Carbon Tax Legislation: Viv Forbes’ Submission

THE nineteen bills on “Australia’s Clean Energy Future Legislation” are listed here:

http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jscacefl/bills.htm

Written submissions can be emailed to the Joint Select Committee at:

jscacefl@aph.gov.au

The government’s advice on preparing submissions is here:

http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/documnts/howsub.htm

You have just a few days to do something… submissions close on September 22.  Why the rush?

According to Viv Forbes from the Carbon Sense Coalition:

“WE should leave government and opposition in no doubt that a large and vocal constituency will never cease its opposition. None of the carbon credit assets, the carbon trading profits or the alternative energy handouts will ever be safe.  No politician who votes to introduce or retain these bills will ever feel safe. We will record the voting and work ceaselessly to remove the guilty.

“The points below will form the basis of our submission to the Select Committee on the Carbon Taxes. Please add your voices in your own way in your own words, long or short. Please feel free to use our ideas or words – there is no copyright on the words or the facts.

There is no evidence that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere controls the climate. There is strong evidence that global temperature controls the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere via the absorption or emission of the gas from the vast oceans.

There is no evidence that the current gentle warm era is unusual or harmful. There have been warmer periods in the past and all have seen a profusion of animal and plant life.

In the broad sweep of climate change it is clear that life on earth has far more to fear from global cooling than from global warming. It is the ice ages that cause massive extinctions. In the long history of life on earth, global warming has never been a threat to the biosphere.

There is significant evidence that solar cycles have a notable effect on global temperature and rainfall. The carbon tax will have no effect on solar cycles.

Many of the climate scares, such as loss of corals and rising sea levels, are inventions or exaggerations. Corals have survived millions of years, have adapted to rising and falling sea levels, and have moved north and south as earth’s temperatures changed. Sea levels have been rising slowly for thousands of years, long before steam engines were invented, and current changes are very gentle and not unusual.

It is nonsense to call carbon dioxide a pollutant. It is better called “The Gas of Life” as it provides the major source of food for all plant life which in turn supports all animal life. Current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are lower than they have been many times in the past and significantly lower than is optimal for all life.

Every molecule of carbon dioxide released by burning coal today was once part of the atmosphere at a time of prolific growth of the huge forests that formed the coal in the first place, millions of years ago. Burning the coal just recycles the natural carbon and other minerals back to the biosphere where the next generation of plants can use them. Coal is as natural and “green” as the forests from which it came.

Carbon dioxide has zero ability to produce heat in itself. It does not burn like carbon, coal or wood – it is a harmless by-product of burning these fuels. It is not a source of radioactive heat like uranium. All it can do is redirect some of the heat exchanged between the sun and the earth.

Carbon dioxide is a colourless gas generally invisible to most heat and light radiation. However, during the day, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can temporarily interrupt and redirect some of the heat flowing between the sun and the earth (generally keeping the surface cooler than it would have otherwise been). During the night, carbon dioxide again interrupts some of the heat escaping from the surface to space, thus keeping nights warmer than they would have otherwise been. The net effect on average global temperature is negligible and beneficial to the comfort of life on the surface of the earth.

The climate of the globe is always changing and natural disasters have been a regular feature of earth history for as long as geological and historical records exist. To suggest that man is suddenly causing every disturbing weather event is just superstitious scare mongering.

To believe that a tax on some Australian businesses which emit carbon dioxide will have the slightest effect on world climate is ludicrous.

It is obvious that the glib targets for 5-20% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 (in spite of rising populations) can NEVER be actually achieved without a massive depression of economic activity. A fake reduction may be achieved by forcing Australian companies to pay billions of dollars to foreign carbon sharps for promises to cut their production of carbon dioxide. In most cases, this will NOT result in any reduction in emissions – at best it will produce largely worthless promises to not increase emissions in future. At worst it will be a massive fraud on the Australian taxpayers and consumers. In all cases, it will see a massive transfer of Australian wealth to foreign countries for zero climate benefit.

It is false to claim that Australia lags the world in waging war on carbon. The Kyoto Protocol is dead. Only western Europe and New Zealand are moving with us on this suicidal path. However New Zealand hopes to cope without too much pain using their abundant hydro and geothermal energy. Moreover, most European countries have access to significant hydro, nuclear or geothermal energy. Australia has NONE of these advantages. Our current and future energy needs depend solely on coal and gas, the very things that Bob Brown’s green extremists want to tax and litigate to death. It is an act of national economic suicide to attempt to destroy our ability to generate low cost energy.

The computerised climate models so beloved by the UN IPCC and the CSIRO have never made successful predictions and there is no reason to believe they will ever mimic the complexity of factors affecting climate at any point.

Even if the warming projections from the scare forecasters were accepted, the minor changes in temperature envisaged are small compared to the actual daily and annual variations in temperature experienced at any point on earth. The difference in average temperature between Brisbane and Sydney or Melbourne is more than the worst global warming scares. The temperature change that occurs while we eat breakfast is probably greater than any global warming that could be caused by carbon dioxide. The idea that laughably small temperature changes will somehow do untold damage to life on earth is ludicrous.

It is obvious that there is no consensus on the science supporting the alarmist climate models. A very large and growing group of scientists with relevant knowledge or experience is actively challenging the alarmist models. They will not go away.

Wind and solar energy can never provide reliable electric power at a cost the consumers can afford or Australian businesses can use in a competitive world. They provide unreliable and intermittent power, at a high cost, and also need massive investment in backup power facilities and new transmission lines.

Our large fleets of cars, trucks, trains, ships, dozers and aircraft are not going to run on sunbeams and sea breezes – they need coal, diesel, petrol or gas to keep moving.

If they stop moving, our cities will starve in a few days.

Subsidising and mandating the use of ethanol produced from food crops is a foolish policy with no benefits for the climate or the environment.

The suggestion that emissions from farm livestock are net additions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is just plain wrong. Every molecule of carbon dioxide emitted by livestock is taken from the grass and grains the animal eats, which in turn is taken from the atmosphere by growing plants using photosynthesis and energy from the sun. It is a continual carbon cycle that has been going in since ancient auroch cattle roamed Europe, bison and antelopes roamed the American grassland, wild herds of grazing animals roamed free over all the African plains, and kangaroos and bushfires regularly harvested the Australian grasslands.

In the carbon cycle, trees are just like animals – temporary storehouses for carbon. They are not some special stand-alone life form to be worshipped unconditionally and subsidised thoughtlessly. Every molecule of carbon dioxide that is “captured” when the tree is growing creates the leaves, bark and wood and is stored there. While growing, the tree will shed bark, leaves and branches. These will fall to the ground and decompose, releasing the carbon to the soil, to bacteria or back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Eventually, the tree itself will die or be used for timber structures. Eventually all of the tree will rot or be burnt and every carbon atom that was taken from the atmosphere will be end up back in the atmosphere. The same cyclic process occurs for all plant life, including food crops, grasses and algae. All that varies is the time for the complete cycle to occur.

The criticism that Australia leads the world in per capital emissions of carbon dioxide is a silly conclusion from nonsense calculations. Australians are very large suppliers of coal, minerals, food and fibre to consumers all over the world. We have a massive transport network to move this food, fibre, energy and minerals to our own capitals and to world consumers. Those consumers should be the ones responsible for the emissions generated by a handful of productive Australians to produce our flood of raw materials. Moreover our grasslands, rivers, oceans and soils are net absorbers of carbon dioxide. A fair and more complete calculation would show that Australia is a net absorber of carbon dioxide.

Viv Forbes
Chairman
The Carbon Sense Coalition
www.carbon-sense.com