Letters to the Editor

There are important lessons here for New Zealand and now, with National and ACT in the driving seat, maybe we’ll juice up our defence spending? Is there an appetite for that? Let me know in the comments.

Green, powerless, defenceless

31st October, 2023

by Viv Forbes with help from friends
Washpool, Qld 4306, Australia

As net zero strangles Australian industry, Australia is becoming green, powerless and defenceless.

History holds lessons that we ignore at our peril. Japan was opened to trade with the US in the 1850s. They were daunted by the naval power of Britain and the US but were determined to catch up.

In the 1930s Japan attacked China, Mussolini attacked Ethiopia and Hitler planned how to avenge WW1 in Europe. Britain’s PM Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler and proclaimed he had achieved “Peace in our Time”.

But Churchill warned:

Britain must arm. America must arm. We will surely do it in the end but how
much greater the cost for each day’s delay.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 59

Stampede of the Green lemmings

Viv resides in Queensland and, though blessed with wonderfully broad insight on most things, he’s naturally drawn to matters with a strong Australian component. Consequently I decline many of his good articles for the lack of a Kiwi connection. However, on the so-called renewable energy bandwagon, or the Zero Carbon movement, New Zealand are as far up the creek as Australia is, so learning what’s happening over there and how they think and fare can only help.

Feel free to pass this on

24th February 2022

No country on Earth relies entirely on wind and solar energy, but Australian politicians aim to achieve this miracle. They are leaders in the Stampede of the Green Lemmings. Continue Reading →

Visits: 332

Letters to the Editor

Digital Handcuffs

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Viv Forbes reminds us that passports were never compulsory but a sought-after luxury that made travel smoother. Thus he highlights how we’ve become accustomed (oh, how slowly) to their necessity. In this, he reminds us that travel documents were everywhere introduced not by western democratic governments but by dictators. We would do well to be warned that the proposed COVID passports will be prevented only by the pinpricks of thousands of people refusing to use them. Nothing else will persuade the bureaucrats that travel documents are more trouble than they’re worth. Though even after they see the next election won by conservatives they’ll probably still not consider them anti-democratic. — RT

23rd May 2021

A passport was once highly valued by travellers, but it was not compulsory. Signed by the sovereign, it said: “The bearer of this passport has my protection. He is free to travel anywhere. Do not pester him (or her).”

Gradually passports became compulsory bureaucratic tools to control and track international travellers. Continue Reading →

Visits: 250

Letters to the Editor

Mother Nature’s mighty batteries

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25th April 2021

The World Climate Conference is spreading a Green Virus – they must be gagged for our safety.

The Biden-Boris green virus which infects most of the west has become a danger to Australia. PM Morrison has promised to sink a billion dollars in “hydrogen, CCUS (carbon capture use or storage), batteries and critical minerals” — to achieve “net zero”.

NONE of these green dreams will produce one light-bulb of new energy — they  will actually require massive inputs of energy and cash. Continue Reading →

Visits: 109

Fighting fires with fire

Media Release — Holiday reading

The Power of the Torch
There can be few if any races who for so long were able to practice the delights of incendiarism.
          Geoffrey Blainey “Triumph of the Nomads – A History of Ancient Australia.”  (Macmillan 1975)

The fire-lighter was the most powerful tool that early humans brought to Australia.

Fires lit by aboriginal men and women created the landscape of Australia. They used fire to create and fertilise fresh new grass for the grazing animals that they hunted, to trap and roast grass-dwelling reptiles and rodents, to fight enemies, to send smoke signals, to fell dead trees for camp fires, to ward off frosts and biting insects, and for religious and cultural ceremonies. Their fires created and maintained grasslands and open forests and extinguished all flora and fauna unable to cope with frequent burn-offs. Continue Reading →

Visits: 58

Letters to the Editor

Bushfire Sense and Nonsense

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation Group

11 September 2019

Bushfires are normal events in this season in tropical and sub-tropical latitudes of the southern hemisphere — in Australia, Africa and South America. Even Captain Cook noted many fires in Eastern Australia in 1770, long before the era of “global warming” hysteria. Continue Reading →

Visits: 195

Downunder wind and solar power increasingly unreliable

• Guest post •

— by Bryan Leyland
Consulting Engineer • Member, NZ Climate Science Coalition

Once upon a time New Zealand and Australia had some of the lowest electricity prices in the world. Unfortunately, imposing ill-conceived electricity “markets”, combined with the modern mania for renewable energy, has greatly increased prices in both countries. Newspaper stories on the steadily deteriorating situation in Australia abound. Continue Reading →

Visits: 108

The Mad Mad Maths of Emissions Targets

Letters to the Editor

12th May 2019

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Most politicians live in a green fantasy-land where facts and numbers don’t count. They dream up fanciful figures for proposed cuts to industrial and agricultural emissions without any understanding of the remorseless growth of population.

The Australian government has set a target to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 27% from 2005 levels by 2030, just 11 years away. The ALP opposition plans to cut emissions by a staggering 45% by 2030. Continue Reading →

Visits: 487

Marohasy says BoM ‘illogical’ but I say ‘just like NIWA’

“Daddy, do NIWA fiddle our national temperature records to create warming?”

“Great question, my boy, but what makes you ask?” I said.

Aunty Jenny says the BoM just increased the rate of warming at Darwin by lowering the early temperatures, and they’ve done it before! Remember when NIWA overhauled our temp records a few years ago, and the BoM gave it respectability by writing that laughable one-page “peer review”? NIWA kept the details secret and the BoM let them get away with it. Now the BoM are fiddling their own figures. They’re both in it together.”

“Yeah, I think you’re probably right. And do you remember that Kiwi paper a few years ago? NIWA’s review claimed we warmed about a degree in 100 years, but the Kiwi paper says it was nowhere near that. NIWA are strangers to the truth, my son.

Changes to Darwin’s Climate History are Not Logical

February 23, 2019

– by Jennifer Marohasy

Newspapers

This is an adopted article.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 218

Cautionary Australian tale of real genius

New Zealand politicians should heed the expense and disruption being caused in Australia by the green environmental agenda and the UN’s sham battle against benign, entirely natural global warming. Much of the climate farrago is soaked in the fiction that natural resources are free—but we can be certain that the labourers, tradesmen, managers and shareholders in the solar panel and windmill industries would refuse to work for nothing, just as workers in the ‘free’ coal, oil and gas industries don’t work for nothing. – RT

Australian heavy industry

Back in the chaotic dying days of the Whitlam-Cairns-Connor government, Canberra was buzzing with Rex Connor’s grand plans for a national energy grid and gas pipelines linking the NW Shelf to the capital cities, all to be funded by massive foreign loans arranged by a mysterious Pakistani named Khemlani. Malcolm Fraser staged a parliamentary revolt. The economy slumped. Continue Reading →

Visits: 208

Battle for our grasslands and livestock

This comprehensive essay by our good friend Viv Forbes in Australia doesn’t apply to us, since we have no grass-covered continent and our Green movement has developed in different directions. But it may have a lesson to teach us, as there’s evidence of gung-ho Green radicalism in New Zealand that should caution us against complacency. Perhaps not grasslands, but how would you like our native forests, fisheries, mountains, rivers, lakes and coastlines, piece by piece, being taken out of bounds, not only for productive development but for access?

In truth, the process is under way, with the Green Party agitating against exploitation within our enormous National Parks and Greenpeace interfering with lawful access to the seabed for mining. In addition we now have Maoris claiming the right to control river and lake waters, which under centuries-old British law belong to the Crown. Let’s hope these ancient rights will not on any pretext be tampered with or given to any portion of our population, or it’ll be a dark day for the whole world. Viv paints a superb picture of how things were and how things are today—and how life is distorted by environmental activists out of touch with the environment’s needs. His account warns us to keep our situation awareness alive. I strongly recommend you click through to the entire article in pdf and relish the whole of it. – Richard Treadgold

Continue Reading →

Visits: 116

Engineers make things happen

UPDATE — John Cook cited

Complaint lodged over breach of Professional Engineers Act

This is brilliant and simple: attack climate activists when they trespass on forbidden areas.

I’ve just heard about this from Warwick Hughes. There’ll be more, by the sound of it. Malcom Roberts has laid a complaint with the Board of Professional Engineers of Queensland regarding academics giving professional engineering advice though they are not registered engineers. Continue Reading →

Visits: 94

NSW Farmers go over to dark side of climate change

Josh Gilbert, district chairman of the NSW Young Farmers (right) speaking to rural reporter Josh Becker (left). The belief that the climate is being dangerously changed by warming caused by human activities, though on careful examination unsupported by evidence, infiltrates remorselessly into all aspects of society. It will take some shifting when people wake up to it.

Climate change is back on the NSW Farmers Association agenda after a push from young farmers. Young Farmers triumphed over sceptics and complex meeting procedures to push climate change onto the agenda at the New South Wales Farmers Association annual conference. In a rejigged policy on climate, they emphasised the need to move away from fossil fuels and closer to renewables.

Source: Young farmers rewrite NSW Farmers climate change policy – ABC Rural (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Continue Reading →

Visits: 92

Curiously connected temperatures

Australia and NZ are closer than we thought

Source: New Zealand hottest ever day in February 1973 arrived directly from Australian heatwave | Errors in IPCC climate science

Warwick Hughes came across the highest temperatures recorded in New Zealand and found that they occurred just as a Sydney heatwave came to an end. Continue Reading →

Visits: 83

More solar panel subsidies die

solar panels

Waste of money in Spain, USA, Britain and Germany and now Australia

Aussie solar panels suck money from the poor and hand it to the rich

• Adapted from The Australian (behind paywall) – H/T John McLean

The cost of climate-change-inspired subsidies to boost the installation of rooftop solar systems has forced consumers who don’t have solar panels (the poor people) to pay $14bn to the rich people who do, but the Aussies are coming to their senses.

With 1.4m households having solar panels, Australia has the highest proportion in the world of households with solar panels, but the ill-advised subsidies that allowed them, plus presumably their marketing, outweigh any good they do by $9 billion. Unbelievable. Continue Reading →

Visits: 1102

Tampering at Australian BOM exploded

Devastating criticism from William Kininmonth

This is dynamite. Heartland’s November Environment & Climate News reports scientist Jennifer Marohasy and environment editor Graham Lloyd, among others, have learned the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has been “fudging” historical temperature records to fit a warming narrative. Continue Reading →

Visits: 82

Heated climate debate continues

Professor Bob Carter

It can’t be over yet. When people are still being fired for not believing in global warming, it’s far from over. The war continues.

Professor Bob Carter (an expatriate Kiwi) lost his job the other day at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville. He had worked there for 31 loyal years, his professional life devoted to stratigraphy, understanding events in the deep past recorded in ocean sediments, and teaching.

Significantly, because it led to his dismissal, Bob made an honourable name for himself and earned a world-wide reputation for remaining faithful to scientific principles while analysing the outrageous predictions from global warming alarmists. He was never afraid to speak out against the alarmists and their dubious claims. Continue Reading →

Visits: 137

Taxing Air out soon

Brochure for Taxing Air. Download the pdf (986 KB).

From our good friend, the always-in-touch Val Majkus, comes a reminder about Bob Carter’s new book (which she’s ordered already!) and encouragement to pass it on to anyone you know who may be interested.

Bob says the book will be available from July 1st, and he would appreciate any support or publicity we can give it. It’s especially significant in the context of the forthcoming Australian election and the new-old PM’s just-announced ditching of the hated carbon tax.

The book has its own web site, and a Twitter account is available.

Visits: 45

Sun sets on solar subsidies

Tesla with solar power umbrella

In the days of Queen Victoria they could say truthfully: “the sun never sets on the British Empire.”

But it does set on Australia, every single day. Even the green power engineers in Parliament must have noticed that the sun also sets on all those solar panels that their mandates and subsidies have plastered onto Australian roofs.

Solar energy is most intense on the equator but weakens towards the poles. It disappears when the sun sets or cloud obscures the sun. For just six hours or so per day during summer, in a clear tropical desert area, solar energy is reasonably reliable and collectible, although always very dilute. But at times of peak demand, about 6.30pm in winter, solar panels contribute nothing to electricity supply. Continue Reading →

Visits: 219

Magic gas discovery

It has been discovered that Australian coal has a magical property – it is one of a small group of coals which produce an invisible gas with supernatural properties.

This magic gas, carbon dioxide, first became famous for its claimed ability to warm the whole world, thus removing the threat of a new ice age. The British academic who reported this magic power claimed that winter snow would become “a very rare and exciting event.”

Then an Australian guru predicted that just a tiny addition of magic gas to the atmosphere would abolish floods, and billions of dollars were spent constructing water desalination plants to combat his forecast of never-ending droughts. Continue Reading →

Visits: 374

Greens about-face on Tasmania safety burn-offs

A homestead burns in Tasmania

Australia endures regular bushfires. They destroy property and kill people and wildlife, but they’re necessary for the survival of various plants and trees.

The most important tool in managing bushfires to help ensure they don’t become monster conflagrations is controlled burnoffs in the cooler months — it’s really the only tool, since burning is the only practical way to destroy undergrowth and dead timber. That way, when the fires arise in the hot season they are not so large and damaging.

Burnoffs have a fascinating history. They’ve been practised since Europeans arrived in Australia, and of course the Aborigines, who started the burnoffs thousands of years ago, taught them how to do it. Since then the application of Western science has improved our understanding of the bush.

This week, on the Tasmanian Greens web site, in response to “a few queries about the Greens’ policy on fuel reduction burns,” somebody signing himself “Greens staff” claimed that the Party supports “fuel reduction burns as a vital tool in protecting lives and property in all land tenures including National Parks.”

But it’s only two years ago that they wanted to shut them down. Continue Reading →

Visits: 378

Greens win, so Tasmania burns

Miranda Devine Blog, Daily Telegraph.

Tuesday, January 08, 2013
h/t Andy Scrase

First

It’s nothing to do with the climate.

WHEN Julia Gillard toured fire ravaged parts of Tasmania on Monday she couldn’t resist opportunism – using the calamity to push a climate change agenda.

As a result of climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events,” she said.

But the fact is Australia gets hot in summer – sometimes very hot – and if there is fuel on the ground it will burn. The more fuel, the wilder the fire.

Greens are environmentally disconnected

Green activists are mostly city dwellers with little understanding of the natural environment — regardless of how much they talk about it. How else could they put so much bush ecosystem, human property and human life at risk? Why did they go out of their way to meddle with well-tested systems of fire management that were working? Why do we listen to them? Continue Reading →

Visits: 413

Letter to the editor

Greens rediscover hydrogen car

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation

19th August 2012

I saw my first and only hydrogen car in Brisbane City Square in the 1960’s. No one saw it work, but now, fifty years later, the “hydrogen economy” has become green gospel.

Hydrogen combines readily with oxygen to produce energy via combustion engines, gas welders or fuel cells – there is nothing new about this process. And the sole exhaust product is pure water, another greenhouse gas.

Hydrogen is an abundant element. However, pure hydrogen gas is very rare on earth – it is almost always combined with other elements, commonly oxygen or carbon.

Hydrogen is not a primary source of energy. Continue Reading →

Visits: 29

Letter to the editor

Why Bury the Essentials of Life
in Carbon Cemeteries?

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation

3rd August 2012

We are told that carbon dioxide is such a dangerous gas that we must capture and “bury it deep down below”.

Carbon is the building block for every bit of organic matter on earth – bread, butter and bitumen; coal, cauliflowers and cows; men, microbes and mulberries.

When oxidised by combustion in fires and engines, or digested in stomachs, or decayed in soil or compost, every bit of organic matter is recycled into the harmless natural atmospheric gas, carbon dioxide. Plants extract this plant food from the atmosphere, reuse the carbon, and recycle the oxygen for use by all forms of animal life.

Every tonne of coal burnt produces about three tonnes of carbon dioxide containing over two tonnes of oxygen and under one tonne of carbon. Thus with every tonne of carbon buried, more than twice as much life-sustaining oxygen must also be sacrificed. Continue Reading →

Visits: 46

Letters to the editor

Taxing Termites, Wetlands, Volcanoes and Sacred Cows

To the Editor
Climate Conversation

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9th July 2012

Australia’s tax on carbon dioxide now applies to big power stations, rubbish tips, steel works, cement plants, refineries and coal mines. But many of them have been given exemptions or compensation packages. Naturally they will pass all net costs onto consumers, but our government says that most voters will be compensated and will feel no pain. So it all looks like achieving a net nothing. Continue Reading →

Visits: 45

Letters to the Editor

The Soda Water scare

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation

22nd May 2012

The climatists have a new alarm – the soda water scare.

We are told that the oceans, which weigh 300 times more than all the gases in the atmosphere, are being turned acidic by the 0.0012% (12 parts per million) of man-made additions to the carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere.

CO2 is a natural gas that dissolves in water. The amount absorbed depends upon how much CO2 there is in the air, and the temperature of the water. CO2 dissolves best in cold water and is expelled as the water warms. And far more would be absorbed if there was 100% CO2 in the atmosphere above.

When concentrated CO2 gas is bubbled under high pressure into ice-cold water much CO2 dissolves, producing acidic soda water whose pH (acidity) could be as low as 4. This is 1,000 times more acidic than pure water whose pH is a neutral 7.

But oceans are much warmer than that and atmospheric CO2 is at much lower pressure. Therefore in the open ocean, pH seldom gets below 8, ten times more alkaline than pure water.

This weak soda water could only be described as “acidic” by someone pushing an alarmist agenda. Continue Reading →

Visits: 36

Letter to the Editor

Carbon lies

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation

11th March 2012

The Australian government’s plan to sell their un-saleable carbon tax has hit a snag – their pollsters have discovered that the word ”carbon” provokes anger in the electorate.

This is no surprise. Most decent people hate liars and the carbon tax campaign has been mired in lies from the start. Continue Reading →

Visits: 48

Letter to the editor

Will Tony Abbott leave Australia Legless
and Powerless in the Global Storms?

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation

22nd December 2011

Some at the big end of town are worried that Mr Abbott may keep his promise to repeal the carbon tax. No doubt they and their smart lawyers fear losing the clever green schemes that rely on ripping off tax payers, consumers and other businesses.

Australia’s wealth and jobs have always rested on three legs – mining and farming, making and processing things, and rich foreigners; in short, resources, manufacturing and money from tourists and investors.

The Gillard carbon tax will white-ant all three legs. Continue Reading →

Visits: 34

Sixes all around the park from Monckton

cricket ball knocked out of the park

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley opened his debate at the National Press Club in Australia two days ago by reminding his audience that England not only took the Ashes off Australia, but also held on to them in the next rematch. He said: “I just thought I’d rub it in.” Then he proceeded to take his cudgel to his feeble debating opponent.

Economist Richard Deniss must be no intellectual weakling, but he gave the impression of not knowing where he was, so he said the things he normally said. Which usually works, because his normal audience has heard them before and agrees with him. But here, he floundered and had no idea what he was doing. Continue Reading →

Visits: 83

Letter to the editor

Carbon Tax Mk IV flimsy, cancerous

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation
10th July 2011

Carbon Tax Mark 4 is flimsy but dangerous.

Because of public opposition to a new tax on everything, the tax has been gutted. The PM hopes to buy public support by giving exemptions to almost everyone and offering widespread bribes to voters. It is now feeble and ineffective.

But the Green-Gillard coalition is desperate and such people cannot be trusted. They will say or promise anything in order to get this new tax introduced.

Once on the law books, the exemptions will be whittled away, the tax rate will increase and the tax bribes will disappear. It is a stealthy cancer in the gut of the Australian economy.

The cost of electricity, food, fuel and travel will increase, but few people will recognise the root cause. Politicians will blame “Woolworths, power suppliers and Big Oil” for the pain.

This new stealth tax is the thin edge of the wedge.

It will have no effect on the climate, but is a fiscal weapon too dangerous to be left in the hands of green extremists.

Letting Bob Brown loose with the vast powers of a carbon tax is like leaving the grandkids alone in the hayshed with a box of matches.

“Abolish the Stealth Tax” will be the next election slogan.

Viv Forbes

Visits: 79

Taxus, taxus, hurryup and taxus!

no dice? loaded dice?

Altogether now: taxus, taxus…

What an unedifying spectacle: thousands of moronic Australians shouting for more taxes. There’s hardly anything I can add. Let’s lend the sensible Australians our voices against the utterly useless expense of it.

SYDNEY — Thousands of Australians across the country rallied on Sunday to support a tax on the carbon emissions blamed for global warming, as a new report outlined the risks of rising sea levels from climate change.

In Sydney, demonstrators carried banners reading “Say yes to cutting carbon pollution” and “Price carbon — our kids are worth it” while similar rallies attracted crowds in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Hobart and Canberra.

“This should send a clear message to the government to set an ambitious price on carbon that will kick-start investment in clean energy,” said rally organiser Simon Sheikh, national director of the activist group GetUp.

Kick the habit?

Those who describe our emissions of carbon dioxide as a habit in the same vein (sorry, pun intended) as heroin are evilly misled and wickedly mislead others. Continue Reading →

Visits: 104

Letter to Editor

Proof please, not propaganda

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation

9th May 2011

We need proof that carbon dioxide is a pollutant in the atmosphere. There is none – only political propaganda.

We need proof that global temperatures are controlled by man-made carbon dioxide. There is none – only computer models which are fiddled to fit the past but unable to predict the future.

We need proof on how the emissions targets will be achieved, especially if the big emitters are exempted and consumers are compensated. How many power stations, steel furnaces and cement plants will need to close, what will replace them and when?

We need proof that a tax on carbon dioxide will produce net benefits for the climate or the environment. There is none – just scare stories, misleading pictures and green fairy tales.

We need an independent audit into the mishmash of mandates and subsidies promoting the ethanol, solar, wind, carbon forest and carbon trading industries. There is none – only government spruikers and lobbyists for vested interests.

On the other hand there is voluminous evidence that carbon dioxide is a beneficial plant food not a pollutant, that global temperatures are set by natural cycles and processes, that a tax on carbon dioxide will increase living costs and close Australian industries and that the climate agenda has more to do with wealth redistribution than with climate or the environment.

Viv Forbes
Chairman
Carbon Sense Coalition

Visits: 70

Why wind won’t work

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation

13th February 2011

Why are governments still mollycoddling wind power?

There is no proof that wind farms reduce carbon dioxide emissions and it is ludicrous to believe that a few windmills in Australia are going to improve global climate.

Such wondrous expressions of green faith put our politicians on par with those who believe in the tooth fairy.

Tax payers funding this largess and consumers paying the escalating power bills are entitled to demand proof.

Not only is there no climate justification for wind farms, but they are also incapable of supplying reliable or economical power.

It is also surprising those who claim to be defenders of the environment can support this monstrous desecration of the environment.

Wind power is so dilute that to collect a significant quantity of wind energy will always require thousands of gigantic towers each with a massive concrete base and a network of interconnecting heavy duty roads and transmission lines. Then when they go into production, they slice up bats and eagles, disturb neighbours, reduce property values and start bushfires.

Finally, to cover the total loss of power when the wind drops or blows too hard, every wind farm needs a conventional back-up power station (commonly gas-fired) with capacity at least twice the design capacity of the wind farm to even out the sudden fluctuations in the electricity grid.

Why bother with the wind farm – just build the backup?

There is no justification for the continuation of mandates, subsidies or tax breaks favouring wind power over reliable and cheaper electricity generation options.

Wind power should compete on an equal basis with all other electricity options.

Viv Forbes


The above statements

are supported and expanded in a recent submission to the Australian Senate entitled: “Why Wind Won’t Work – It’s as Weak as Water.”

See a summary of the submission.

See the full report with pictures and all the gory and depressing details.

Visits: 31

Green power generates red ink

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation

12th December 2010

It’s time to end the mollycoddling of wind and solar energy toys before this stupidity does irreversible damage to Australia’s electricity supply and costs.

The mindless green dream of producing serious base load power from whimsical breezes and intermittent sunbeams has caused a halt to new low-cost coal power, a boom in expensive gas power, a national debate about nuclear power and no effect at all on global climate.

The frivolous wind and solar generators already installed have caused a surge in electricity prices, a bonanza for Chinese manufacturers and well founded doubts about our future ability to keep the lights on.

Provision of cheap reliable energy is a basic requirement for modern civilisation and is the engine that lifts people from poverty. It is far too important to be left to green dreamers, anti-industrial zealots, vote seeking politicians, engineering illiterates and guilt-ridden millionaires.

It is already obvious from Denmark, Spain, California and Germany that subsidising green power creates very little power but much red ink in the accounts. It always causes massive burdens for tax payers, electricity consumers and industry. Tax payers and investors will rue the day they allowed politicians to waste their savings on chimeras.

Get rid of all the mandated markets, subsidies and tax breaks for all energy generators, and leave power engineers and business managers to work out how best to supply our future energy needs in a free competitive market.

Subsidised power must collapse under its own dead weight. But every day’s delay increases the eventual cost.

Viv Forbes

Visits: 46

Ignore climate fakirs and shamans

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation

1st January 2011

Queensland has wasted millions on the global warming industry. Residents would be better off had they spent it on water storage, flood gauges and flood-proofing of highways, railways and airports.

Europe and USA have wasted billions on the global warming industry. Residents would be better off had they spent it on reliable power stations and snow-proofing of highways, railways and airports.

Climate change and extreme weather have endangered every generation of humans. But this is the first generation that has sacrificed its savings on the altars of the climate gods instead of preparing for whatever weather shocks we may encounter.

“We can forecast and control the weather” has always been the false promise of fakirs and shamans.

Sensible people make sure they have the equipment to cope with extreme weather events.

It’s time to ignore climate fakirs and shamans, and cease paying tributes to them.

Viv Forbes

Visits: 39

Who wants a carbon tax?

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To the Editor
Climate Conversation

14th November 2010

When the Australian PM says “we need a price on carbon”, she is just sprouting another misleading Wongism like “we must reduce carbon pollution”.

Most forms of carbon already have a price – coal, oil, gas, petrol, diesel, beef, bread, butter, diamonds and whisky all have a price (which usually includes a few taxes).

What Ms Gillard wants, but dares not say, is another tax on our usage of many carbon products.

But who wants a tax on carbon?

The Greens do. They hate humans and their farm animals, crops, coal, oil, cars, power generators and heavy industry. They would like to see the end of most mining, farming, fishing and forestry. A carbon tax will hit all of these people so the Greens support it. Continue Reading →

Visits: 79

The BOM discovers UHI

Australia's Gold Coast

UPDATE 1: 15 NOVEMBER

UPDATE 2: 17 NOVEMBER

There’s some excitement around blogdom with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) apparently questioning the UHI adjustments it’s made to the temperature record.

The actual press release

But the story is proving difficult to pin down. I’ve located the BOM Media Release of 13 October, 2010, which says (emphasis added):

Wednesday 13 October 2010
MEDIA RELEASE

Hot cities

If you thought our cities are getting warmer, you’re right.

Bureau of Meteorology researchers have found that daytime temperatures in our cities are warming more rapidly than those of the surrounding countryside and that this is due to the cities themselves. Continue Reading →

Visits: 109

Taxing the Heart out of Australia

Australian flag

The Rudd Resource tax is just another in a long line of taxes helping to depopulate rural Australia.

That depopulation of the outback started with the fringe benefits tax and the removal of accelerated depreciation, both of which penalise companies who provide housing for employees.

Every government since then has accelerated the drift to the coastal and capital cities.

The heavy burdens of excessive fuel taxes, coal royalties, rail freights and infrastructure bottlenecks have for years restricted the development of the outback resource industry. Only deposits that are rich or close to the coast can pay their way, which is why the Galilee Basin has been undeveloped for so long.

The vegetation control bans, water mismanagement and growth of carbon credit forests are depressing agriculture and will depopulate rural towns. Continue Reading →

Visits: 389

Earth doesn’t care about our lights, our electricity

Every night in the two Koreas

(thanks to the Competitive Enterprise Institute)

Viv Hughes, chairman of the Australia-based Carbon Sense Coalition, frequently talks sense about the carbon dioxide “demon”. Today he takes aim at the guilt-easing, yet nonsensical, notion of “Earth Hour”, an increasingly popular expression of opposition to so-called “climate change”. His focus is of course Australia, but that’s not so far from us, is it? Note that we get 70% of our electricity from hydro power, not oil, and, for Penny Wong and rationing, read John Key and the ETS, which will have largely the same effect. I want to say more about the folly of Earth Hour, but first read Viv’s no-nonsense dose of cold reason for these hot, fanciful fears of man-made disaster.

Earth Hour or Blackout Night?

A statement by Viv Hughes, Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition.

Visit the Carbon Sense web site to download a pdf of this statement – spread it around.

Earth Hour should be renamed “Blackout Night” and be held outdoors, for the whole night, in mid-winter, on the shortest and coldest day of the year – 22 June in the Southern Hemisphere.

All supporters of alternative energy should spend just one night in the cold and the dark, emitting no carbon dioxide from coal, oil, gas, petrol or diesel for lights, TV, hot coffee, barbecues or cars. This will be good practice for the blackouts and shortages to come if Penny Wong’s rationing of carbon products and carbon energy is attempted. Continue Reading →

Visits: 158

Carbon Sense Coalition

Australian flag

Newsletter

Understanding the Ruddy ETS

The Emissions Trading Scheme proposed for Australia and now before the Australian Parliament is far more than “A Great Big New Tax”.

PM Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme combines a Big New Tax with a War-Time Rationing scheme and an Income redistributing compensation scheme, all to be run by a regulatory army probably bigger than our real army.

Let’s try to understand this Ruddy ETS. To simplify things, let’s look at just the electricity industry. Continue Reading →

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Spencer climbs down — word is out, help at hand

Peter Spencer

I missed the announcement in the Herald yesterday, but it’s just as welcome for hearing it late: after 52 long days on a hunger strike, Peter Spencer, farmer, has given in to “the concerns of family and friends” and been winched back down to earth.

According to Greg Ansley, Peter was “taken to hospital in the nearby alpine town of Cooma to help recover from the ordeal and a diet of lemon juice, vitamins and water.”

Congratulations to a determined champion of justice. We hope he can keep the farm he’s worked so valiantly to save.

He has not achieved the demands he made of the authorities, like a royal commission and a face-to-face meeting with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, but he seems to have made a strong point around the country which will now be followed up by supporters and sympathetic politicians.

Australian Opposition National Senator Barnaby Joyce will take Spencer to Canberra next month to continue his “courageous” fight. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said Spencer had made an important point.

Spencer, who faces the sale of his property and is deeply in debt, said yesterday he intended to continue his fight against laws that prevented him from clearing trees from his property.

From The Canberra Times:

The hunger strike was the latest in a long line of measures Mr Spencer took to draw attention to his plight and those of many other farmers and graziers in NSW and Queensland.

Mr Spencer said he plans to continue to lobby the Federal Government for a Royal Commission into legislation that bans farmers from clearing native vegetation on their properties.

So the crisis is over and Spencer is safe; I wonder how the real battle will end? This dispute is not just about global warming, it’s about private property, land rights and the rightful powers of the state.

Visits: 86

Caustic criticism as Jo Nova badgers The Australian

Joanne Nova

Jo Nova gives no quarter as she attacks The Australian newspaper for its coverage of Peter Spencer’s hunger strike against his unjust treatment by his own government.

Jo chastises it strongly for the long delay before it covered Spencer’s strike and its inadequacy since. She compares the paper’s reporting of other hunger strikers, including a sex offender, a serial killer and some asylum seekers, with its reporting of Spencer. The criminals got extensive and sympathetic coverage after a mere few days of their hunger strike. But The Australian waited 26 days (nearly four weeks) to mention Peter Spencer’s strike — as a sideline. They provided no substantive coverage until Day 42 — six weeks after it began — and even then were bitingly unsympathetic.

Jo suggests that “The Australian appears to go out of its way not to report the case of an Australian facing ruin, feeling suicidal and asking for a fair go. Spencer has had it tough within our legal system — even a Justice decreed his case was unconscionable“. She asks:

Could it be that The Australian cares more for our carbon emissions than they do about the lives of our farmers? Do the editors feel that somehow the country is better off if we don’t look too closely at any of the drawbacks of legislation aimed to reduce our carbon output?

Jo obviously did a lot of reading on the coverage and asks about the balance one might reasonably expect from Australia’s flagship newspaper but which is lacking in this series of stories of hunger strikes. It’s remarkable (even striking!) how on the one hand the paper is sympathetic to the criminals and migrants and yet on the other hand distinctly stonyhearted towards an innocent Australian farmer.

Whatever the editors’ motivations, they add a further injustice to Peter Spencer’s already long list of injustices.

Visits: 83

Peter Spencer story getting more attention

Red tape protest

The mainstream media are becoming involved in Peter Spencer’s story now, although apparently some reporters are looking at Peter himself rather than the big picture.

Some less savoury details have emerged from Peter’s past, which have the potential to obscure the real and substantial matters of his treatment by successive governments and his undeserved misfortunes at their hands.

Still, lots of people are interested in his welfare and Joanne Nova is doing a sterling job keeping up with the play and badgering the news professionals to protect citizens from the government, not the other way around.

We can see how the story develops further at Jo Nova’s blog.

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Peter Spencer — climate martyr

Peter Spencer fasting on his protest platform

This is an Australian story. It is for us all.

Noble resistance has often created martyrs, those who die in defence of their cause. Let us hope we’re not watching the final days of the first climate change martyr.

Peter Spencer is a courageous, intelligent and resourceful man. But he has been destroyed by the Australian government, through the legal system, in the name of climate change. The only rescue possible for him is by the government and they are refusing to get involved.

It is worse than disgraceful. It is tragic.

The only hope for him now is a public outcry, which is beginning in Australia.

He came to my attention through this story on Jo Nova’s web site. It is a disgrace that the mainstream Australian media are not reporting it (though some are beginning to).

It is no great surprise that the New Zealand media aren’t reporting it either. For one thing it’s happening overseas but doesn’t involve Paris Hilton and for another our media have largely lost their spine. Especially where climate change is involved, almost no journalists will challenge the government line.

Losing all he has in the next few days

The page I link to above has important links to parts of the story. In addition, Joanne posted this story yesterday which contains a harrowing radio account by Peter himself of the troubles he faces and the strenuous, creative efforts he’s made over several years to confront them.

The tremendous strain of being parted from his family for the last three years and the imminent loss of his farm and personal effects in the next few days causes him to break down several times. Throughout his account, even after more than 40 days without food, he speaks clearly of events and his hope that the government can yet be persuaded to change what it has done.

Jo’s latest post reports the rally was quite well supported. However it includes a very disturbing account of possible government intervention making the rally more difficult to stage. Bus inspectors threatened a snap inspection which effectively stopped the organisers from using buses.

And we thought Australia was a modern country with advanced notions of freedom and democracy.

What’s possible over the ditch is possible right here.

What to do? Post a comment about your support on Jo Nova’s blog. There’s an address there to write to the Australian Prime Minister. Post a comment here. Write to anyone you know in Australia to make sure they’ve heard about this amazing injustice.

If you think of something else we can do, post it here.

Visits: 334

Climate Crusaders Conned in Copenhagen

COP15 logo

We Kiwis should stay in touch with Australian developments, so here’s another in a continuing collaboration with the friendly dingos across the ditch. Download the original pdf (153KB) from Carbon Sense.

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the Australian Parliament to repudiate the
Copenhagen giveaways promised by PM Rudd to the failed states of Africa and the welfare
beggars of the islands.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that the three Climate Crusaders,
Obama, Brown and Rudd, had been comprehensively conned in Copenhagen by African
mendicants and fakers from the islands.

“They have agreed to hand over mega-bucks of our money (anywhere from $5 billion to
$100 billion) as compensation for alleged damage caused by our production of carbon
dioxide – the Africans citing climate damage and the islanders claiming rising sea levels.

“Even a cursory examination of the facts would prove that both of these claims are
fraudulent.

“There is no evidence that carbon dioxide has caused global warming, or causes damage to
any aspect of life on earth. The vast majority of earth’s warming originates from the sun, and fluctuations there are the major cause of climate changes.

“In addition, careful recent surveys show no unusual rising of sea levels. Continue Reading →

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