Garnaut report "an assault on democracy"

1 June, 2011 by

Undemocratic

So says Tony Abbott. I think he may be right, since giving the power to levy taxes or change tax rates to an unelected body sounds pretty dangerous to me:

TONY Abbott has rejected the latest climate change report from economist Ross Garnaut as an assault on democracy, warning that it proposes to give a committee of unelected appointees the power to set tax rates.

“There is a developing democratic deficit here,” he said. “First of all the Prime Minister wasn’t upfront with the Australian public before the election. Now the idea that taxes in this country should effectively be set by people who are outside the parliament, and who are not accountable to the people, I think, is just odd.

“This just goes to show how out of control the government is on this whole climate change question.”

Later, the Opposition Leader continued his attack in question time, noting that the report said: “Australian households will ultimately bear the full cost of a carbon price”.

“So how can (the Prime Minister) continue to maintain that her tax only makes big polluters pay?” Mr Abbott asked parliament.

“Who pays? Big polluters or households? The truth is: households.” (source)

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Garnaut tells the truth about a carbon price

31 May, 2011 by

The truth will out

Just one line from his latest report is enough:

“Australian households will ultimately bear the full cost of a carbon price.” (source)

So it isn’t the big polluters, is it Julia and Greg?

Lies, lies and more lies from our deceitful government. When will it ever end?

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Labor "at war" with Garnaut

2 April, 2011 by

Slapped down Garnaut

Add poor old Ross Garnaut to the list of who Labor is at war with: Greens, independents, the Opposition, the Australian people… It’s all shaping up for an epic battle.

ENERGY Minister Martin Ferguson has slapped down the government’s chief climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, flatly rejecting calls for more regulation on electricity markets and warning that mandatory renewable energy targets are pushing up power prices.

Mr Ferguson rejected Professor Garnaut’s claims that electricity price rises were a result of “gouging” by electricity generators.

The senior cabinet minister said electricity prices had risen because of costs in replacing ageing plants and he warned that prices would rise by 30 per cent in the next three years because of investment costs, a carbon price and the mandatory target for renewable energy generation.

Mr Ferguson and the Australian Energy Market Commission both warned that the government’s compulsory target of 20 per cent electricity generation from renewable sources by 2020 was coming at a “cost to the community” and could “challenge” the national electricity grid.

Professor Garnaut this week recommended coal-fired power electricity generators not be compensated for a carbon tax and that a new energy regulator be formed.

At an energy conference in Melbourne yesterday, Mr Ferguson said Professor Garnaut had a role in advising the multi-party climate change committee, which includes the Greens, but he “does not speak for the government, nor for the Ministerial Council on Energy”, which represents every government.

Mr Ferguson’s comments come as the Labor government fights with the Greens over “extreme” policies. (source)

And in another piece of breathtaking hypocrisy, as news leaks that the carbon tax could cost families over $600 a year, Labor has warned against a “scare campaign” on the cost to families, whilst at the exact same time conducting its own “scare campaign” on climate change:

In a joint statement, Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said the Government had not made final decisions on the starting price or how much people will be compensated.

“No final decisions on the starting price or assistance have been taken and therefore it is far too early to speculate on any potential price impacts,” the statement said.

“Until the final design and modelling have been settled, anyone who uses these figures to scare families about prices is engaging in a dishonest, misleading scare campaign. (source)

They should know. After all, Combet and Swan are the experts on dishonest, misleading scare campaigns.

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Garnaut: superficial, simplistic and naïve

31 March, 2011 by

Disconnected from reality

Ross Garnaut is pilloried again today from a number of quarters. After Tuesday’s nonsensical and frankly ludicrous claim that we should emulate China in our emissions reduction efforts, his grasp of the realities of a carbon tax on the economy seems non-existent. Miranda Devine:

WHEN the Gillard Government’s climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, isn’t busy having dinners with independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, he has been releasing umpteen papers on how to remake our economy.

His work has been damned by the energy industry as “undergraduate”, “simplistic”, “superficial” and “full of high-level principles that assume away” real-world problems.

The criticism doesn’t seem to have dimmed the professor’s enthusiasm for a carbon tax, even as polling this week shows public appetite ebbing with each passing day, with just 34 per cent of people declaring they support the tax.

But this week Garnaut slapped back at the power generators, claiming electricity price hikes higher than any on the planet are all their fault. He did not mention the role of rapacious state governments who have clawed out dividends for years and demanded expensive and inefficient green alternative energy sources.

And he ruled out compensation for energy companies who make sure our lights switch on and are complaining they will go belly-up under a carbon tax.

The boss of two small Latrobe Valley coal-fired power stations, which employ 140 people directly and 1000 people indirectly, told The Australian: “We have survived bushfires and floods, but we may not be able to survive Garnaut.” (source)

And The Australian weighs in as well:

JULIA Gillard’s chief climate change adviser has been lashed by the $120 billion energy sector, which says his latest advice is a risk to investment and could lead to a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against the government if followed.

As the opposition seized on Ross Garnaut’s latest report as evidence that Labor’s carbon policy would lead to brownouts and insufficient electricity production, the sector slammed it as “naive”, “commercially unsophisticated” and “undergraduate”.

The nation’s biggest private power producer, International Power Australia, urged the government to recognise the “shortcomings and dangers” of Professor Garnaut’s update on how the electricity sector should be treated under a carbon price.

The criticism comes as a confidential report to the former Keneally NSW government, obtained by The Australian, warns that consumers in the state face electricity bill increases of up to 27 per cent from July 1, in part because of the federal renewable energy target. (source)

That’s going to go down well in NSW… It is truly frightening that someone who is so clearly disconnected from economic reality is in charge of advising the Australian government on the effects of carbon pricing.

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Garnaut: China has carbon trading, so…

29 March, 2011 by

"Low carbon" China

See? Australia is lagging behind China in cutting emissions. Disgraceful. We must follow China’s lead and implement Julia and Greg’s wonderful carbon tax to cut our emissions from 1.3% of the global total to just a teensy-weensy bit less than 1.3%, at a cost of several billion dollars each year, which will be slugged mercilessly from the wallets of every family in Australia…, every year…, for ever…

CLIMATE change adviser Ross Garnaut says China is experimenting with carbon trading in a number of large cities because it knows that’s the cheapest way to reduce emissions.

The economist held talks today with the man responsible for China’s climate change policies, Xie Zhenhua, ahead of ministerial-level meetings.

Professor Garnaut said the emerging power was trialling carbon trading in five provinces and three cities – Tianjin, Shanghai and Beijing.

“The way China tends to do these things is they try them out, sometimes in different ways, and if they seem to be working they adopt them nationally,” Prof Garnaut told reporters, adding he wouldn’t presume what China’s next step would be.

“(But) they are experimenting with broader approaches like a carbon price because the economists in China as well as other places have worked out that’s a lower-cost way of doing things.”

Maybe we should copy China in other ways, like building a new coal fired power station every fortnight… no, wait. Laughably, even Greg Combet is citing China as a shining example of “tackling climate change”:

Mr Combet’s climate change department put out a briefing paper today, outlining the action China and other countries were taking to reduce emissions.

“Thirty-two countries and 10 US states already have emissions trading schemes in place,” the paper states. [24 of those countries are in the fraud-riddled EU ETS, aren’t they? And it’s nine US states now that New Hampshire has bailed out of the RGGI, isn’t it – Ed]

On China, it notes that Beijing’s latest 12-year plan speaks of an imperative for the country to establish a “green, low-carbon development concept”.

China’s new targets include:

  • increasing the proportion of non-fossil fuels in energy consumption to 11.4 per cent by 2015;
  • reducing energy per unit of GDP by 16 per cent by 2015;
  • reducing carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 17 per cent by 2015.

China? Low carbon? My aching sides. Of course, the “trick” to “hide the incline” is the magic words “per unit of GDP”. So let’s do the math, as our US friends would say. China is likely to have a GDP growth over the next four years of, say, approximately 9% per year, so if we take 2011 as a baseline 100 units of GDP, 2012 will be 109 units, 2013 will be 118.8 units, 2014 will be 129.5 units and 2015 will be approximately 141 units. So reducing emissions by 17% per unit of GDP actually works out as an increase of 17% on 2011 figures in absolute terms.

If we take China’s 2007 emissions figure of 6.5 Gigatons of CO2, which is probably far less than in reality today, that means an increase of about 1.1 Gt CO2 per year by 2015. For comparison, Australia emitted just 0.3 Gt per year in 2007. Which means in just four years, China will increase its emissions by nearly FOUR TIMES Australia’s annual total. Any reduction our pointless carbon tax might make will be simply lost in the noise. If we manage to reduce emissions by 10% by 2015 (highly unlikely), that equates to one fortieth of China’s increase – a joke in other words.

The reality of China is that it is far more concerned with raising its population out of poverty than “tackling climate change”, and nothing Australia does will make the slightest bit of difference.

More spin than a launderette from Garnaut and Combet – but what else do we expect?

Read it here.

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Economist lectures us on climatology

10 March, 2011 by

He's an economist, OK?

But that’s OK. Nobody cares about his qualifications because he’s a warmist – like Flannery. Contrast the case of a sceptic, when their qualifications and authority to speak would be rummaged through like an old suitcase. Of course, it’s our old friend Ross Garnaut, who needs sadly little introduction, and lectures us again on the “climate crisis” and rising temperatures and rising sea levels – all “worse than we thought”, according to his great climatological authority:

GLOBAL warming may push sea levels rises to the upper limit of current projections and temperatures above previously anticipated levels, Julia Gillard’s top climate change adviser has warned.

Ross Garnaut today issued a pessimistic assessment of likely climate change effects, suggesting recent updates to climate science showed previous research may have underestimated the effects of increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Professor Garnaut flagged the “awful reality” that global political leaders may have to go further than the emissions reduction targets they have been aiming for in international negotiations. [Great timing when the carbon tax is on all the front pages. If you were cynical you might almost think it was planned – Ed]

These targets aim for a concentration of carbon dioxide equivalent of 450 parts per million, which would limit temperature increases to 2 degrees celsius. [Just like that. The earth’s climate system has but one dial, marked CO2 – we twiddle it and the earth responds, like a cheap electric fire – Ed]

“There is a case in managing the risks of climate change for seeking to reduce emissions concentrations below 450ppm carbon dioxide equivalent,” Professor Garnaut said. (source)

Nice try to prop up Gillard’s pointless carbon tax, but no dice, mate.

Why, oh why does The Australian publish this crap? Can you imagine the howls of derision that would come from the warm-monger camp if an economist claimed that AGW was a crock? But with Garnaut, it’s all hushed respect. Give me a break. Nobody with a brain should give a flying fig what Garnaut thinks.

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Garnaut's cynical opportunism

4 February, 2011 by

Cynical

Turning up like a bad penny [Wong? – Ed], Ross Garnaut appears at the most inappropriate moment, this time by cynically citing TC Yasi as an example of the more severe weather events which are “consistent with global warming” … or something:

CYCLONE YASI is probably early real-world evidence of scientific predictions that global warming will lead to more extreme weather events, according to the government’s expert climate change adviser, Professor Ross Garnaut. [Who is an economist, by the way – Ed]

He says that if it is, given the evidence that global warming is tracking at the highest end of international predictions, then future cyclones could prove that we ”ain’t seen nothing yet”. [Total, utter, horse shit, as anyone who reads this blog would know. Global temperature anomaly is below zero this month – Ed]

Professor Garnaut said scientists and climate change modelling had predicted global warming would lead to more frequent extreme weather events, including cyclones and bushfires. [Which is why accumulated cyclone energy is at its lowest for 30 years – Ed]

The prediction of more extreme storms already appeared to be verified by data from the north Atlantic. While there was not yet sufficient statistical data to prove more frequent extreme cyclones in Australia, ”there is no reason to think the physics will work differently in Australian air than north Atlantic air”, Professor Garnaut said. ” [Who cares if there’s not enough data, it’s never stopped us before! – Ed]

”I would say the odds seem to favour the proposition that cyclonic events will be more intense in a hotter world and bear in mind … if this is the case we are just at the beginning of the warming process, the warming since pre-industrial times is 1 degree, the science says without mitigation … that first degree is just the beginning, and so if we are seeing an intensification of extreme weather events now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” (source)

You’re right, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. We haven’t yet seen a fraction of the hysteria and alarmism from ill-informed commentators and politicians with an agenda to push, who have the memory span of a goldfish and don’t have the intellectual capacity to understand that cyclones have been part of Australia’s climate for thousands of years, like floods and droughts. Total climate madness.

The Australian injects some sanity by quoting the eco-tards who have tried to link Yasi to global warming, and it’s all the usual suspects: ABC, Fairfax, Clive Hamilton… yawn.

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Quote of the Day: Ross Garnaut

18 February, 2010 by

Quote of the Day

Speaking of the Coalition’s climate policy:

“I did not take seriously the possibility that it would become part of the Australian policy discussion – I thought that debates over the Government taking huge decisions about the resource allocation ended with the fall of the Soviet Union.”

“To think that regulation, decisions by bureaucrats and governments to reach the right conclusions is, I think, delusional.”

Unfortunately, there is no pleasing dear old Ross, who, back in October described the government’s CPRS (ETS), you know, the one he helped construct, as:

“One of the worst examples of policy making we have seen on major issues in Australia”.

Read it here.

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Garnaut urges Rudd to call early climate change election

26 January, 2010 by

Enough, already

Much as I dislike having to post about the over-exposed Ross Garnaut (who we are all thoroughly sick of), it is unfortunately necessary in this case, as he is urging Kevin Rudd to call a double dissolution election in order to get the ETS passed. I guess that would be to try and scare the Opposition into supporting it, is it? Well, we have news for you, mate: bring it on.

If Rudd thinks he can win an election on climate change, after the disaster in Copenhagen, after the warmist camp and the IPCC have been shaken to their very foundations by Climategate, Glaciergate, Amazongate and all the other “gates” that will happen in the next few months, after Pachauri has been shown to be hopelessly mired in conflict in his role as IPCC head, after the ETS has been exposed as a pointless tax that will do nothing for the environment, then he is even more deluded than we give him credit for.

Actually, Kevin Rudd hasn’t even mentioned climate change this year! Not once! Hardly the sign of a top priority policy is it? But Garnaut wades in anyway, and the ABC lurves it:

Professor Garnaut says it is unlikely this Parliament will support the legislation, so the Government should consider calling a double dissolution election.

“One would have to say at the moment, there’s not much prospect for this Parliament, so it will take a double dissolution election,” he told ABC Radio’s AM program.

“Or it can put the legislation to a new parliament with a different Senate after July 1, 2011. There’s the two options.

“I think that there should be support for the Government if it presses ahead with the double dissolution, but obviously it’s got lots of calculations to make there.”

Professor Garnaut also backed a Greens proposal for an interim scheme which would set the price of carbon at $20 a tonne while negotiations continue for a permanent ETS.

“Let’s not kid ourselves that we’re ahead of the game – there’s no danger of that. Lots of countries are doing major things,” he said. [Just look at Europe, struggling to keep its population warm in freezing temperatures because energy prices have gone through the roof – Ed]

“At this stage we’re one of the laggards. And us coming up with a field and ceasing to be a laggard would help the debate in the United States.” [The US legislation is virtually sunk, and nothing Australia does will make the slightest bit of difference, pal – Ed]

Back to planet earth, you can read the rest of it here (if you really must).

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Climate madness from Ross Garnaut

21 December, 2009 by

Pontificating…

Ross Garnaut hangs around like a bad smell, pontificating on climate matters when nobody really gives a toss (a bit like Malcolm Turnbull, in fact), and his latest announcement suggests Australia commit to a 25% emissions reduction by 2020:

Professor Ross Garnaut told The Australian Online today that such a goal [2˚C warming] would require Australia to embrace the top end of the [government’s] target.

“Well that’s the 450 parts per million. If the world really was on the path to delivering that that would be a 25 per cent target in Australia by 2020 and 90 per cent by 2050,” he said.

However, he said the Prime Minister would have to wait until he discovered what the world was doing before he committed to such a target.

“I think we’ve got to wait. The wise thing is to wait and talk to others,” he said.

So we have to cut 25% by 2020, but at the same time wait until we see what the world is doing? And even if you can look past that inconsistency, you have to ask, what difference does it make to global emissions if Australia cuts by 5%, or 25% or 100%? Answer: nothing. Anything we do is just a gesture, and a pointless one at that.

And if you can look past that, then you have to ask why they think 450 ppm will guarantee only a 2˚C rise in temperature. The sun didn’t take part at Copenhagen, neither did the oceans, nor the clouds, nor volcanoes, nor cosmic rays, nor the solar system, so I wonder what they all think of this tiny, annoying surface irritant on the planet (i.e. humans) deciding what its climate will be in 2050?

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