From The Spectator-Australia
This is a tale of idiocy, full of facts and foreboding, signifying that the end times must be surely upon us. A bloke bought a sheep property of half a million acres in western Queensland for $2.0 million. Instead of running sheep on it, he now gets $350,000 per annum under the federal government’s Direct Action scheme for not using the grass on his property. The idea being that the grass locks up carbon and reduces Australia’s carbon emissions. A neighbouring property gets $600,000 per annum. Direct Action is a $1.7 billion per annum program funded from general taxation revenue.
Now people may be paid, from time to time, for not doing things and there may be a rational reason for that. But being paid for allowing grass to stand undisturbed? That grass is going to rot or be burnt within three years anyway. Not allowing the fuel load from dead grass to build up is so important in rangeland management that in northern Australia it is done from aircraft using capsules containing potassium permanganate and glycerine. Upon hitting the ground, the capsules shatter, mixing the components which spontaneously ignite. Burning grassland is important because otherwise the fuel load builds up and the resulting fire, which will come, kills everything. As Captain Cook and others have noted, when the Aborigines had the run of the country they would set fire to everything, all the time – because bad things happened if they didn’t.
Now the idiocy of Direct Action is founded on belief in global warming. Global warming in turn is a state-sponsored religion and those of us who do not follow that faith are forking out for those who do. From that perspective, it is a just a case of trying to keep the total spend on such religious observance under control. And beyond the direct spend; belief in global warming is now being used to destroy our power supply. But does the federal government have to insult our intelligence so egregiously by paying people not to use grass? Seemingly no member of parliament cares – about the waste or the idiotic science.
Something similar happened in the Department of Transport in mid-2014. The Minister for Transport at the time, Warren Truss, was a wheat farmer. Farmers are supposed to be practical, no-nonsense people. But the Department talked their minister into closing Darwin airport because a volcano 1,000 km away in Indonesia had erupted, releasing volcanic ash into the atmosphere. What do the Indonesians, the Filipinos, the Japanese do about their exploding volcanoes? They simply fly around them. At the time, nobody thought it strange that the Indonesians kept flying up and down their archipelago while Australia closed airports far away from the danger zone.
Now it is one thing for Canberra public servants to respond to natural events by going into hysterical schoolgirl mode, but our members of parliament, and especially the best of these, the ones chosen to be ministers, should be level-headed and have knowledge of the real world. But none of our federal parliamentarians thought it was strange that Darwin airport could be closed under clear blue skies. And they didn’t care about the lives of Australians being needlessly disrupted by such an inane directive.
It seems though that, as a nation, we will only stop doing very stupid things when we run out of money to do so. Surely a cathartic event is coming?
David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare
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So his $2M investment is paid off in a little over 6 years and then he starts earning about 6% per year on his original investment. Sweet deal!
Or sell for 5 million.
Reducing Australia’s carbon emissions is even more ludicrous since the OCO2 satellite data indicate that Australia is net negative. Absorbs more CO2 than it produces. The bushfire season doesn’t seem to make much difference and is barely detectable. This non-footprint will of course be getting larger now that industry is being killed off by insane power pricing.
Reminds me of the ethanol debacle in the USA. Farmers were paid for conservation easements—areas they did not plow up. Then ethanol became the darling of the Feds and the price for corn went way up. It went high enough to make the conservation easement payment look paltry. So out came the tractors and poof, no more conservation area. Enviros were shocked. They didn’t see it coming. Of course, any rational person would realize if you pay more to tear up the land than preserve it, no one preserves.
The US obsession with ethanol was a strategic move towards energy independence, in the days before shale oil
It had and has nothing to do with anything ‘green’ or reducing CO2.
It has since become a standard US federal pork barrel thing.
No it was a short term solution to one of the last energy crises before energy became a just-in-time commodity sector no longer dependent on 10-year projects offshore. As the Clintons spun it with PR strategy, it was started by George Bush. What they did not own up to was the extension and expansion of it during their years and its political centroid in Iowa. That’s not even getting to Obama extensions and expansions of it.
I have to agree with Griff on this one Resourceguy.
The Government mandated Ethanol silliness started way back in the Carter years of the 1970’s.
“5. Biofuels and the Global Energy Crisis 1970s – 2000s
In the 25 years after World War II, global oil consumption grew by five- and- a- half times, and the world became dependent on cheap oil from the Middle East. Discussions about raising prices preoccupied meetings of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for years, but in 1973, a Middle Eastern war conflated tight oil supplies into an international energy crisis. It began on October 6, 1973, when Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries launched an attack on Israel in an attempt to regain land lost in the 1967 war. By October 17, 1973, as the attack faltered and U.S. military aid flowed to the Israelis, Arab oil ministers gathered in Kuwait agreed to institute a total oil embargo against the United States and other countries friendly to Israel (Salameh, 2004). They would drop production by five percent per month until their demands were met. The price of oil quadrupled, from $4.50 to $22.60 per barrel. The shortages created long gas lines and sparked panic buying the US and Europe. Although the embargo ended in March 1974, the U.S. gross national product (GNP) plunged 6% and unemployment doubled to 9% by 1975.
The first energy crisis also spurred a widespread search for alternative energy sources, especially the “Pro-Alcool” National Alcohol Program in Brazil in 1975, involving mandatory blending of about 20 percent ethanol in gasoline. Around the same time, states in the American Midwest, particularly Nebraska, began researching the potential of ethanol from corn (maize) in a blend with gasoline.
The second energy crisis took place when Iranian dissent grew into an October, 1978 strike in the nation’s oil refineries, shutting down five percent of world oil exports. This in turn grew into a violent revolution that overthrew the pro-western government of the Shah in January 1979. Once again, panicked buying led to price increases, this time up to $34.50 a barrel.
The Brazilian ethanol program began growing quickly but a proposed US ethanol program became mired in controversy and opposition from the oil industry. The Brazilian program was seen as an outgrowth of sugarcane growing traditions and was part of the economic movement towards import substitution and industrialization. It was also able to enlist the full support of Brazil’s automotive industry.
In the United States, the oil industry insisted that ethanol was an inferior fuel and that it caused insurmountable technical problems when blended with gasoline. Support for biofuels came mostly from a farm movement which saw ethanol in the light of farm prosperity and independence from the oil industry. Although the US auto industry was more inclined to back the oil industry, early proof that ethanol blending caused only minor engine problems that were easily solved came from both the Brazilian Pro-Alcool program and the Nebraska state Corn Products Utilization Committee, later known as the Gasohol Committee, which initiated a million miles of road tests on ethanol blends.
“Automotive companies were denouncing the idea of promoting biofuels on the grounds that they couldn’t be taken seriously,” said Scott Sklar, then an aide to Sen. Jacob Javits and today a renewable energy expert with the Stella Group. “Brazil’s move to subsidize their vast sugar industry and work with automotive engineers to make ethanol tolerant cars created immense tension in Washington,” Sklar said. “Biofuels advocates were able to point to the ‘Brazilian experience’ every time the US oil and auto industry said that it couldn’t be done or that it would never be successful” (Kovarik, 2006).
In 1980, in the waning months of his administration, President Jimmy Carter created a fledgling US ethanol program by signing a bill giving a 54 cent per gallon ethanol tax incentive and, at the same time, excluding Latin American ethanol from the U.S. market. These two pieces of legislation protected the U.S. ethanol industry through its infancy and up to the mid-1990s, when it grew to over one billion gallons per year of capacity.”
http://www.ethyl.environmentalhistory.org/?page_id=58
The only good thing I see in this ethanol business is the humor of running the country on corn likker. ‘Course we’ve long done that anyway: “My daddy he made whiskey, my gran daddy did too. We ain’t paid nah whiskey tax since seventeenninetytwo.” 😉 😉
There are FOUR MAJOR PRIMARY threats to a FREE Constitutional [Western-type] society … threats which one can see manifest clearly in the example provided via this article:
[1] entrenched politicians which play hand-in-hand with an ever-growing entrenched govt bureaucracy;
[2] large scale PROFITEERING corporations — not to be confused with capitalistic concerns … which, by definition, operate in a free and fair competitive environment — where, in order to establish and perpetuate a NON-competitive economy, PROFITEERS, indeed, work hand-in-hand with the entrenched politicians and bureaucracies;
[3] an UNINFORMED citizenry, which has no well-developed sense of classically liberal critical thinking — where, in fact, political brainwashing is part-and-parcel of the plan as advocated by the above culprits — by which the citizenry is educationally incapable of distinguishing between truth and lie; and,
[4] a citizenry with a broken moral compass by which this citizenry is NOT capable of understanding nor appreciating the need to respect the “inalienable rights” of each and every individual citizen; where the broken-moral-compass citizenry are duped easily by the politicians-bureaucracies-profiteers cabal and who, thereby, as a result, is rife with frustration and despair. [Note: it matters little the amount of education one has if the moral compass is broken. This is seen, time and again, in so many of history’s recognized dictators and tyrants … who were so “well educated”.]
Until these threats are recognized, seen as such and counteracted upon, there is little longer-term hope for substantial improvement in the human condition; whether in individual nations or on a global basis. Insanity = continuing to advocate and support centralized command and control oppressive govt yet expecting a different result.
This is NOT a pipe dream for UTOPIA. Utopia does NOT exist, and, where pursuing such is a fool’s errand, OTOH, the pursuit of human excellence does exist, where, the above is the generalized logic for justifying collectively — nationally and globally — MOVING AWAY, piece by piece, from a centralized command and control oppressive govt and MOVING TOWARD a more truly individual-freedom-based govt of, by and for the people. Certainly, very little of this will happen overnight, and, most likely, it will not happen in the time span of several or even many generations; however, I am of the group which, above all, advocates aggressively to voting out the bullies and tyrants, who control all too much of our respective countries, and begin moving more, step by step, toward govt systems which are founded upon the recognition respect of the rights of each and every freeborn individual.
[JFK, paraphrased: supported him or otherwise, and, regardless of whether these were simply words he was “mouthing” for political “points” or otherwise … “ask not what your country can do for you … rather ask what you can do for your family, community, and country.” HOWEVER, be aware, this approach will have positive results if and only if such a govt is founded upon laws of, by and for the people … in full recognition of the fact that we, across the globe, even in the Western cultures, are a far distance from this type of govt excellence. OTOH, laws based on IMMORAL AND CORRUPT POLITICIANS, BUREAUCRACIES and their CRONY PROFITEERS do NOT deserve the support of the citizenry; and, must be changed if WE want to improve our overall condition. The struggle continues … and will continue.]
I’m not sure about the picture. It sure looks like tilled land rather than pasture. It also looks like someone is begging for a big wind to come up and blow all the fertility away … but I’m not a farmer.
It’s plowed and planted, but I’m not a farmer either. I guess there aren’t a lot of stock photos of Australian fields of sheep grass.
Wait. That bloke is getting screwed. Sure, he’s getting paid to not use the grass, but what about the not raising sheep part? Sheep, as everyone knows, expel prodigious amounts of planet-destroying methane. They saw him coming!
The trouble comes in all forms for you and your family when you point out the Emperor has no clothes. At work, at school, in society…there are now state sanctioned methods of forcing compliance via ostracization , blacklisting at work, even humiliating your children. Where will this end? With absolute statism, globally.
How to fight desertification and reverse climate change
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change
Maybe they should subsidize cattle or bison.
“This is a tale of idiocy”
No links, no sources, nowhere we can go to get a more rational account.
Let me guess. Your gut feeling that there must be a rational justification for this idiocy is so strong that you are certain it need not even be explained or justified.
It’s just right because?
I’d like some facts.
Stokes is correct, there is no source to support this statement David wrote:
“This is a tale of idiocy, full of facts and foreboding, signifying that the end times must be surely upon us. A bloke bought a sheep property of half a million acres in western Queensland for $2.0 million. Instead of running sheep on it, he now gets $350,000 per annum under the federal government’s Direct Action scheme for not using the grass on his property. The idea being that the grass locks up carbon and reduces Australia’s carbon emissions. A neighbouring property gets $600,000 per annum. Direct Action is a $1.7 billion per annum program funded from general taxation revenue.”
No link is posted to it.
The confounding nature of people who display absolute confidence in notions without any persuasive evidence of any merit is an indication of some mixture of perception and judgement defects.
Progressives are foolishly and recklessly certain they are not only right about their feelings of concern being a sufficient test of need but they are equally certain that it is they (and only they) who MUST intervene, be in permanent control and act as they see fit to make all of the ongoing corrections.
Their delusion of being humanity’s parents and grandeur of insistent authority has grown to be what may be the most destructive infection in the history of the human race.
While they feel they know best and act on our behalf their collective intrusion is an ugly parasite that can produces net detriment at every level in every corner of the planet.
Other than that they are fine people. 🙂
RE “some mixture of perception and judgement defects”:
As George Carlin said:
“You know how stupid the average person is, right? Well, half of them are stupider than that!”
About 30% (or more) of humanity are imbeciles who vote for raving “progressives” like Gerry Brown, who continues to Californicate the Golden State. The left is full of them.
That is the problem with democracy. I dislike programs to “Get Out the Vote”. I want more programs like this:
Skill testing question: “If your car says Dodge on the front, do you really need a horn?” If you fail the question, “Stay home – you are ‘way too stupid to vote.”
IIRC, there is no constitutional right to vote in Federal elections in the US.
Steve. Regarding your comment “The confounding nature of people who display absolute confidence in notions without any persuasive evidence of any merit is an indication of some mixture of perception and judgement defects.”
My father told me (in the early seventies) that the people you speak of have always been around but in the past they weren’t allowed to control anything.
Australia may have been outdone in Tennessee. Grant was called massive. Someone good in higher math can figure out how much per person this is to study 600 workers (?).
http://wreg.com/2017/07/27/university-of-memphis-receives-13-8-million-grant-to-expand-sensor-technology/
“The results should help measure work performance, the university said. The mPerf project is sponsored by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity’s Multimodal Objective Sensing to Assess Individuals with Context program.” Translation?
On this side of the pond some of us avidly follow all the twists and turns of American politics and the presidency. It is becoming apparent that in Donald J. Trump the USA got themselves, like it not, for the better or worse, an independent president.
Will the Australian government pay me for every minute that I can hold my breath.
I’ll even sign a contract with wording something like this:
I, Robert Kernodle, hereby affirm that I will hold my breath for a minimum of five minutes per day, accumulated in five separate daily sessions of one minute each, for the remainder of my life, in consideration of payment of one USA dollar per minute, to be paid to me by the Australian government in monthly installments. This amounts to a sum of roughly $ 365 USA per year, and I am willing to commit to a long-term contract of ten years for the sum of $ 3,650 USA.
Of course, we would have to work out methods of proof and penalties for breaking the contract, but no problem, because I feel very confident that I could easily commit to this.
Well, I really blew that mental math, shortchanging myself immensely. Word of advice, don’t skip the back-of-envelope calculation, thinking that you can do it fast in your head.
My daily take would be $ 5 USA, or $ 35 USA per week, or $ 1820 USA per year, or $ 18,200 for ten years.
The contract could extend even when you are dead and gone providing for your family. In the US you could even vote early and often!
Surely letting sheep eat grass sequesters most of the carbon as droppings some sequestering in sheep bodies and likely the bloke would have been even expanding his sheep flock. The grass just keeps growing anyway! Of course these nimrods don’t want you to eat meat which is already a biomass by product and biomass is considered a carbon neutral material when you burn it!!
Unless we start teaching K to Uni logic and encouraging them to think, ever growing numbers of functional idiots will be taking over the world and there will be no way back. Millennials have been choked off from their heritage, history, traditions, free thought, free enterprise, a productive political economy… by teachings that treat these as shameful things for which we must feel guilty. A little thought reveals this political correctness product as a most insidious new form of гас¡зм by шнуте progressives.
I need an app to find all of the green ATM machines dispensing cash. I also need the political code to enter the system and complete the deal.
Pay people to do nothing . What ? That’s what we have government for .
Make $350,000 per year to watch grass grow ? No college degree required either .
The fundamental problem is that governments have our credit cards and are
determined to max out the limit . Stupid policies abound till we hit the wall .
The USA government topped that . To by pass the requirement for Senate approval of a “Treaty ” they
knew would never pass they called it the Paris ..”Accord ” then slipped half a $$Billion dollars out the door as Obama cleaned out his office . Someone steals a quart of milk goes to jail but the politicians with the aid of a few bureaucrats rob tax payers of billions … not a word .
Cut the credit card up and this bullshit ends .
We’ve been paying people to d nothing for years. They are called politicians.
Dr. Archibald usually writes about sun and its effects on the climate change but his arguments are not readily accepted by some.
There is another commentator who started contributing a year or two ago (here and Climate.etc) and appears to be very well versed in the solar matters but often strays into area which borders on so called ‘cyclomania’. He wrote number of well researched and documented essays under the title Nature Unbound and goes by name Javier but his identity has been protected.
I believe that I have come across his professional work, if so he is the world’s foremost expert in his very narrow field of (solar related) activity, unless I’m grossly mistaken. There is a good reason for his desire to remain anonymous.
Sounds like CA and Gov. Jerry Brown has rubbed off on the Aussies!
Reality is stranger than fiction. Joseph Heller was pretty close though:
“His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbours sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counselled one and all, and everyone said “Amen.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22
David, despite the witty and pithy comments, I find the likelihood of this post being accurate similar to GCM’s. Here in Canada, that would even rate in the top 100 stupid things the federal government does, I simply cannot believe our brethren in the southern commonwealth are so much better governed.
There is no way this article is long enough to even begin addressing this topic.
I salute you sir! It’s my dream to take advantage of the same type of opportunity here stateside. Congratulations! I’ve often though of going into solar panel or wind turbine sales but my sense of decency and righteousness so far outweighs my desire to screw environmentalists at their own game. It’s getting closer though.
To get paid for not building a coal mine, do I first have to have enough money to build a coal mine? If I skip the entire planning stage, doesn’t that also save on energy consumption and help the earth? For a million dollars a year I promise to not even think about building a coal mine.
They don’t want sheep to eat grass to stop them from farting methane, which is more potent than CO2. It’s a way to regulate sheep fart. Or just starve them to death or put airbag in their ass
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_orkXxp0bhEA/S-derI2uoxI/AAAAAAAAdRE/2YfO14m2yWY/s400/100509-climatard.jpg
Please tell me that’s not real…
Probably is. I know in New Zealand “farmers”, “scientists” and politicians were “exploring” ways to trap methane emissions from livestock with contraptions like that and/or changes in feed. I guess you can’t change much in open fields of grass. But you can sure make a living out of virtue signalling and rent seeking.
I wonder how many politicians are “connected” to these “farms”. I would suggest it’s a lot.
Mind you, Aussie pollies are now rushing to prove they do not hold dual citizenships as their position as an MP would be invalid under Parliamentary rules. Clearly, there are no checks and measures for politicians in Australia.
Let’s see how far they try and push the fart tax in NZ.