Lessons From History on Climate Change

Published with the permission of Viv Forbes:

“Lessons from History on Climate Change”.

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

3 January 2009

For Immediate Release.

The Carbon Sense Coalition today congratulated Senator Barnaby Joyce, Senator Ron Boswell, Senator Cory Bernardi and Dr Dennis Jensen MP for their principled stand against the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Releasing a new paper entitled “Climate Change in Perspective” the Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, Mr Viv Forbes, said that changing climate was a permanent feature of Earth’s history – man did not cause it and cannot change it.

“All over the world, politicians, scientists, taxpayers and shareholders are waking up to the fact that they have been conned by the global warming story. All we need to do is read a bit of climate history to get things into perspective and realize how lucky we are today.”

He commented: “Within just the last 20,000 years, vast ice sheets melted from the earth’s surface, seas rose about 130 m, temperatures rose well above present levels several times, and as the seas warmed, they expelled their dissolved carbon dioxide.”

“Then just 300 years ago, earth suffered from the bitter cold and famines caused by the Little Ice Age. Since about 1700 AD, warmth created by increasing solar activity has been driving back the deadly frosts, snow and ice. Carbon dioxide is naturally expelled from the warming oceans to the atmosphere – humans have very little to do with it all.”

“All of these events were caused by and controlled by natural processes, and all life on earth was forced to adapt or die.”

“Despite continual increases in man’s emissions of carbon dioxide, the earth has not warmed since 1998. With unseasonal snow, bitter frosts, power failures and lost crops being reported every week, to send 10,000 pampered politicians and bureaucrats on a junket to Poland to discuss “Global warming” is surely a sick joke?

“A growing number of politicians are now bravely stating what a large and increasing number of scientists have been saying: “There is no global warming crisis, carbon dioxide is a benefit not a danger in the atmosphere, and the whole Emissions Trading industry is shaping up to be a bigger financial disaster than the sub-prime mess.”

To read the full report from The Carbon Sense Coalition on “Climate Change in Perspective” see:
http://carbon-sense.com/2009/01/02/climate-change-in-perspective/

For a link to the additional 650 scientists who signed their dissent over Man-Made Global Warming claims and continue to debunk the so-called “Consensus” in 2008 see:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=83947f5d-d84a-4a84-ad5d-6e2d71db52d9&CFID=53242194&CFTOKEN=70206467

To read comments by Senator Joyce see:
http://www.agmates.com/blog/2008/12/17/barnaby-joyce-the-innate-problems-with-labors-emissions-trading-scheme/

Viv Forbes
Chairman
The Carbon Sense Coalition
MS 23 Rosewood Qld 4340
0754 640 533

info@carbon-sense.com www.carbon-sense.com.

Senator Barnaby Joyce on Climate Change and ETS

The following is an address to the readers of Agmates website from the Leader of the Nationals in the Australian Senate, Barnaby Joyce -

Leader of the Nationals in the Senate Barnaby Joyce writes to the Agmates community -
*****
I’m going to be serious and quite frank with you here as the issues I am about to raise will be contentious not only amongst coalition MP’s but also my own party.
Every age comes up with a witch to burn, a sect that apparently if it is not succumbed will bring about the destruction of an empire, an issue that occupies the rigours of the day.
It is almost as if those in the position of power and their surrounding Illuminati with time to spare are terrified of the banality of daily existence and so search for an issue that demands blind obedience to conquer it.
The most dangerous place to be in these times of immense fervour is in the counter position that calls in to question the logic of the euphoria. Those who dare to question are held as heretics. There is a communal life fest in being part of the pack or staying silent.
It is hard for them to separate from the reality that the world is fairly constant and predictable and that things of the greater nature of the universe have remained beyond our control in the past and generally shall remain so into the future.
It was interesting to hear the recent discussion between Freeman Dyson, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, with Robyn Williams, on The Science Show on ABC Radio National, when he rightly stated that the world has many problems but global warming is not one of the biggest ones. As Dyson said:
“Sea level rise has been going on much longer, long before global warming, and it probably has very little to do with human activities. All we know for sure is that sea level has been rising steadily for about 10,000 years and we’ll have to do something about that.”
I don’t pretend for one moment to be a scientist but in my role in the Senate it is implicit in my job to be a sceptic , to question and to consider all sides and be open to the views of many rather than one view.
My current concern with the emissions trading scheme is that a religious fervour has built up around the altar of global warming. Those who serve at the altar have become ruthless in their denigration of alternate views. This fervour has now received its imprimatur by reason of a new tax, or should it be tithe to be paid to the Rudd Labor Government.
The similarity in this newest forte of socialism can be defined by the ultimate purpose of divesting the individual of their asset or income stream on the premise of an apparent greater moral good.
But who becomes the benefactors of this divestment? The administrators and the traders. Their pockets are lined with the property and income of others.
I don’t remember anybody paying rural Australia for the vegetation that was divested from their asset, rural land, during the tree-clearing legislation so we could meet our Kyoto target and unfortunately I don’t hear any chorus of questioning as to why in the future rural producers, after trying to feed the nation and others, will have to be dragged into an emissions trading scheme that could make many of them unviable.
Where is all this heading?
The National Party has been at the forefront of saying this is all getting beyond ridiculous and becoming dangerous. They are also being supported by unlikely allies such as the Australian Workers Union who see their own members, who have been part of the process of delivering wealth to our nation from their labours have had their industries now termed ‘dirty’ by the new environmental high priests. In this new Orwellian frenzy everyone is looking over their shoulder.
Australia is going down a path of an ETS without the co-operation of the major emitting countries. It says that it is morally right to do so. The Rudd Labor Government and others say that unilateral action is a moral imperative. I look forward to that same fervour of moralistic rectitude as they approach the Mugabe issue in Zimbabwe. He is certainly in the wrong and it is on this new platform of morals that we await our dear leader to launch an attack in a very worthwhile and immediate practice of ridding our planet of this tyrant, Mugabe. That is something that would be of an exceptional benefit.
The government is currently honey-coating the fact that it will be collecting a vast amount of money from the Australian people. The ETS will collect $11.5 billion in its first year, $12 billion in its second, it will force up the price of goods and services, it will encourage industries to move to where an ETS is not present.
Australia generates 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse emissions and this ETS will reduce world levels by the smallest sliver, which self-evidently will have nil effect on global climate whether you believe in climate warming or not.
People will lose their job or their business because of the ETS. They will be the modern-day witches burning on the environmentalist fanatical pyre because their role in this new dynamic was unacceptable.
For regional Australia we look forward to the ridiculous prospect of 34 million possible hectares of forest to take the place of farming land, formerly the backbone of so many regional towns and generations of good, honest working Australians’ lives.
The history of human civilisations has the disturbing trait of devising ways to put themselves out of business, sometimes through no more than their own excesses and belief structures of their governing bureaucracies. The only protection against these excesses is the capacity of the general population to question, to doubt and to disagree.
I have no doubt that as a world we must become efficient with the utilisation of our resources. We must give the greatest number of people the greatest access to the highest standard of living, it is only fair.
Efficiency, more than emissions, must become the trading scheme that brings a cleaner, fairer future. Encourage efficiency and keep the government’s hands out of people’s pockets and off their assets and that will bring a greater propensity to a long-term broad-based better world for all of us.
END

Well said Senator.

Please pass on this news, and your support of the Senator's comments, particularly to your Member of Parliament.

First ETS spin "gotcha"

I haven't even finished reading the first news item I opened (Kids take the heat out of climate costs) on the Australian Government's new emissions reduction target of 5% (from 2000 levels) and the first whopper bites me on the nose -

Some 60 per cent of middle income earners - 2.4 million households - would be compensated for all price rises. The extra money would come through a 2.5 per cent rise in welfare payments, including Family Tax benefits A and B, from July 2010.
This would include a 1.1 per cent indexation due in September but to be brought forward, and 1.4 per cent to cover cost increases.

In other words, over 40% of what the government claims they will be paying families to compensate for the costs of the scheme they would have been paying any way! This is called spin in polite political circles.

What would the figures look like if they showed only the actual true increase in welfare assistance as 1.4%?

The figures in the couriermail.com.au article compared to the true 1.4% extra payments:

(My comments and calculations at 1.4% are in red beside each quote.)

"How the emissions trading scheme will impact you, assuming you do not alter your energy consumption:

Single-person household - no children

• On $30,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $324, government assistance is $390 - therefore $66 a year better off - really $106 worse off
• On $70,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $574, assistance from government is $290 - therefore $284 a year worse off - really $412 worse off
• On $120,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $877, government assistance is nil - therefore $877 a year worse off - still $877 worse off

Sole parent with one dependent child under five-years-old

• On $30,000 a year: Average cost if living impact is $487, government assistance is $963 - therefore $476 a year better off - really $52 better off
• On $70,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $622, government assistance is $904 - therefore $282 a year better off - really $116 worse off
• On $120,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $900, government assistance is $99 - therefore $801 a year worse off - really $845 worse off

Single income couple with two dependent children, one aged 6-12 and one aged 13-15

• On $30,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $553, government assistance is $1189 - therefore $636 a year better off - really $113 better off
• On $70,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $701, government assistance is $1044 - therefore $343 a year better off - really $116 worse off
• On $120,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $925, government assistance is $897 - therefore $28 a year worse off - really $423 worse off

Dual income couple (50:50 income split) - no children

• On $30,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $436, government assistance is $1249 - therefore $813 a year better off - really $263 better off
• On $70,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $658, government assistance is $780 - therefore $122 a year better off - really $221 worse off
• On $120,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $960, government assistance is $780 - therefore $180 worse off - really $523 worse off

Dual income couple (50:50 income split) with two dependent children, one aged under five and one aged 6-12

• On $30,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $554, government assistance is $1540 - therefore $986 a year better off - really $308 better off
• On $70,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $741, government assistance is $1028 - therefore $287 a year better off - really $165 worse off
• On $120,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $985, government assistance is $984 - therefore $1 a year worse off - really $434 worse off

Dual income couple (70:30 income split) with three dependent children, one aged under five-year-old and two aged 6-12

• On $30,000 a year: Average cost if living impact is $623, government assistance is $1322 - therefore $699 a year better off - really $117 better off
• On $70,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $793, government assistance is $1265 - therefore $472 a year better off - really $85 worse off
• On $120,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $1040, government assistance is $750 - therefore $290 a year worse off - really $620 worse off

Single aged pensioner

• On $20,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $358, government assistance is $382 - therefore $24 a year better off - really $144 worse off
• On $40,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $406, government assistance is $845 - therefore $439 a year better off - really $67 better off

Age pensioner couple

• On $20,000 a year: Average cost of living impact $461, government assistance is $640 - therefore $179 a year better off - really $103 worse off
• On $50,000 a year: Average cost of living impact is $611, government assistance is $1894 - therefore $1283 a year better off - really $450 better off

In other words, most people will be worse off!

Now, if an emissions trading scheme is such a great idea, why does the government need to bribe us to accept it?

If the government is telling such obvious spin to exaggerate the effect of government assistance, what makes them think we are going to believe the cost of living impact will be as low as they say?

What other spin has been put on the global warming and emissions trading sales pitch?