EARLIER this week the Australian Senate passed the Clean Energy Bill and the associated 18 other Bills that set out the carbon pricing mechanism due to come into effect from July 1, 2012. The so-called big polluters will need to reduce or offset their emissions from that date.
One potential mechanism for offsetting emissions is by buying Kyoto compliant carbon units from overseas.
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) established under the Kyoto Protocol is a cornerstone of the existing international greenhouse-gas emissions-trading scheme. It allows emissions to be offset by investing in schemes, for example hydroelectric power and wind farms, in developing countries. But the schemes have to be certified.
About one-fifth of existing Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) are registered in India, and certified, but they may nevertheless be non-compliant.
That’s according to a recent article in the journal Nature that reported on a 2008 diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks.
The situation may have improved, but the Nature article suggests it may have actually gotten worst. Then again the United Nations own validation and registration process for the CDMs, like Kyoto itself, is fairly arbitrary and bureaucratic and not particularly focused on emissions reductions.
Now the carbon tax legislation is through the Australian parliament the Australian Regulator will start to auction floating priced carbon units, based at least in part on CDMs. In addition to buying carbon units in the auction process, secondary markets and derivative markets will likely also develop in Australia also linked in to the international greenhouse-gas trading system.
So does this in effect mean Australia will soon be linked in to a type of ‘subprime’ UN compliant carbon trading scheme?
********
Australia: Carbon tax/pricing mechanism approved – what needs to be done to prepare for it? By Fiona Melville And Jo Garland
http://www.utilityproducts.com/news/2011/11/1538624264/australia-carbon-tax-pricing-mechanism-approved-what-needs-to-be-done-to-prepare-for-it.html
Clean-energy credits tarnished: Wikileaks reveals most Indian claims are ineligible. By Quirin Schiermeier.
Nature, Volume 477, pages 517-518
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
This idiot subprime UN market will be the greatest con part of this AGW mitigation con.
We’ll pay billions every year for a tiny component of fresh air and receive a grubby, corrupt and worhless certificate that let’s OZ use our own coal.
That’s the same coal that we’re exporting at 3 times more than our domestic use every year to places like China, India, Japan, Korea etc who will pay sweet FA in carbon credits to use as they please.
These corrupt credits will cost us around 3 billion p.a by 2020 and blow out to 57 billion p.a by 2050. Every single dollar will be wasted, guaranteed.
Of course the climate and temp won’t change by a jot because the developing world will emit co2 at 20 times the rate of the developed world for decades to come.
Just to get a taste of China’s soaring co2 emissions. From 2000 to 2009 China’s emissions went from 2.8 billion tonnes to 7.7 billion tonnes or an increase of 4.9 billion tonnes in 10 years.
Yet Steffen/Brown/Wong/ Gillard/Combet etc claim China will be the great green hope of the world. These people are completely troppo and beyond hope.
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=90&pid=44&aid=8&cid=CH,&syid=1990&eyid=2009&unit=MMTCD
Ah, subprime markets; they are shonky even when anchored by something which is worth something, like houses mortgaged to people who could never afford them.
But just imagine when they are based on something which has no utility other than a completely bogus offset to a byproduct of productivity, CO2. On this basis the CO2 credit starts life already in the red because it is putting out of business or adding to the cost of something which has value.
The carbon tax and the ETS is just another derivative that will be used to fleece the masses again.Penny Wong is on record as saying that a Carbon Tax is not a magic bullet.
Prof William K Black was US financial regulator in the 1990’s.He said that in 90% of cases in Fannie and Freddie, there was mortgage fraud.The regulators have the evidence to prosecute but not one person has been charged.The entire system has been hijacked by corruption and self interest yet Occupy Protestors get arrested and labelled as fringe dwellers.
The evidence is there and a class action would see many get their super and pension funds back.The money did not disappear.All that needs happen is the masses to rise up and insist that the regulators do their job and implement the law.
I found this amusing:
“An easily understandable explanation of derivative markets:
Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar.
To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed in a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).
Word gets around about Heidi’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy, and as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit.
By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most-consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi’s gross sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic vice president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets, and increases Heidi’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS, and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets.
Naïve investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.
One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi’s bar. He so informs Heidi. Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons. But being unemployed alcoholics, they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations, she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and her eleven employees lose their jobs.
Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS, and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.
Suppliers of Heidi’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with not only having to write off her bad debt but also with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations. Her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, which immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.
Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses, and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multibillion dollar, no-strings-attached cash infusion from their cronies in the federal government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Heidi’s bar.”
cohers,
You just summarised the economic system that most of the western world currently operates under.
When we add the horrendous compliance cost to both the govt [taxpayer] and the manufacturer/business for absolutely no gain, the philosophy of paying half the population to dig holes and the other half to fill them in, by comparison, has merit.
Wasn’t the shonky manipulation of the sub prime market a major catalyst in the GFC?
That one at least had a semblance of ‘bricks and mortar’ underpinning it.
It still collapsed.
What on earth is going to ‘underpin’ this one?
Same thing I guess?
Tax payers?
The more sub-prime an “asset” becomes, the more it needs rigorous policing by govt regulation.
Prime assets are self evident but ACO2 OTOH is arguably the least evident asset ever invented.
It makes tulips look like gold.
The chances of this degenerating into rorts and corruption are so high as to be almost certain.
Creating a bubble that will take everyone’s savings with it.
Why would a govt that purports to support the battler, put their future in such jeopardy?
Well it’s being called ‘carbon pollution’ by our politicians.
Wanna invest in some pollution folks?
How do you put a value on ‘pollution’?
Done right, CDM could actually be a good investment.
It turns out that developing nations are net emitters of CO2, while the US and Western Europe are net absorbers of CO2. http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/japanese-satellites-say-3rd-world-owes-co2-reparations-to-the-west/
This means that a good way to reduce CO2 emissions would be to invest in, say, nat gas power plants in Africa. And widely affordable electricity would make a substantial contribution to human welfare. In turn, that would generate wealth and a return on investment.
Trouble is, the money will most likely be spent (rather than invested) on wind farms in developed nations which are not part of ‘the problem’, a ‘problem’ which is illusory anyhow.
Bob Tinsdale shows why we are wasting billions and generations of time trying to fix the climate.
Luke, Gav etc are in raptures over the IPCC climate models of course, but Tinsdale shows the SST actually follows the ENSO and oscillation cycles and not levels of atmospheric co2.
I just hope some of the better Aussie brains look at this post and try and understand it and then further explain it via the blogs to a wider audience.
Cohenite should be able to make a start by explaining here on Jen’s site whether he basically agrees with Bob or not.
We must remember in this case we are looking at 71% of the planet’s surface, not only the 29% of the land surface.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/12/the-texas-enso-bassmaster-classic/#more-51051
Sorry but above should read Tisdale not Tinsdale.
Neville, Bob Tisdale does good work; he has been banging on about ENSO as one of the dominant climate factors for some time; what this means is that the ocean drives world temperature; an early empirical paper which showed that is here:
http://tenaya.ucsd.edu/~cayan/Pubs/60_White_JGeoPhyRes_2001.pdf
Some subsequent modelling also points this way:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2007a.pdf
The latter paper covers its backside to some extent by suggesting that the oceans may have partially warmed due to anthropogenic influences; that is a theme which had some currency recently:
http://landshape.org/enm/no-clue-on-global-warming-and-el-nino/#disqus_thread
The idea that ocean based effects like ENSO which drive the world climate are themselves driven by AGW is preposterous because backradiation cannot heat the ocean.
Cuckoos are very much in action at present. They lay an egg in an unsuspecting bird’s nest at every opportunity and the nesting birds, while knowing this to be a foreign object that will destroy their yet unborn children and possibly their own future, nurture this egg with every breath.
It is not until this monster they have nearly killed themselves to raise eventually flies that it dawns on them what idiots they have been.
Does this remind you of anything?
The AGW egg laid by the IPCC seems to have been closely modelled on the Cuckoo principle.
Maybe humans will never wake up to this scam because, unlike the Cuckoo chick, this bird will never fly and we can feed it forever.
Bolt and Steffen probably come out of this even stevens or 50/50. But if Bolt had more than these few minutes and was able to cover the wider spectrum of AGW, more would have been conceded by Steffen I’m sure.
With more time the sheer stupidity of Gillard’s co2 tax and mitigating AGW could have been explored and Bolt would have gotten the upper hand.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/from_todays_bolt_report4/
Neville
I just watched it on his site and I have the feeling that he wants to run a more “middle” of the road
programme, so that he gets people on his show.
Now that MTR is faltering and probably News Ltd is under a new direction he needs to keep his options open.
Still you are right, with a bit more time and further digging, Steffen had nowhere to go but admit that they were, on at least the predictions, wrong.
I can’t understand this whole business any more, I’m reading reports and papers telling me one thing and then bang, some one like Steffen comes along and denies, the very factual observations
that those reports were based on.
Who is right and who is wrong?
Bolt’s talk with Steffen was very revealing.
Steffen claimed: 1/ OHC was increasing. 2/ SLR was 3.2mm per yr and increasing over the last two decades. 3/ Ice was reducing.
1 and 2 are definitely wrong and 3 was not discussed in any detail [certainly not Antarctia] also he said Judith Curry was confused when she said there was a consensus that atmospheric temps had plateaued for the last decade as she hadn’t taken into account the above three aspects.
Good for Bolt and the sceptics to get Steffen on his show but as the executive director of the ANU Climate Change Institute his claims were very unconvincing.
Spangled, I agree with you.
Steffen is partly in denial, also he has admitted he does not keep up with the latest measurements. However, possibly he is starting to lay the ground to keep his job (or a new direction for his climate group at ANU) when the AGW scam is exposed after the present government is ousted
Good morning. Is there any objectivity at all on this site? What if there was just a 5% chance that the climate scientists are right? I wonder what it would take to change opinion. Politics, emotion and Gina Rinehart-supported Bolt aside; don’t you think it’s worth incorporating the ‘what if’ into thinking? Climate science is inherently complex – its appropriate to question but not to close your mind!
What if we are slipping into a mini ice age?
Let’s not close our minds to what has come before and will again. CO2 does not cause global warming.
Marc seems nice, hope he returns.
Marc,
You are right. The precautionary principle should always be considered but the same precautionary principle should always be used to weigh it.
Marc, when you have had an open mind for 15 years, & thought about, & followed the subject for that long, you start to gather a bit of information.
When you find that information from peer reviewed papers is totally different to the stuff being fed to us via the compliant media by government ministers, & their well paid activists, you do start to be able to see a smelly fish when when one hits you in the face.
When satellite photos show increasing ice in the antarctic, & peer reviewed studies show the same thing, you start to smell a rat when the usual suspects, [the IPCC, CSIRO, & the ANU] tell us that warming & ice loss is accelerating, even some of us dummies wake up & see we’re being conned.
Time to read more sites like this, where information is qualified, & counter arguments [like yours, & qualified research] are welcome, & published.
Enough reading will cancel your 5% doubt, & you’ll become a more able reader. You will develop the ability to see through the carefully crafted misinformation to the truth. Be careful, you may have to change your whole philosophy, as you gain insight. You’ll find it applied to much you have previously taken as fact, with just a little misinformation, rather than the total con AGW has become.
So Marc, have you got a solution that comes at an affordable price? You will be happy to spend $57b buying “permits” from offshore to meet our commitments? You seriously dont see how open to fraud this all is?…infact europe has already shown how open to fraud “carbon trading” is.
With an open mind you can only reach one conclusion, the world is throwing around platitudes and the sciencxe is far from settled.
Hasbeen, being science-trained and now working in the field of environmental science and management, being able to question and to approach an issue with a ‘principally’ open mind is critical – noting that one always carries some sort of bias. It is disappointing however, that the science and scientists are so poorly treated and disrespected in this broader space. Science and the interpretation of science should not lend itself to closing the mind off to one perspective or another, regardless of how much is (selectively) purported or read. The testing or challenging of a theory is an ongoing task, which is what science is about. Scientists, in the majority, will freely admit, and publish, when they are wrong or there has been unexpected results generated. Currently, we can’t deny the fact that by far the majority of the scientific community supports the scientific theory of human-forced climate change.
Marc
You write, “Scientists, in the majority, will freely admit, and publish, when they are wrong…”
So they should. But they don’t.
Consider the following article by Jennifer based on a peer-reviewed journal article she recently had published…
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12719
Jon Brodie, Norm Duke and others won’t admit any fault. WWF is still pushing the junk science and refusing to comment on Jennifer’s allegations of fraud.
Can you help?
Denis, as I indicated, bias is within us all. On both sides of the argument you will find strong bias that curtails objectivity. Fortunately, extreme bias is in the minority. What I have come to experience with this site is that Jenny posts items that supports hers and likeminded individual’s points of view, where as other material is conveniently overlooked and not posted. ‘Our’ bias ensures that ‘we’ behave in a way that reinforces ‘our’ beliefs, often regardless of the science. Being honest with ‘yourself’ about ‘your’ personal bias is very important and frees ‘you’ up to question both sides of the argument.
Cut the crap Marc; talk is cheap; put up your proof of AGW.
cohenite. With your response, I can comfortably rest my case.
OT – In a study of cyclic behaviour of the Sun, Russian scientists now predict 100 years of cooling. IceAgeNow reports that these are not just any scientists. This forecast comes from astrophysicist Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the Russian segment of the International Space Station, and head of Space Research of the Sun Sector at the Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2011/11/12/100-years-of-cooling-global-cooling-habibullo-abdussamatov-climate-change-solar-minimum/
The only case you have is between your ears.
Where is Luke? Maybe he is sick and Marc is filling in for him?
Well, if Marc is filling in for luke he is doing a bad job; sanctimonious without the wit or the occasional bit of useful information.
I asked him a direct question and he went all “case closed”; very troll-like.
Marc my question to you is ” can you understand very simple maths?” Forget about whether you believe in CAGW or not, the fact is there is nothing Aussie’s can do to change anything now or in the future.
You see even if we waste billions and generations of time trying to reduce co2 emissions the developing world are replacing those emissions but at a much faster rate.
What is it you don’t understand about these very simple facts?
I procrastinated long and hard as to whether to respond to the nonsense retorts and then provide an exhaustive list of web links to ‘support the case’, which would not be referenced any way – a pointless exercise.
However, I will only provide one. A good read and I recommend particular attention is paid to the issue of ‘threat’ –
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20111311-22831.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencealert-latestnews+%28ScienceAlert-Latest+Stories%29
Cheers
Marc,
Those “nonsense retorts” were straight forward requests for you to provide evidence.
If the best you can come up with is a long winded philosophical ramble from Lewandowsky to prove a specific hypothesis, your case is not rested, it is knackered!
Lewandowsky’s rubbish has been dealt with here:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2011/01/david-stockwell-and-anthony-cox-reply-to-lewandowsky-and-his-lies-dam-lies-and-statistics/
…this site is that Jenny posts items that supports hers and likeminded individual’s points of view’….
That’s generally true of most blogs. It will be your job, as new resident troll, is to sway us to your way of thinking.
Welcome.
Friends – closed minds can be opened – question everything! Best wishes.
You just got here, give us a break.
Alright Marc, tell us how you would mitigate CAGW?
Good question Neville but is there really such a thing as CAGW?
The term ‘catastrophic’ is subjective and also needs to be referenced to a time frame. A major geological event such as an earth quake, which happens over a very short period of time is indeed catastrophic. I don’t think catastrophic can be legitimately applied to global warming.
The capacity of humans, as a species, amongst all other species on this planet, to adapt will be the defining factor as to how well we develop and prosper into the future.
“I don’t think catastrophic can be legitimately applied to global warming.
The capacity of humans, as a species, amongst all other species on this planet, to adapt will be the defining factor as to how well we develop and prosper into the future.”
There you have it; case closed; let’s all go home.
Anyone notice on The Bolt Report last Sunday that Steffen answered a question with the statement along the lines that the point Andrew Bolt made about a lull in warming voer the decade didn’t take into consideration ALL the temperature record areas?
I DID!
I shouted at my TV
“WHAT? YOUR mob are spruiking the BEST results, which apparently omitted the OCEANS!”
Warmist agenda”DO as I say not as I do!”
‘….to adapt will be the defining factor as to how well we develop and prosper into the future.’
Adaptation is the word, through warm times and cool, homo sapiens developed because of climate change. Starting from around two million years ago when our ape ancestors lost their habitat and went out onto the Savanna.
We have had a couple of close shaves over the years, almost becoming extinct, but we have managed to survive and prosper…seven billion strong.
AGW is a complete fabrication and we have probably passed the Modern Climate Optimum, so we should think about Bob Carter’s Plan B.
Does anyone know if industrial CO2 is beneficial for agriculture?
Turn your back on the lads and they’re like dogs returning to their vomit. CAGW of course is just sceptic meme speak. Marc – they’re all just shat that the Arctic keeps melting and like drongos failing to see that while Antarctic sea ice is expanding (as it should) land ice is falling into the drink freshening the water as it goes.
And yes humanity almost became ape arses in an earlier run-in with a mega-drought during one of those lovely warm periods.
EG, the 3 main types of CO2 are based on isotopic differences, C12, C13 and the rare C14. All are consumed by plants but cynaobacteria, the most abundant plant on the planet prefers C13 which may explain the depletion of C13 relative to C12 in the atmosphere; this change in the ration between C12/C13 is supposedly one of the markers for claiming that ACO2 is the main cause of the increase in CO2 levels; it is not; see part 10 of segalstad:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm
10 out of 10 Marc for understanding that adaptation is the only game in town. We’ve been doing it for an awful long time and guess what we won’t be changing the climate from Canberra anytime soon.
Just a pity Juliar and her band of numbskulls are going to waste billions for a zero return and the poor taxpayer will have to pick up the bill.
Lukie Luv,
CAGW IS what it is all about or you’re a bigger denier than anyone.
Have a read of:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/11/the-chemistry-of-ocean-ph-and-acidification/
And were you by any chance born during a drought when Mum and the cows all dried up and the chooks went off the lay?
Thanks cohers.
CAGW is sceptic meme speak.
Changing dryland cropping sequences from 6 break even, 3 make money, 3 lose money to a less favourable risk profile while not the big C (catastrophic) is a significant pisser if you’re a dryland farmer.
But anyway lads – shouldn’t you be somewhere watching the latest wiggle in some arcane data set (HEY THIS IS THE BIG TREND DEPARTURE POINT RIGHT NOW – I TELL YOU !!) or worshipping the latest solar cycle crap from the Tajikistan Journal of Chook Farming. Conference proceedings here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlr90NLDp-0
As for Bob’s Plan B – hahahahahahahaha …. good one ….
Anyway – looks like Labor’s fortunes are back and Abbott has done a runner overseas.
AND and and did I read that
And did I read that Greg Hunt said the opposition won’t be repealing the Carbon Farming Initiative but will be enhancing it.
“And did I read that Greg Hunt said the opposition won’t be repealing the Carbon Farming Initiative but will be enhancing it.”
The Climate Sceptics will repeal it.
Who ? unelectable swill Check out the candidates – a veritable Dad’s Army of codgers. And won’t they now have defected to the Tea Party anyway?
Dad’s Army eh; as opposed to the Green’s “Are You Being Served”, I suppose.
Interesting outcome from Bolt’s interview with Steffen is the admission that our recent drought was not caused by AGW and Wong , Flannery etc were wrong to claim otherwise.
So to extend this AGW argument a little further why hasn’t there been a continuation of the warming for the last 10 or more years.
Also problems with SST increases, OHC and SLR for quite a while. So where is Trenberth’s missing heat hiding? Perhaps it’s just buggered off to outer space and hopefully taken part of the AGW argument with it?
Then there’s the problem of a very quiet old Sol to contemplate.
Perhaps the next IPCC report might reflect more commonsense and science of the physical world and less reliance on those messy climate models. I guess only time will tell.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/14/ipcc-draft-climate-change-signals-expected-to-be-relatively-small-over-coming-20-30-years/#more-51153
BTW this time I’m sure Donna and her army of supporters will swoop on the next report quickly and dissect it line by line for exaggerations, lies, poor research and clueless stupidity.
But I’m sure the dummies understand that this time groups will be waiting with baseball bats to expose any underhand nonsense in a matter of weeks after publication.
Luke is back.
Marc is gone.
hmmmm?
sp
Luke is back. Marc is gone. hmmmm?
Don’t think so sp, Marc is a verbose wanker,
Luke gets to the point decisively, sometimes nasty, often wrong but he doesn’t beat around the bush!
Interesting that the Climate Sceptics would campaign against the bipartisan support for the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) when the result of that research would be better soil health (increased organic matter), reduced loss of valuable nitrogenous fertiliser (costs big bucks), improved savanna burning (improved biodiversity from reducing high intensity late wet season fires), improved nutrition and methane metabolism from grazing ruminants, culling feral camel populations, positive biodiversity dividends from riparian tree planting for water quality and a more connected landscape with a few more trees. And a carbon neutral razing industry with vegetation offsets on their least performing land types. And scientific objectivity oversight from the DOIC (Domestic Offsets Integrity Committee).
And oh – reduced national greenhouse emissions should you believe in such things.
As usual a negative Abbott-like spoiling agenda.
Luke has exposed our delema – carbon in the soil is good. If someone can talk taxpayers into helping us put it there good.
If someone can create another market for grain, food for fuel … Er sorry my moral standard has been exceded and I’m not going to play.
I’ve watched my neighbours waste lots of taxpayers money on PV panels and resisted the temptation.
Doug
Even if your soil is in better condition with improve infiltration, soil structure, water holding capacity and cation exchange?
From experience “goodies” obtained on false premisis are risky. Somewhere down the track it’ll come back and bite you.
Getting involved will be a complicated process and probably open to rorts.
They are buying votes. Not a good start.
As it hapens a lot of farmers are getting on with it without the bribes.
Doug
Well I don’t think you’d have a complex process to approve sequestration options via something like the DOIC process if they were “buying votes”. Why not make it much easier?
Complex yes.
Rorts? hmmm hard given ongoing reporting mechanisms involved.
Is it for everyone – maybe not.
Any suggestion that Marc is a sock puppet is most unlikely.
‘Interesting that the Climate Sceptics would campaign against the bipartisan support for the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI)…
Valid point and it’s a dilemma for us who don’t accept the theory that CO2 is causing global warming.
El Gordo – hey I thought you all believed CO2 was a greenhouse gas and had at least 1C in it for 2 x CO2? Or like typical sceptics have you changed your mind on Thursday?
No Luke,
I disagree.
The typical sceptics are questioning why the ‘warmists’ are refusing to change their minds.
The typical sceptics are asking questions and noticing that there are so many variables that it is unlikely at this stage we can prove conclusively that man made C02 is having a major influence on the climate or that mankind can actually manage the global climate or that we should be trying to do so when the evidence is not conclusive.
Whether we agree or disagree on levels is not relevant to the basic difference in idealogy.
No one is arguing that carbon sequestration is not a good idea. It is the way it will be implemented that is the problem.
I sent the following in response to The Australian’s editorial on 9 November. I don’t know if it was published, as I’ve been in a media-free zone for 11 days:
Global temperatures have been flat for at least ten years in spite of rising CO2 emissions, and there is no convincing cost-benefit analysis to justify emissions reductions. Leaving that aside, in principle effective market mechanisms would be the most efficient way of reducing emissions (“Trading scheme is a viable method of cutting carbon,” 9/11). However, what is proposed as Australia’s scheme develops is that we should send many billions of dollars offshore every year for alleged reductions elswhere which in most cases will have to be taken on faith. No one will be able to say “Here are the million tonnes of non-emitted CO2 you paid for.” There is evidence that existing schemes have been heavily rorted, and it will be almost impossible for Australia to verify that all paid-for reductions have in fact occurred.
Given that the major supporter of carbon trading, the EU, is in dire straits, and that major emitters such as the US, India and China will not take meaningful action, we would be best served shelving all emissions-reduction policies at least until a strong warming trend, demonstrably related to human activity rather than natural causes, re-emerges. That may be a long time a’coming.