doubt it – Bill Ludwig might wake up and realise what is really going on with the chardonnay set that has hijacked the ALP.
I was approached by Origin energy to switch to their green solution a couple of days ago.
The shill said same price as non green, no cost.
I am currently with Integra/l who approached me months ago same shill. No cost to go green.
Both reps told me the government was paying them a subsidy from taxes (after I interrogated the fock our of them).
This is wrong as I pointed out the tax base is for everything not for causes. Pensioners, health, education but not because someone wants to feel green because of offsets.
Ladies and Gentleman, the tax by stealth is in operation and no one saw them do it, they take the tax out of the surplus for all the good things that cna be done without the gen pop of Aus knowing.
They steal from the surplus.
Poor poor Aussies – nowhere to go
Sitting by while the opportunties sail past …
http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/
Solar Thermal Power Could Supply Over 90 percent of U.S. Grid Plus Auto Fleet
http://www.ausra.com/news/releases/080306.html
Rather than natural green CO2 fertilizer Ruddy goofball is going to spray this diabolical guano fertilizer over everyone because we are all guilty of original carbon sin.
Solar, thermal and tidal reduction in baseload. Coal for downtime, is when we are alive and sleeping.
Say the the time between 12 AND 6 AM. Except weekend.
>
say expect a 20% reduction without power storage.
>
say put money into R&D of power storage for better max power storage for intermittment power sources.
>
Say way or say no way.
Logic tree
Incremental development.
Tidal is water sail like the wind for ship. The solar system moves water.
Not control it harness water movement.
Tide and wave are some of the most powerful forces we defend against.
build water sails.
> why do fossil fuels have to burn 24/7
> they don’t have to from a power point of view, they need to be on stand by and generate for the peak.
My father was dutch, some say the best mariners.
But the north sea is what the dutch fight to control, their land they build not take. They face the full brunt of the north sea. Dykes and tidal power they can power Europe.
My father’s gift as his son to Holland.
We cannot control the universe but we can control the things we do.
We can generate baseload power, whether coal or other but the most powerful forces that we don’t control we can harness.
My my Luke, you are in a state! You still don’t appear to have had that practice snot and dirt sandwich, or have you? and now the bile is welling up, no?
Anyhow, it seems one of our esteemed Honourable Members is flicking switches and making lots of noise!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/04/2294466.htm?section=business
And on the other hand Costa, the Treasurer, is seen giving Garnaut a serve or two! And also apparently referring to the Prof as Robert MuGarnaut. (Source: Annabel Crabb SMH 28/6/2008)
According to Garnaut: Australia ‘needs carbon trading’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7489411.stm
Seems that Garnaut thinks that Australia can control its climate by attempting to manipulate atmospheric CO2 unilaterally.
No he does not. He has specifically addressed that point. That’s a standard ruse.
If you look at the Federal Opposition – they’re between a rock and a hard place. They’re essentially saying to slow down and not put a carbon tax on petrol. They’re not saying AGW is all bunk. They’re talking about speed of response.
John Howard would be dismayed – what a spineless lot.
If you guys had been successful in your sceptic campaigning, the Opposition would be stating “it’s all bunk – and vote for us and we’ll have none of it !”.
Or is that you guys have totally failed to get your message across.
And that you all look rabid, angry and redneck ?
You’re not very good are you? Couldn’t run a chook raffle.
Poor Aussies – unable to design energy efficient buildings of our own.
http://www.ecocite.ca/home.html
Quoting press releases from tax farmers now to support your argument,Luke?
BTW wasn’t that solar thermal power station at Barstow shut down because it was uneconomic? You know, the one that caught fire a couple of times and used lots of water to clean the mirrors.
“Without early and strong action, sometime before 2020, we will realise that we have indelibly surrendered to forces that have moved beyond our control,” he (Garnaut0 said.)
What ‘forces’ are under Australian control?
There is a large article in today’s Sunday Age quoting a power station engineer on “cleaning” Victoria’s brown coal power stations: “The companies would never do it, it would send them broke” and later on “I’m an engineer and I can’t see how it can be done”.
The only thing I think I can safely predict is that the State and Federal Governments cannot allow Victoria’s industry to shut down for lack of power. However, how they fix two irreconcileable objectives will be fascinating to watch.
Meanwhile the planet’s temperature continues to decline.
Rudd is showing all the political finesse of a bull in a china shop.
Eyrie – didn’t Powerlink get into trouble with supplying power as some of their generators had caught fire and maintenance wasn’t up to speck. Come on mate don’t be desperate.
“tax farmers”? huh ?
Come on Paul – I listened to his whole press club speech as I knew it would be misquoted. And recorded it.
Garnaut was talking about global action. He talked the prisoners dilemma of nobody acting first. He spoke about the first world and 3rd world. He spoke about the need for many nations to cooperate in fair time lest we review our position. He presented no cake with icing and pink ribbons. He said the extent of implementation if any was up to executive government.
He also spoke positively of significant opportunities which need to be analysed as he stated them.
To deliberately misquote his speech selectively and out of context is totally unfair.
The best option is to defeat this possible new policy is for sceptics and others to engage with the Federal Opposition and campaign against it. However – don’t take the redneck blog goons from here to help. They’re so extreme and stupid it would scare the willies out of the voters that you need to convert.
But in a world where gasoline will become an ever increasingly expensive commodity – some pondering of energy policy will be necessary regardless of carbon trading or not.
You might be interested in the relative per capita emissions of Australia and China. In China the average person emits ~1.05 tons C per year, in Australia each person emits ~4.4 tons C per year
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2-emissions.html
That’s up to 2004, but the situation has not changed that much and if you think it has, run the numbers. Otherwise you are claiming the right to emit 4x what each person in China does not that they are perfect either, and, of course, in the US we emit ~5.6 tons per person per year.
Some solar on hold, in the US.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/us/27solar.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Well Eli, not all Australians emit as much as 4.4 tons per year. And I would guess that several million Chinese emit MORE than 4.4 tons per year.
As a frugal Australian, who emits less than average, once all those Aussies and Chinese who emit more than me have reduced their emissions to my level, then we can start to discuss government mandated controls of emission, starting with whether they are going to achieve the stated purpose.
Until then, you’re just pissing on my leg and telling me it’s climate change.
No one is claiming the right to emit 4.4 times more CO2 than a Chinese – since when did this become a prescribed activity? By the dictates of the Eco-Police associated with Eli Rabett?
AGW or climate changed was conjured up for political purposes, not to save the planet and slowly but surely the mob will find out, at some cost however.
Rudderless, incidentally, will be exempt from the fuel price increases as Glen Milne reports in today’s Herald Sun.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23975214-661,00.html
I do believe the media are starting to wise up. Better late than never I suppose.
“The best option is to defeat this possible new policy is for sceptics and others to engage with the Federal Opposition and campaign against it.”
What?? Brendan (“I have never voted Liberal in my life”) Nelson ?
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2104749.htm
Do you think he has a brain? Do you seriously think there is anyone in the Liberal party at the moment with a brain? Perhaps you would be good enough to name him or her.
In the current climate of mass hysteria, the best option is just to let them go ahead and fail – not fail a little, but fail comprehensively. Unfortunately, that is probably the only thing the lemmings will understand.
Bring on the train wreck. I don’t have the time or energy to fight the Hundred Years Climate War.
We are assured that government policies on “global warming” (oops, it’s called ‘climate change’ now) will cause employment to “soar”.
“These are going to be jobs which people are going to enjoy,” [Australian Greens leader Bob Brown] said.” – “Blue collar workers ‘need to turn green'”, The Age, June 26, 2008, http://news.theage.com.au/national/blue-collar-workers-need-to-turn-green-20080626-2x4z.html
The US state of Pennsylvania also understands how combating ‘climate change’ will bury citizens under a deluge of prosperity.
“They understand that global warming poses a threat to our economy and our future if we don’t take action,” said [Jan Jarrett, PennFuture’s vice president], “and they also understand that solving the problem will help grow the green economy and create new jobs.”
Pennsylvania is well-documented as a climate transgressor.
“[state Representative Greg] Vitali said, “Climate change is the most important environmental problem we’re dealing with in Pennsylvania – we produce a full one percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emission.” – Pennsylvania Assembly Passes First Global Warming Law, Environmental News Service, July 3, 2008, http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2008/2008-07-03-093.asp
With all these fun, prosperous jobs waiting to be created in this new burgeoning economic sector, you have to wonder why the private enterprise doesn’t rush in.
Likely it’s because making this happen requires the kind of government subsidies that made the miracle of biofuels so popular.
Luke ranted:
“But have a look at your style – you guys talk like a bunch of rabid frothing rednecks -”
You got something against me and my rabid frothing redneck friends??
I might suggest that you, Gore, Hansen and the rest of the BELIEVERS got us beat!!
But, that’s all OK. I can wait 5 years to laugh in all your BELIEVER faces!! Y’all won’t be able to show them anywhere they are known!! Isn’t it great you can spout this bull anonymously??
I cannot believe how stupid humans are.I’ve just viewed lectures of Bob Carter on Youtube.He has confirmed what I’ve suspected.The computer models upon which the IPCC bases all it’s assumptions are flawed because of incorrect data and natural variables not even considered,let alone put in their models.None these assumptions are based on even a hint of sound scientific method,yet the opportunists are lining up to bleed us dry on consensus science.
You have to wonder about the hidden agendas behind this AGW cult.The left are pushing it really hard as “faite occompli”.I can only assume they are trying to corral us into a world Govt with the UN being it’s head.
The speed at which Garnaut and Rudd are trying to ram these changes through,will destroy our economy.
Australia emits about 13 tons carbon/sq km (if Eli’s figures are correct), and China about 133 tons carbon/sq km.
China is claiming the right to emit ten times the carbon per square kilometre that Australia does. That’s a whopping 1.2 billion tons carbon more than they would if they emitted at Australian levels per square kilometre. If carbon is priced at $30 per ton, that’s $36 billion they owe us.
“Isn’t it great you can spout this bull anonymously??” says KittyKat Dingbat Anon Ranter Redneck hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha – that’s rich !
Mate you’re gonna get a bloody big carbon tax and sucked right in ! Commies are going to win – the world will end ! You’re all going back to the caves. Watermelons rule !
If you guys were any good you would have headed all this off. Surely it’s obvious that it’s all bunkum. What’s wrong with you all?
or put it another way given the differences between Australia’s and China’s populations, using the per capita emissions that Eli Rabbit quotes, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are only 8.8% of what China’s are annually. I guess ones level of guilt all depends on if you are a lumper (population) or a splitter (per capita).
Paul W nice analogy, using emissions per square kilometre.
And Quiggin calls us delusional!
Emissions per the country’s prosperity index is also fun;
http://www.prosperity.org/countries.aspx
luke, who, appears to be near apolexy, is correct about Australia’s lack of commercialisation of new ideas and exploiting innovation as measures of prosperity; we are low, but then, so are most countries in the Western World, including the US and Japan; China is also low; Singapore is the place to be, and India is worth a look; and there is no consistency between those 2 countires in respect of total or per capita emissions.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, AGW is a crock, and beating us up a la Garnaut is no inducement to creating a quiver of new energy sources; if cars could run on electricity or water, it’d be done; in that respect this energy thing can be broken down to 2 issues; transport and baseload; a sensible gov’t would ignore AGW and be investing in thorium R&D, while increasing our refinery capacity and ability to convert coal to petrol in a way that doesn’t add to real pollution like the SO3 example that luke unfairly scorned above; that way the economy could keep chugging along until that new innovation in energy source popped up. I mean the idea that this bloated AGW bureaucracy will create an environment for innovative serendipity is grotesque; look at the brilliance that came out of nanny states in the past….
Cohenite:
Check out the links at this site:
http://www.emc2fusion.org/
From what I read there are no show stoppers so far. Review team will be brought in later this Northern Hemisphere summer. And it will be just great for space propulsion which we might need to get away from the crazies infesting this planet.
OTOH if this doesn’t work then we ought to start on advanced fission plants right away. Thorium as well as Uranium and Plutonium. Not because of “global warming” which I think you are right about but so as to use the coal for conversion to liquid fuel. This doesn’t even need to be a Co2 intensive process if we use nuclear process heat, not that it matters much.
Eyrie; good stuff; luke and the AGWers like to think sceptics are luddites who don’t won’t to get with new technology; well, I’m a fan of Freeman Dyson’s stages of civilization based on energy sources; what the AGWer’s don’t accept is that I don’t want to revert to pre-WW11 living standards while some fanciful manifestation of sustainable energy sources get’s us up and running; other than that caveat, there are 2 other insurmountable defects in the AGW position; the first is, sustainable energy contradicts enthropy, information theory and presupposes a stasis for humanity and earth’s climate; the 2nd is the motivation of some of the AGWer’s; I’m buggered if I’m going to see out my dotage living like a primitive to satisfy a womb-craving, gaia-worshipping, anti-prosperity, guilt infested ideology. They can put that in their hemp baskets and do handsprings around the maypole.
“In China the average person emits ~1.05 tons C per year, in Australia each person emits ~4.4 tons C per year…”
So, Eli, what’s your point?
There are 1,340,000,000 Chinese, there are 20 million Aussies. Perhaps we should cut back a bit so the Chinese can have a fair go, eh? There are about 67 Chinese for every 1 Aussie.
Maybe we should lower our quality of life by 75%, so we’re all equal? Not even the Chinese are that communistic anymore, Eli, or haven’t you heard?
Or is your point that the 1.3 billion Chinese should be able to increase their quality of life by 400% to match ours?
The gestalt of your question is an irrational 19th century Christian guilt complex, fittingly enough since you’re a climate creationist who believes the weather rotates around Mankind and for our sinful ways we deserve a flogging. You’re a bit like a self-harm patient, suffering from low cultural-esteem problem.
What? You feel guilty about the luxuries your civilization has bestowed upon your mathematically-mendacious existence?
A short history lesson: The Chinese have one quarter our standard of living (proxy: carbon emissions) because they spent much of the last century tweaking the worst possible variety of economy (ie, Marxist) and while they were at it, murdered many tens of millions of their own people, while wreaking environmental harms that would be unimaginable in your own country. Human folly at its most pathetic.
We lucky Westerners who disrespect our democracies and freedoms of speech and property as sins against nature do so only from the most ill-informed perspective imaginable.
However, I have come to expect self-loathing propositions from climate creationists.
A short maths lesson: If all 20-something million Aussies were to die of the plague and the continent left uninhabited tomorrow it wouldn’t make for 0.01% slowing of climate change in whatever direction the climate happens to be changing.
Likewise, we could all double our C-emission tomorrow and it wouldn’t match a single week of emissions from China.
Do your maths, before spouting your ecumenical guilt, pal.
27.3 Days*
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_great_garnaut_scare/
Wes George raises predictable and understandable responses – Garnaut tackles it head-on – Garnaut discusses the issue of the prisoners’ dilemma – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
whether to self-maximise, distrust or cooperate.
He also discusses the sheer difficulty and enormity of the problem.
So it is worth reading exactly what Garnaut had to say, instead of deliberately misquoting him.
After all it is our debate – it’s up to us through our executive government to choose. Appropriate action by the sceptic network that supports this blog has a good chance to scuttle this agenda. That is if you piss off the stupid red neck element from the debate and get serious.
Wes makes a good point – why would you trust commies to act cooperatively with the history they have? Of course our a emissions are drop in the ocean (one burp in a big atmosphere) and Garnaut knows that.
So you have to make some personal choices on climate change evidence. There’s plenty of information – the case is not perfect.
But an increasing worry for us nonetheless –
http://www.maff.gov.au/media/media_releases/july/droughts
http://www.daff.gov.au/agriculture-food/drought/national_review_of_drought_policy
http://www.daff.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/721285/csiro-bom-report-future-droughts.pdf
You can create a vision of apocalyptic economic ruin if Rudd pursues this course of action (and timing is an issue) – or you could also paint a picture of a changed society well placed with and enhanced energy infrastructure, a seat at the international table, and renewed technology base.
Alone in a ballot box – there is a very large amount for us all to contemplate beyond the rhetoric.
Garnaut says:
“Effective international action is necessary if the risks of dangerous climate
change are to be held to acceptable levels, but deeply problematic. International
cooperation is essential for a solution to a global problem. However, such a
solution requires the resolution of a genuine prisoners’ dilemma. Each country
benefits from a national point of view if it does less of the mitigation itself,
and others do more. If all countries act on this basis, without forethought and cooperation, there will be no resolution of the dilemma. We will all judge the
outcome, in the fullness of time, to be insufficient and unsatisfactory.
Resolution of the international prisoner’s dilemma takes time—possibly more
time than we have. The world has squandered the time that it did have in the
1990s to experiment with various approaches to mitigation.
Climate change is a diabolical policy problem. It is harder than any other
issue of high importance that has come before our polity in living memory.
Climate change presents a new kind of challenge. It is uncertain in its form
and extent, rather than drawn in clear lines. It is insidious rather than directly
confrontational. It is long term rather than immediate, in both its impacts and its
remedies. Any effective remedies lie beyond any act of national will, requiring
international cooperation of unprecedented dimension and complexity.
While an effective response to the challenge would play out over many
decades, it must take shape and be put in place over the next few years. Without
such action, if the mainstream science is broadly right, the Review’s assessment
of likely growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in the absence of effective
mitigation tells us that the risks of dangerous climate change, already significant,
will soon have risen to dangerously high levels.
Observation of daily debate and media discussion in Australia and elsewhere
suggests that this issue might be too hard for rational policy making. It is too
complex. The special interests are too numerous, powerful and intense. The
time frames within which effects become evident are too long, and the time
frames within which action must be effected too short.
The most inappropriate response would be to delude ourselves, taking small
actions that create an appearance of action, but which do not solve the problem.
Such an approach would risk the integrity of our market economy and political
processes to no good effect.
We will delude ourselves if we think that scientific uncertainties are cause for
delay. Delaying now will eliminate attractive lower-cost options. Delaying now is
not postponing a decision. To delay is to deliberately choose to avoid effective
steps to reduce the risks of climate change to acceptable levels.
The work of this Review is directed at nurturing the slender chance that
Australia and the world will manage to develop a position that strikes a good
balance between the costs of dangerous climate change and the costs
of mitigation.
Australia has a larger interest in a strong mitigation outcome than other
developed countries. Our location makes us already a hot and dry country;
small variations in climate are more damaging to us than to other developed
countries. We live in a region of developing countries, which are in weaker
positions to adapt to climate change than wealthy countries with robust political
and economic institutions. The problems of our neighbours would inevitably
become our problems. And the structure of our economy suggests that our terms of trade would be damaged more by the effects of climate change than
would those of any other developed country (see Chapter 9).
However, Australia carries some major assets into this challenge. Australians
are facing this new kind of challenge in the best of times. These are the times
that earlier generations of Australians hoped for their country.
Australia is fortunate that humanity is enjoying the harvest of modern
economic development in Asia and beyond. More people are emerging from
poverty more quickly than ever before in human history.
Australia is enjoying a double harvest. The internationally oriented market
reforms from the 1980s were put in place just in time. We are now riding the
extension of the beneficent processes of modern economic growth into the
heartlands of the populous countries of Asia.
In the early years of our federation Australians took pride in the highest living
standards in the world. On the eve of World War I, Australia’s output per person
was a bit above that of the United States, then and now the benchmark for
economic modernity. Then, for seven decades, we turned in on ourselves, and
paid the cost. For seven decades, we fell further and further behind the global
frontiers of productivity and incomes. The value of our output per person fell to
less than two thirds of the United States.
Then, a quarter of a century ago, we caught that tide which taken at the
flood leads on to fortune. On such a full sea we are now afloat. In the first
quarter of this year, for the first time since the onset of World War I, the value
of output per person in Australia exceeded that of the United States when both
are measured in the national accounts and converted into a currency at today’s
exchange rates.2
So we have much to contribute and much to lose as we face the diabolical
policy challenge of climate change. Unmitigated climate change could lose
this challenge. Or it could be lost by a bungled attempt to mitigate climate
change, which would bring back into the centre of our national policy all of
the self‑interested pressure groups and arbitrary interventions that retarded our
progress for so long.
Australians’ recent return to material grace has had two direct causes. First
was our decisive rejection and reversal of mistakes of the early decades after
federation: the turning away from protectionism, xenophobia and the bureaucratic
trammelling of the market.
The second cause is the Asian economic boom. Australia’s resources and
human capacities are more closely complementary to those of the densely
populated countries of Asia than are those of any other economies on earth.
For other developed and many developing countries, the strong growth in
industrial production and demand for raw materials and food that accompanies
economic growth in China, India, Indonesia and other Asian countries is seen
as a competitive and inflationary threat. For Australia, it is unbridled opportunity.
Strong Chinese and other Asian economic growth has been the main factor behind the lift in Australia’s terms of trade by about two-thirds over the past
six years. This has lifted the average value of Australian output and incomes by
over one-eighth from the effects of increased export prices alone.
The Asian economic boom, half the cause of our prosperity, is also the
source of the sharper immediacy of the climate change problem. The increase
in concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last two
centuries has generated the climate change that we have experienced to
date and will experience over the next couple of decades. This is the result
of economic activity in the countries that are now rich. The rapid increase in
concentrations that are expected over the next several decades is primarily the
result of activities in the developing countries that are becoming rich. This rapid
increase is what makes action to avert dangerous climate change urgent.”
All this stuff about watermelons and world government is really drivel and pub talk. Garnaut is an intelligent man and has advanced a value proposition for us to consider – the document is worth a hearing.
One’s hand trembles above the Yes/No buttons.
Fellas; this one world government conspiracy stuff is old League of Rights central propaganda that used to catch fire in the bush after a dry season.
http://www.alor.org/Volume1/Vol1No30.htm
cohenite: “I’m buggered if I’m going to see out my dotage living like a primitive to satisfy a womb-craving, gaia-worshipping, anti-prosperity, guilt infested ideology. They can put that in their hemp baskets and do handsprings around the maypole”.
Any kids yet?
Keep their options open hey
Granddad
India has just released an important government document and:
“No firm link between the documented [climate] changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established.”
SO don’t count on India cooperating.
And Gavin, while the League of Rights is an unusual organisation, with peculiar ideas, are you telling us that in the hey days of the USSR, world socialism wasn’t on the agenda?
The lefties I know have it still on their agenda – and while it may not be world socialism or government, I do not dismiss Maurice Strong’s opinions on the matter, nor the fairly obvious fact that the people who support AGW are the same who oppose the US and the capitalist system.
By signing the Kyoto Protocol we have basically surrender a good part of our national sovereignty to the UN. What do you think the EU is attempting? The elimination of the nation state, and if you do that who makes the rules?
Link to the Indian Position: http://indefenceofliberty.org/story.aspx?id=1530&pubid=1309
Louis – you really are an old cold war warrior out of time aren’t you. World government through the UN – mate ! ROTFL.
One security council veto and it’s all over.
Stop pulling our leg hey.
Louis: We both know Australia sends people from both sides of the political spectrum to serve on the UN and I have met many police and other personnel who have volunteered on UN missions to such places as Cypress and East Timor.
What I see on this blog apart from procrastination is considerable reluctance to share the workload in the wider community sense. There is a distinct preference to avoid any sacrifice in terms of personal lifestyle too.
The math is simple, the more people on the globe, the less each of us can have. Footprints must reduce regardless of global warming. Dealing with climate change is not about individual opinions either way. Without a team nothing happens for the good of all.
Whereas the elite once had slaves under their control, remaining upwardly mobile within the commercial classes had become quite a rat race nowadays. I could go on about consumerism driving capitalism then we could get into an argument about which comes first , the chicken or the egg however I’l finish with a yarn about practicalities.
The chap a former refugee from a current hot spot not mentioned above working next to me in the car park market today was stressed by an infringement notice he received in the mail last week. Apparently he left a drink bottle on the ground last time and the litter inspector was there on overtime.
Sixty dollars fine for an empty drink bottle, is that fair? How many drink containers do we leave and where did the liquid come from? Reckon it was the MDB?
BTW this community pumps 40 tons of salt into the river every day?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/06/2295708.htm
“The Federal Government announced it will give the ACT $85 million to extract the salt to help to improve water quality in the Murray Darling system”
http://bigpond.com/news/national/content/20080704/2294855.asp
Luke
You are right, even Maurice Strong doesn’t advocate it, but like you, he is a looney lefty. It’s all about networking. My own personal experiences with the looney lefties confirms my suspicions that AGW is a scam, especially when they tell you that it is straight to your face. You only obfuscate.
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/1201/1201strong.htm
Luke, Here’s a summary:
Twenty-five years ago Strong sketched out a global political framework that would curtail the sovereignty of nations and expand the power of the U.N. and other international organizations.
Strong’s downpayment on this vision have been the policies he subsequently has helped advance at a series of U.N.-sponsored conferences from Stockholm and Rio to Kyoto and, next year, Johannesburg.
Strong appears to rule out a formal world government when he suggests that “the technological society [his shorthand expression for life in a globalized world] cannot be managed by traditional systems of hierarchical control.” Instead, “it requires a network of institutions, governmental and non-governmental, local, regional, national and international, to perform the wide variety tasks and functions necessary to the operation of that society.”
This new network does not exactly end nation-state sovereignty. Instead, it should lead to the creation of a formalized “system of international organizations” whose purpose will be to “provide the instrumentalities for carrying out those common tasks which it is either not feasible or advantageous for [individual nation-states] to carry out themselves.”
There’s no need to describe the peril of handing over U.S. sovereignty – a sovereignty that guarantees the freedoms of U.S. citizens – to a centralized and often corrupt foreign bureaucracy whose agenda is frequently at odds with U.S. policies and values. Strong’s enthusiasm for the U.N. completely ignores its history of failure in numerous policy areas. In the years since Strong’s 1974 speech the U.N. has failed to alleviate poverty – and ecological devastation – in Africa and other developing nations. And its peacekeeping efforts in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia failed to deter aggression in the 1990s.”
I still marvel at the political power of the Greens in Australia, way more than the number of votes they get.
gavin; whence from the League of Rights?
luke; Garnaut:
“The increase in concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the LAST TWO CENTURIES (my emphasis) has generated the climate change that we have experienced to date and will experience over the next couple of decades. This is the result of economic activity in the countries that are now rich. The RAPID INCREASE IN CONCENTRATIONS THAT ARE EXPECTED OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DECADES (my emphasis) is primarily the result of activities in the developing countries that are becoming rich. This RAPID INCREASE is what makes action to avert DANGEROUS (my emphasis) climate change urgent.”
So many errors and assumptions; first bold; has CO2 been increasing for 2 centuries?
http://brneurosci.org/co2.html
Figs 5 and 6 are the relevant ones.
2nd bold; CO2 levels are declining now, as Steve Short’s recent post shows.
3rd bold; the expected rapid increase is now definite; this is elementary agitprop; assume something then build a case on the assumption being real.4th bold; dangerous; throw in some provocative scaremongering. Even if there is to be some warming who can say if it is going to be bad? Lomborg doesn’t think so as he demonstrates in “Cool It”, and Anthony Watts has a good post now about how warming is better than cooling.
At gavin’s invitation I read Garnaut’s speech for the 6th H.W. Arndt Memorial Lecture on the 5/6/08; it was a risible contortion of Pascal’s wretched wager to justify the cost of insuring against potentially catastrophic risk; useful fools in the msm are running with this like Mike Steketee in The Australian, 5/7/08; Steketee compares the insurance for AGW as being similar to the vast expense of military expenditure on the basis that the risk of invasion is small but if it does happen will have devastating consequences; this is sophistry of a low order; assume something can happen and then, if it does happen, that the consequences will be terrible; it is dire logic, where the nominated horrendous consequence supersedes the low risk or improbability of the event happening at all. For a more balanced perspective read Bret Stephen’s article in the same edition; Stephen’s notes the punitive nature of AGW measures and the implied requirement to be penitent; Garnaut’s description of countries who have become rich causing the ‘problem’, along with those countries which are going to become rich by making the ‘problem’ worse perfectly sums up that aspect of the AGE rationale.
I really think it’s time for you to justify all the moral reprimands and point to some unequivocal manifestation of AGW.
No it’s not up to me to demonstrate anything – it’s for you to get off your bum and get the opposition to oppose the proposition. But Julie looks like she’s in the AGW camp ”
“We support many of the principles in the Garnaut report, but we can’t just be unquestioning, uncritical of everything that is put forward,” she told Sky News.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23977282-2702,00.html
THAT IS “support many of the principles”
What you’ve quoted is all just junk science and unpublished rhetorical twaddle. All of this bilge has not washed. Totally failed to impress those in power.
Interestingly BoM and CSIRO have never come up alongside the Australian sceptic movement for a full broadside. They really should get the gloves off and get stuck right into you lot. Could be very every interesting.
The fact that Luke speciously summons the Prisoner’s Dilemma shows what a weak position Garnaut is in. Better dob in your mates now than play the zero-sum game that Al Gore and Hansen once presented as our only option, after all the climate is really NOT warming at all.
Are we to throw ourselves on the funeral pyre of our civilization because a couple of global circulation computer models say we are all going to die anyway in 70 years?
Another history lesson: Futurology is always wrong, by definition. Go check. The clue is that we are all still here.
Everyone from the Mayans to the Jesus freaks predict the end of the world, as we know it. What makes Hansen, Mann, Garnaut, et al any different?
Meet the new peer reviewed apocalyptic freaks…same as the old apocalyptic freaks with a new suit and tech lingo.
What distinguishes climatology as it is practiced today, with its obfuscations, data manipulations, its denial of FOI requests and political intrigues from a nutter Freemason account of the Future?
A more probable account of the future is that Moore’s Law and technological evolution will “naturally” supersede today’s debate in the most unforeseeable ways imaginable (oxymoron intended.)
Luke won’t tolerate those who cite decadal global cooling but he’s chuffed to point out a rather droughty June as proof of climate change. He might well be right for the wrong reason, we are in an interglacial and climate is always changing. That’s a given. “Climate Change” is an insidious tautology.
Ender cites a friend’s outdoor potted plant as proof positive of “climate change” and looks forward to the day when “advanced weather forecasting” will guide wind to the wind turbines. Just who are the redneck, under-educated, speaking-in-tongues nutters here?
The hypocrisy would be stunning, if it didn’t occur every bloody post or two.
The problem with Garnaut is both epistemological and political mendacity.
Not to mention the hulking logical monstrosity: “Stopping Climate Change” is a tautology lumped with an oxymoron. Hardly the foundational meme for a rational socio-economic policy of a nation, much less the whole world.
The climate is always changing by definition, stopping it is not only undesirable, but literally impossible. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either an idiot (useful or not) or committing what might well be someday recognized as indictable criminal fraud. (hat tip to Dr. Hansen for the suggestion.)
Epistemologically, one can’t propose a trillion dollar economic solution to a problem before the problem has been systematically verified as real.
That means letting the opposition have a fair go at deconstructing the hypothesis. Good hypotheses have no worries when opponents question the premise. Facts speak louder than fiction.
But Clive Hamilton wants the debate stopped now. The end. Over. Kapput. Done deal. Clive longs for the good old days of Stalinism. So does Garnaut. Then they could prosecute people like us for saying things that aren’t in line with the party talking points. We’re “Denialists,” once called heretics. But we are not the ones denying that climate change is natural.
The rush to push through a solution just when the whole AGW theory is collapsing is highly suspect. It reminds one of the tobacco lobby’s vested interest in concealing the true science behind the causes of lung cancer. They lied under oath to the US Congress. Perhaps there are vested interests in seeing the multi-trillion dollar climate change remediation economy pushed through before the science is settled?
The jumping of the epistemological gun, so to speak, signals the political mendacity. Something is up. Garnaut’s solution to “stop climate change” is a rerun of failed 20 th century centrally controlled economics. The government technocrats will tax us and redistribute the wealth according to their special agenda and we will all be the poorer for it.
One has to wonder: How does a failed economic policy resurrected from the mid-20 the century have any relevance to “climate change” in 2008? What is the real agenda here?
Surely, if one were really worried about the climate the last thing to come to mind would be the massive economic logical fallacies of the 20 th century as a solution?
Perhaps those committed to history long past are doomed to repeat it?
“You might be interested in the relative per capita emissions of Australia and China.”
Nope – the atmosphere doesn’t care how many people or from which country CO2 came from – CO2 emissions either need to be reduced or not – not switched from the developed world to the developing world. Taking such a position reveals the true UN IPCC agenda of wealth redistribution rather than reducing atmospheric CO2. You can’t have it both ways.
Below is the 2004 top 5 total CO2 emitters – China is now No.1:
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
2 CHINA (MAINLAND)
3 RUSSIAN FEDERATION
4 INDIA
5 JAPAN
Wes you’re a trooper.
“Perhaps those committed to history long past are doomed to repeat it?” LOL – EXACTLY !!! That’s the illogical response to climate often cited.
“rather droughty June as proof of climate change” – are you daft – try 20 years !!!
“It reminds one of the tobacco lobby’s vested interest in concealing the true science behind the causes of lung cancer” WTF – that’s what denialists are doing !!! Are you trying on some Jedi mind trick?
Mayans – yes – their civilisation taken out by a mild MWP warming. Great example.
Mate your comments thicker than Clag glue with added rhetorical sludge.
Wes: “Perhaps those committed to history long past are doomed to repeat it”
Yeah, surviving downunder over 40,000 years was all about adopting some new age fantasy. There is two sides to a selfish society. I spent a long time playing devil’s advocate with remote share holders and end users including those working in the middle.
Working through change for wealth redistribution in a technical society has a relatively short history. I recall walking down the main street in Melbourne under a double pole banner which carried the words “We want the lot from – -“ (global manufacturing group) and wondering what the lunch time crowds were thinking about us holding up trams.
At that time I had the highest award position in the country and was struggling to make ends meet week to week with four youngsters getting ready for school. Negotiations over hourly rates at our place affected employees across this and other industry to the point internal relationships were very sour throughout the transitional period that ground down the total number of manual positions.
Automation has two sides too. Skills had to be transportable as modernization programs got shorter.
Remaining practicable is the new challenge for society. All this sudden self awareness has a particular downside. In a modern dog eat dog world there are fewer winners and more losers when society breaks down.
Who owns the process that puts water in our plastic drink bottles, with or without CO2 is the next issue. Nothing is free in a cluttered world.
Paul: It’s about time we compared the ratios of selfish people in countries across this modern world. IMO your UK and the US are going to struggle with the shocks ahead
>It’s about time we compared the ratios of selfish people in countries across this modern world.
Something a little easier. Do it for this thread on this blog alone. Of course most AGW believers don’t bother commenting here, so the sample is skewed even more in favour of the buffoons from old school.
AGW believers – Travis you have hit the nail on the proverbial head – it’s a belief system and under no circumstances a science.
The initial assumption that CO2 causes heating was never observed but imagined from an incomplete understanding of the physics.
Never mind, the shock will be among the AGW crowd as they discover that the apocalypse needs to be rescheduled.
Gavin said:
Paul: “It’s about time we compared the ratios of selfish people in countries across this modern world”.
Gavin, what unmittigated rubbish. Are you saying for example that Australians are inherently more selfish than the Chinese? So a nation which has successfully built up it’s political, economic, social systems is selfish is it? Another nation which trashed it’s systems with ideological clap-cap & suffered accordingly is selfless is it?
Is this the same sort of logic you use in AGU arguments?
I agree with Paul, this is a ridiculous argument.
It’s interesting that Travis’s and Gavin’s experiment is getting immediate results. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So it’s not alcohol or drugs, Gavin. You’re just an unreconstructed commie.
I actually blame the Chinese for AGW. After all, they had a sophisticated culture when my ancestors were running around dressed only in woad. If they had bothered to have an Industrial Revolution back then, selfish Westerners would not have been able to ravage the planet, and China’s renewable energy targets would no doubt have come to full flowering by now.
Or maybe Alfred Deakin. If only he had started an Emission Trading Scheme on 1904. This drought would never have happened.
Luke and Gavin–not only are those committed to the past doomed to repeat it, but those ignorant of the past as well. Which kind of fool are you?
Garnaut’s report contains, shrouded in fashionable language, economic policies and philosophies that have often been applied in the past and utterly failed to produce the desired outcome.
What’s remarkable is that these discredited economic philosophies are so far removed from an effective Information Age response to “climate change” as to reveal this government’s ideological agenda.
The first of Garnaut’s historically failed propositions is a direct punitive tax regime to control a complex problem that isn’t well understood, this is the most enervating approach imaginable.
The structural outcomes of punitive taxation are well understood in economics. Only the most ideologically partisan or historically blind could surmise this approach represents innovation or intellectual rigor.
As usual, the unintended consequences of ETS didn’t receive a 600-page study by an eminent academic. Instead, we are urged to rush in discredited economic policies from eras long past with a concerted campaign of fear mongering nonsense.
If Garnaut’s ETS were to go ahead in 2010, Australia’s economy would quickly devolve into the Argentina of the Asia Pacific region. It certainly might lower our carbon footprint, alright—assuming the electric doesn’t go out and we all revert to burning wood to light our McCaves…
The second of these proven loser concepts is to redistribute the wealth bled off our economic infrastructure to whoever is most fashionable with the government of the day. That’s why guvs love taxes. It increases their authority and reduces your autonomy.
Garnaut proposes 50% of the appropriated wealth will go to “low income” families. If the real agenda was to lower carbon emissions then redistributing free cash bonuses to citizens to spend on increasing their C-footprint is counterproductive.
The third proven economic error in Garnaut’s report is to reckon it can offset the tax burden imposed on the Australian export economy through compensation to effected business. So why impose the tax burden to begin with?
Garnaut’s working assumption is that government bureaucracies (which will have to be massively increased) are wiser than the marketplace.
Compensation to business will fail because marketplaces are fluid complex systems, a bit like the climate, while governments are inflexible, ad hoc and all decision-making is ultimately filtered politically. Moreover, compensation will be seen as unfair by our trading partners and impeded the functioning of the marketplace.
Most diabolical of all of Garnaut’s ideas is the unspoken, underlying authoritarian philosophy—your private property isn’t an inviolate civil liberty, but simply a part of the collectivist whole to be appropriated as the federal government imagines it requires.
Keating warned we could become a banana republic. Again, look at the outcome in Argentina when such ancient ills were visited upon its economy by a collectivist government in recent times:
http://s.wsj.net/article/SB120692466040375723.html
This is the course upon which the Rudd government has set our nation.
Lota stuck pigs here.
Yes Wes – I can see your point of view actually.
But isn’t it utterly galling that you know that AGW is a crock and that a carbon tax is flawed even if it was not.
Yet despite the contrarian dissent – the hundreds of angry emails, op-eds, anti-AGW blogs – it keeps on keeping on?
Might it be something in your style of approach and way of conducting business? I’ve said it before …. the look isn’t pretty.
Spot on, Luke. We denialist shills need to lift our game or the whole debate will get away from us.
Eli has given us the perfect example we can aspire to in the post above Luke’s.
Geoff: It started with selfish b’s way back in the UK and it continues with poms still whinging here and elsewhere. The ex RN emigrant types I worked with here weren’t so bad BTW. They knew when they were onto a good thing and stayed downunder.
Eyrie: I did not join the hard core in Trades Hall after learning to make my own arrangements wherever. And since two bob capitalists are a dime a dozen these days I know a big man when I see one.
That leaves me wondering about Christine cause this is a bloke’s place with Jen leading the charge. And Wes bless him thinks he owns something out there.
Dear Gavin,
Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions.
— G. K. Chesterton
You’re right Gavin, this is a bloke’s place. Helen contributes, but other regular female posters (Pinxi, Ann, Libby to name a few) don’t appear to contribute anymore, more’s the pity. Then again Gavin, maybe they are the smart ones eh?
One acre one vote, how 1820s.
“Below is the 2004 top 5 total CO2 emitters – China is now No.1:”
I know, wouldn’t it have been great if the Kyoto protocol had been taken seriously and we had a new, low emission infrastructure in place to sell to the Indians and the Chinese. However, due to political fear and the spoiling actions of people like you, Kyoto was trashed and reduced to a mostly innefectual agreement on paper. I hope you are all proud of yourselves. My children will suffer because of people like you.
Christine: Don’t be frustrated by the m/f ratios in cyber space discussions. Since I got into chats way back it probably hasn’t changed much. Be aware too some of us back then used a fem ID to confuse the issue. It reduced some of the flaming, other attacks and was quite useful on ebay for certain lines like girls vintage toys (swapped two words; vintage /girls).
As I write it seems my CD collection is top heavy with female vocal albums. I’m also aware that people in govt advisory positions are likely to be 50/50 now. Blog space must catch up hey. I can’t do the consulting* forever (with reference to the wider community).
Wes ole mate; I’m very content just knowing the other half.
“Eli has given us the perfect example we can aspire to in the post above Luke’s.”
It’s the same old game that’s been played here since I turned up. Ignore all the evidence that doesn’t fit in with your views, then abuse people instead. When they respond in kind, say “Ohhh, look, he’s abusing me”. Lift your game, the standard of response to science is pathetic here.
Eli, just so you know, it was a joke about the per hectare emissions. I’d be quite happy for the Chinese to have 10 times my per capita emissions.
SJT, you’re a crackup mate!