Climate sense
That’s the cost/benefit analysis of a price on carbon in Australia, as Bob Carter points out in a letter to The Australian this morning:
OUR new Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, says that his role is to provide accurate information to the public about climate change. (Letters, 15/2).
Perhaps he might start by answering the two most critical questions that taxpayers have in mind.
The first is how many degrees of warming will be averted by a cut in Australian CO2 emissions of, say, 20 per cent by 2020. Second, what extra costs, including all flow-through costs, will be imposed on an average family by the taxation strategy that is aimed at producing such a cut. Available estimates indicate that the answers to these questions are: (i) less than one one-thousandth of a degree Celsius by 2020; and (ii) more than $2000 per family of four per year.
Australian battlers, on whom the extra costs will impinge the most, are unlikely to view this as a good public policy option, and if Flannery has more policy-favourable figures in mind, then now might be a good time to share them with us.
Bob Carter, Townsville, Qld
Seems like great value, doesn’t it?
Australian Climate Madness 
The amount of money doesn’t matter to those when it’s coming out of someone else’s pocket.
It’s incredible that any country would commit economic SUICIDE on the altar of completely, totally FALSE science…see who’s poised to get rich (or RICHER) with schemes…
Bob Carter is bang on the money with his comments, as always. I was going to suggest that he take over from Flannery but I don’t think Bob would want to bother himself with that circus.
There is no end to this stupidity..
Well, look on the bright side, it’s better value than the $25,000 per Hybrid Camry produced so far the green car fund subsidised. Or whatever horrendous celsius-saved-per-solar-panel-rebate value the state governments have been giving away.
If the Gillard government would only look at this CO2 emissions issue in the proper context, she would realise that her concern about CO2 emissions from human activity is much ado about nothing.
It’s estimated that human activity contributes up to 9 giga tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. But when compared to the amount of CO2 contributed into to the atmosphere each year from natural sources (e.g. animals and bacteria; rotting vegetation; volcanic activity; oceans), our 9 giga tons only represents between half of one percent and two percent of the total CO2 that enters the atmosphere each year from all sources.
So what does this mean?
It means that the contribution of CO2 into the atmosphere each year from human activity is immaterial. It is statistically insignificant. It means that even if the planet were to completely rid itself of the human race, it would have no discernible impact. Yes, it’s an inconvenient truth, but the truth, nevertheless.
So the question begs, why then would any intelligent politician want to inflict so much economic pain, for absolutely no gain, by introducing a carbon tax? It simply does not make any sense… unless, of course, it’s for one reason only… a convenient major source of additional government revenue.
Correct.
It’s a SUPER convenient major source of additional government revenue.
Think about it. This is the perfect tax.
It’s effectively a tax on living and BREATHING.
And sheep eyed fools are lining up in droves to pay it….
Renewable Energy (Wind & Solar) Myths Tidbit #1:
Every Megawatt of Solar Photovoltaic (PV) or wind energy capacity installed requires that power companies install a DUPLICATE Megawatt of natural gas turbine power as a back-up for when the Sun or wind vary or fail. NO ONE ever discusses this huge, unjustified extra cost to consumers because power companies have been intimidated into silence by laws Dictating that these companies put increasing percentages of Renewable Energy on their grid up to the limit of grid instability, 15% by 2015. In Pennsylvania, USA that law is HB-2405.
Renewable Energy (Wind & Solar) Myths Tidbit #2 — PA HB-2405 also mandates insane increasing percentages of “carbon sequestration” based on the Myth that CO2 is causing a Global Warming Crisis. By 2029, 90% of all CO2 emitted from power plants that started up after 1/1/2009.
I recall in the US frontier, when politicains used to get up to all sorts of shennnigans, they were tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.
Perhaps its time to bring back some common sense methods to make people sit up and take notice that people refuse to be shat on from a great height anymore.