Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The climate debate in Australia has descended into farce, as desperate green sympathisers try to maintain the impression that the world cares about CO2.
Withdrawing from the Paris agreement makes no economic sense
Peter Castellas
Mon 9 Jul 2018 13.48 AESTThose who advocate for leaving Paris are economically, environmentally and socially irresponsible
Withdrawing from the Paris agreement is not an option for Australia, unless we want to suffer severe economic consequences as a result.
Australia is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and it is in our national interest to support effective global action. The Paris agreement sets a common multilateral platform that allows for domestic flexibility to make contributions to emissions reductions acknowledging the scale of the challenge is greater than any one country’s capacity to act.
…
As our domestic policy settings will inevitably tighten, Australia’s large-emitting businesses will want access to international permits and conversely our world class domestic offset market will want to export credits to a world short in supply. Accelerated clean energy and technology transfer and climate finance will also be part of expanded trade-related rules stemming from the Paris rulebook.
Despite the mis-truths espoused regularly by some conservative politicians and parts of the Australian media, rapid developments are taking place in India and China to transform their economies and meet their increasingly ambitious climate change commitments. Our exports sit in the supply chain of global markets, where there is increasingly an explicit price on carbon. We don’t want to be locked out of these markets, or worse, penalised through trade and economic sanctions if Australia is seen to be out of alignment with global developments.
…
The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, … went on to say, “The global low emissions economy is estimated to be worth around $6tn and is growing at some 4-5% per annum. We believe that through the use of technology and research and science and innovation, there will be many opportunities for Australian businesses, Australian jobs in a low emissions economy.”
…
Peter Castellas is CEO of the Carbon Market Institute
What I don’t get is why “tightening policy settings” seem to be required to develop these alleged international carbon market opportunities. Australia contributes an estimated 1.8% of global CO2 emissions. Couldn’t countries like Australia and the USA sell carbon credits to overseas buyers without enforcing CO2 restrictions at home? Or are Australian and US carbon credits only valuable if they are produced by suppliers who are subject to carbon taxes? Surely the planet doesn’t care whether all those carbon credit trees are grown in states or countries which enforce carbon taxes?
Where is my money???
I NEED MY MONEY NOW!!!
Sorry.. Only if you’re a despot and sucking up to the U.N. corporation.
The liberals have got so many s c a m s going on….I wonder if there’s even enough money to go around
The Coalition ginger group is preparing to cross the floor if they don’t get three Hele coal fired power stations as part of the NEG mix.
Australian politics is becoming robust again, democracy lives.
That’s interesting, I wonder what it means.
Ginger group:
HELE:
In the above linked article we have this little gem:
Ah yes, energy storage. Only the most ardent greenies can ignore the fact that energy storage is the Achilles heel of wind and solar energy.
The greenies have assumed that demand will lead to the development of viable grid scale energy storage. That would require some serious scientific breakthroughs. Breakthroughs don’t happen on demand.
Battery technology doesn’t follow Moore’s law the same way computer technology developed. Battery technology develops more in accord with Eroom’s Law. 🙂
The most important requirement for achieving “serious scientific/technological breakthroughs” is for the Universe to have natural processes that are able to provide the results needed for the science that is necessary for being able to develop the technology.
The science of physics is based on the fundamental universal rules of reality, don’t you know?
As far as I can tell, there isn’t just one roadblock. example
A promising technology I was following is Aquion batteries.
As far as I can tell, the technology is viable and the problem is production. Anyhow Aquion is going nowhere fast.
When it comes to new battery technology, there always seems to be something …
Here’s an article assessing commercially available Aquion batteries. While they work fine, they are large, and expensive and have comparatively slow permitted discharge rates, and long recharge cycles. The article calculates that they cost the user AUD$.49 per kilowatt hour stored over the estimated life of the battery. In contrast, an LG lithium battery will cost AUD$.43 per kilowatt hour stored; 11% less.
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/aquion-salt-water-battery/
That’s interesting, I wonder what it means.
Ginger group:
… a formal or informal group within an organisation seeking to influence its direction and activity. ”
and here I thought they were talking about the Red Headed League.
The correct Australian term for a Blood Nut is ‘Ranga’.
If there was a ‘Ranga Group’ in Australian politics it would be Pauline Hanson, who is a senator from Queensland.
Hanson is a bit of an interesting one. Right/far right. If we didn’t have a moat she would probably be very pro-wall. Did very well last election out of the DelCon voters how refused to vote Liberal after Turnbull took the nominally conversative Liberal Party deep into small L liberal land.
The MSM hate her of course but under the Australian political system she doesn’t really carry a lot of deal making clout.
Use the wind to grind the coal into powder. Wind powered grinding mills were some of the first uses of wind power. Its why still today we call them “wind mills” although most of them aren’t milling anything.
Watermills and windmills powered the industrial revolution of the middle ages, powering all sorts of devices other than flour milling such as, for example, walkering (or fullering- a horrible occupation), boltering, sawyering and smithing. Contrary to the historical revision that is necessitated by each era’s need to appear to be the best ever, life was actually pretty good in the Middle Ages until the plague and the church put an end to the good times. See The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages.
I cleared the cookie disclosure button and the page ate my draft comment. Ouch.
Moore’s law is the working out of Carver Mead’s virtuous cycle of smaller, faster, cooler, cheaper.
It doesn’t apply to batteries because the voltage of any battery is fixed by the chemical reaction between anode and cathode, and the amperage is a straight line function of the quantity of reactant.
If your battery’s chemistry is Lithium and Cobalt, you have a real problem with large quantities of scarce expensive materials. There is no reason to suppose that they will become cheaper, and much reason to believe that they will become more expensive. Especially if they are being bought in boxcar lots to make utility scale batteries.
There are cheaper battery chemistries such as sodium sulfur. But, they come with lots of other problems like high temperature operation and finicky corrosive, combustible materials.
Further, battery chemistries are mature, well characterized science. In the 218 years since the battery was invented, just about every possible combination of chemicals has been tried. Don’t expect something nobody ever thought of to show up.
As it goes on I am getting more and more convinced that the inmates are running the asylum.
Don’t know about ‘inmates’ but we certainly have a marxist-socialist, anti-capitalist and anti free-market global agenda coming out of the UN as it seeks an unelected, unaccountable and anti-democratic global government able to dictate the lifestyle and prosperity (or not) of the proletariat whilst preserving and enhancing the wealth and lifestyles of the ‘global elite’.
And that is ‘climate change’ in a nutshell.
It is called Agenda 21
The problem is that now the asylum has expanded to the size of the earth. And we are all the prisoners now to carbon taxes. I cant quite wrap my head around this . 2/3 of the world has gone mad. The only saving grace is that we skeptics are gaining with every poll.
ETS Compliance Forum
“Prepared Remarks for the ETS Compliance Forum”
By Dirk Forrister
President & CEO, IETA
6 November 2014
Global in coverage: Emissions trading, 7 pages
U.S part includes Pres. Obama, RGGI, EPA, California.
https://ec.euorpa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/docs/0100/keynote_address_en.pdf
California Carbon.info
Interview: Dirk Forrister, Sept.14, 2014
Re: Climate Week,NYC, IETA high level activities September,2014
http://www.californiacarbon.info/exclusive-interview-support-carbon-pricing-needed-ensure-place-carbon-markets-paris-2015-says-ieta-ceo-ahead-climate-week-nyc
Also available online.
California Carbon.info
About Us:
WCI Carbon market North America
Mentors and Advisors
http://www.californiacarbon.info/team
California Carbon. info & Climate Connect,Ltd. link.
Climate Connect Ltd.
Trusted by includes: Ontario and others.
http://www.climate-connect.com
Advocates for 100% renewables.
I was going to quote sections of that report but then reread the whole thing. It is one big blob of illogical bullshit. The whole thing. Every sentence. It is proof that believing in a religion makes you dumber.
1) Carbon credits are fantasyland.
2) Australia’s contribution to any global temperature change is fantasyland.
3) Withdrawing from the Paris agreement contributing to economic hardship is fantasyland.
4) The idea that Australia is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change is fantasyland.
5)The idea that the Paris agreement sets a common multilateral platform is fantasyland.
6) The idea that Australia’s large-emitting businesses will want access to international permits is fantasyland. Businesses want to be left alone and want the right to emit CO2.
7) The thought that the rest of the world will be eager to buy Austalia’s world class domestic offset market credits to a world short in supply is fantasyland.
8) “Accelerated clean energy and technology transfer and climate finance will also be part of expanded trade-related rules stemming from the Paris rulebook.” This statement boggles the mind more than the rest. It is super fantasyland.
9) The statement that rapid developments are taking place in India and China to transform their economies and meet their increasingly ambitious climate change commitments is super super fantasyland. I take back my last statement in no. 8 above about “more than the rest”
10) The global low emissions economy is estimated to be worth around $6tn and is growing at some 4-5% per annum. This final statement will become super super super fantasyland when the global warming castle disintegrates from a tidal wave of TRUTH.
“Accelerated clean energy and technology transfer” probably means woodchips shipped thousands of miles to Drax.
“..climate finance will also be part of expanded trade-related rules stemming from the Paris rulebook” sounds like carbon taxes and wealth transfer thereof.
“..rapid developments are taking place in India and China to transform their economies and meet their increasingly ambitious climate change commitments” is just a blatant lie.
“The global low emissions economy is estimated to be worth around $6tn and is growing at some 4-5% per annum..” will be what the world sues the Elite for when the scam goes completely arse-up.
“…believing in a religion makes you dumber.”
I’m not particularly religious, but I enthusiastically support Christianity. Time and time again the introduction of Christian missionaries has elevated large populations from a condition of abject servitude to one of enlightened wellbeing. I cite the Aztecs, Mayans, Hawaiians, and Maories, and yes, the Australian natives as examples, with additional populations still working. Are people dumber for having learned to read and write?
Some people have a deep seated need to feel superior to others.
So they pick some characteristic and declare that it makes them superior to anyone who lacks it.
I’ve chatted with nearly 100 Aussies over the last 60 years and not one of them ever approached this level of mendacity. Not even when we talked footie.
You really are fixated on your anti-religious bigotry.
I’d love to hear you tell Einstein and Newton how dumb they are.
Just like the religious people you despise, you see and hear only what you want to.
You are as much of a religious fanatic as those you spend all your time looking down on.
Keep believing in your pink elephant. Does God sell or give away ice cream in heaven?
It is given away, of course. The best recipe is a salted caramel one that uses the tears of people wailing in hell as an ingredient. Yum!
The Christian Apostles were all willing to suffer gruesome fates — all of them suffered gruesome, painful deaths, except John, who was exiled. And all they had to do to avoid this, AFAIK, was to renounce their faith. What evidence of truth would you need, to be willing to give up your life for, in this horrific manner?
They’ve made so many Dumbo rides in fantasyland that they really think elephants can fly.
Can we condense the list by saying “Australia is fantasyland”? :•)
It’s the Guardian.
Nonsense is obligatory. Along with moral outrage and social justice.
Think NY Times in drag.
It looks like the green blob getting more and more shrill as they lose.
The wounded beast roars loudest right before it falls down.
” . . . Australia’s large-emitting businesses will want access to international permits and conversely our world class domestic offset market will want to export credits to a world short in supply. ”
This looks odd. Our businesses will want to buy credits from overseas, AND our offset market will want to sell credits overseas. Would it not be simpler for our businesses wanting to buy the credits to get them from the local businesses wanting to sell them?
But if we have businesses in credit and also businesses in debit, Australia as a whole must be in approximate neutral territory. So businesses neither need to sell or buy credits. We should just forget about the whole she-bang and ignore the Paris Agreement.
Of course, if we do that it takes the middle-men out of the market. Guess who the middle-men would be? Yes you have it right, the big banks who are in dead lumber over their misbehaviour with lending, borrowing and financial advising! Would we really want to put another profitable scam into their rapacious pockets?
For non-Australians who are not aware of what the banks (and financial advisers) have got up to, Google “Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services” and despair!
Australia digs stuff out of the ground, coal, iron ore, uranium etc, ships it overseas and lets them use it and add value. We just pay them to emit CO2. I know, sounds crazy, but it is true. And we no longer have any industry to speak of.
I see your claim:
The World will Want to Buy Australia’s Carbon Credits
I raise you a counter claim:
The World wants to buy Australia’s coal and uranium; and it does.
Indeed. Just go to Newcastle NSW and watch the bulk carriers arrive empty and leave the next day filled to the brim with coal.
There’s an economy?
No.
‘World class domestic offset market’. So that’s what it is? I had wondered about that for some time. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
No wonder the British call the place Oz.
Australia contributes much more to global CO2 emission than we do imagine:
“The [AUD] $56.5 billion is split between 200 million tonnes (Mt) of thermal coal valued at $20.8 billion, and 172Mt of coking coal valued at $35.7 billion.”
This coal sets free CO2 as well. Somewhere abroad…
https://www.australianmining.com.au/news/australian-coal-exports-set-new-record-in-2017/
Its not a climate sin if China burns the coal…
Nothing wrong with burning coal, but selling coal abroad and taxing CO2 at home it is.
Australia has moved from low cost energy to high cost. Industry is moving offshore. That will destroy Australia’s economy. For what?
No! We have a housing economy here in Australia, artificially propped up by vast immigration to the tune of 400,000 per year.
Hey, that’s British Columbia’s main “industry” too. Our provincial government is typically dominated by realestate agents, land developers and lawyers who see nothing wrong with selling ones kidneys to buy food (i.e. selling pieces of the country to foreign interests to maintain the illusion of a vibrant economy).
I’m sure Australians care about CO2 when a shortage affects the beer supply – which is the current UK concern.
Recycle warmists, they’re full of Carbon.
Here would be riots in the street. Oh no, the soccer world cup is on, or is it tennis, or F1, or cricket, I forget. During the England vs Sweden football game most arterial motorways around London (M25) and in to and out of London (M1, M2, M4 etc) were practically empty. Everyone seemed to be watching TV.
I would have enjoyed driving on those usually nightmarishly busy roads for once! I don’t give a tuppeny d@mn for soccer but we are not visiting UK this summer…too many horrible crowded drives on such roads normally at this time of the year.
I hear ya! I recall some time ago now that while driving to London on the M3, just as you pass (Under or over, I can’t recall) the M25 you could see red and white vehicle lights as far as the eye could see on both motorways on both carriageways in every direction. This was in the early 90’s.
You get between an Aussie and his Fosters at your peril.
Dred,
Today, might I suggest
“You get between an Aussie and her or his Fosters at your peril.”
Silly, ain’t it??
Auto
Fosters is sold in Aus?
Paying people for NOT producing usable energy is a catastrophic consequence of CAGW philosophy.
Politics in an emulsion with hard natural science is proving to be a dangerously volatile mixture that IS GOING TO BLOW UP and make a huge mess of everything that we have thought we could trust and revere.
The public blurb about the HELE power station can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-01/japan-spruiks-coal-fired-power-plants-to-australia/8577464 It seems to be a public relations blurb written by someone who doesn’t know much about the subject.
Pulverised coal – so what’s new? Pulverising the coal certainly doesn’t enable it to magically create more energy.
It can get a damned sight hotter than that. The problem is that the furnace gases will have undesirably levels of NOx.
45% is about the theoretical limit for a coal fired power station so the plant performance is pretty good. Give it a few years and it probably be down near to 38%. Ho hum.
I’d suggest using powdered warmists, although not as efficient as coal, it would surely boost the economy for everyone else.
If they truly believe carbon credits are valuable, they should be banging at Ontario’s door where they can buy a busload of them from Premier Ford who is pulling out of the Carbon scam.
Why does Australia have any surplus credits? It is coal that is exported from there that China Burns. So it is okay to make a profit from others polluting the planet by selling them the means to pollute and then to sell credits because they are not at fault. Okay Australia why don’t you leave the coal in the ground rather than be complete hypocrites.
Some math I stole from a commenter called Political Junkie at smalldeadanimals. Below refers to Ontario before the recent election of Doug Ford as premier.
ONTARIO’S GREENHOUSE GAS REDUCTION TARGET
IMPACT ON CLIMATE:
Ontario has a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 37% below 1990 levels by the year 2030. This ambitious target means eliminating approximately 66 megatonnes (Mt) of CO₂. Assuming this can be done, what will be the measurable impact on climate?
TEMPERATURE CHANGE IMPACT – 1°C per 8,913 years:
According to Nature Climate Change, global temperature increases by 0.000000000017°C per tonne of CO₂. Ontario’s planned emissions reduction of 66 Mt will reduce temperature by:
66,000,000 t x 0.000000000017°C / t / yr. = 0.00011°C / yr.
Meeting Ontario’s target would affect global temperature by one degree per 8913 years.
EQUIVALENT TEMPERATURE IMPACT BY MOVING NORTHWARD 11 METERS PER YEAR:
Temperature decreases approximately 1°C per 100 kilometers as we move North. The impact of meeting Ontario’s emissions target is:
0.00011°C / yr. x 100 km / 1°C x 1000 m / km = 11 m / yr.
We would feel the same impact by moving Northward 14 meters per year.
EQUIVALENT TEMPERATURE IMPACT BY CLIMBING 2.16 CENTIMETERS PER:
We know that temperature decreases with altitude at a rate of 6.49°C/km. The impact of Ontario meeting its 2030 target will be:
0.00011°C /yr. / 6.49°C/km = 0.000017 km / yr.
This is equivalent to an altitude increase of 1.7 centimeters, or 0.67 inches per year.
Greg61
“This is equivalent to an altitude increase of 1.7 centimeters, or 0.67 inches per year.”
Most kids grow faster than that for years at a time!
Auto
Can we get souvenir copies to frame next to our copies of Confederate currency and Weimar Republic marks?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
First chuckle of the day.
British Columbia already went through the carbon credits scam when our carbon tax was first introduced.
Luckily our Auditor General was a man of integrity and exposed the scam. The level of political corruption and arm twisting through the press was staggering in an attempt to discredit the AG ahead of his report.
The problem is that Carbon Credits have no intrinsic value. The are created out of air. So they are an obvious target for corrupt practices and bogus proposals in an attempt to create something for nothing.
Carbon Credits are basically a license to polute. What value to society is there in creating pollution licenses? Is it OK to dump sewage into a stream so long as you pay someone else to not dump sewage? The entire concept is rotten to the core.
The problem is that everyone not dumping sewage into the stream shows up with their hands out asking for a credit. There is no way to separate the scammers from anyone else. So it all becomes an exercise in fleecing the honest participants.
In the real world, absolute purity is not an option.
As a result society sets a limit to the amount of pollution they are going to allow. In that case, what matters is how to get down to that limit the most economically.
Pollution credits allows you to do this. Nothing rotten about it whatsoever.
Reality gets you down votes?
CO2 is not “pollution” !! D’OH !
‘Nothing rotten about it whatsoever.’
But … but … sir, CO2 is not a pollutant, in fact the greening of the planet proves its a beneficial trace gas.
Admittedly, its failure to increase temperatures is of concern.
Low emissions are a $6 trillion market? That’s 7.5% of the world’s GDP. For those who talk about “Big Oil/Big Coal” financing things, here is a MASSIVE number well beyond the annual revenue of the top 30 oil companies – combined.
$6 T….and thus explains the Pavlov’s Dog behavior among political types and their advocacy satellites.
What Carbon Credits? How does Australia deserve any?
Apart from completely ceasing to produce coal.
So they want High Efficiency power stations.
People of Australia, Fluidised Bed coal burners have been around for decades. Check out Drax if nothing else. Where were you. Not ‘down-the-pub’ I trust?
Oh. You’re gonna get credit from planting some trees?
What trees? Where?
Its been tried, with disastrous results – check out Eucalyptus if nothing else.
There is nowhere in Australia to plant anything that will not grow slowly and produce nothing.
Until a lightning bolt or half-asleep backpacker burns the place right back to a smouldering wreck
(Hint. Wheat farming. Why, exactly, are you so proud of one ton per acre yield from plants and farming methods that produce 5 tons per acre elsewhere. and HOW MANY acres-per-sheep when everyone else counts in sheep-per-acre?)
Until you clearly understand what causes what within any given landscape (i.e. you get Cause & Effect the right way round), any attempts to ‘fix things’ will only make the perceived problem worse.
THE worst Cause & Effect misunderstanding is that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect and the OCO Sputnik has proved as much by showing a huge CO2 hole above Australia.
Of all places. hahaha
Gotta love Ma Nature’s sense of humour…..
Not if we can export our credits first.
And credits for environmental corruption and disruption forced by photovoltaic panels, windmills, and non-green smoothing functions (e.g. batteries, anthropogenic flooding) from recovery to processing to operation to reclamation, especially by the Big Green Blight? In China?
Equal treatment, not political congruence. And let’s dispense with the cargo cult nonsense. The prophecy has not been fulfilled and Nature seems to be in denial in the scientific logical domain (i.e. near time and space, forward and backward).
Pulling my hair out at the absolute idiocy of these people.
Does anyone really care about this movement any? It’s becoming annoying.
So how many credits did China buy?
Maybe some long time in the future, in a galaxy far,far away.
But right now, the world wants to buy Australia’s carbon.
Why would anybody want to buy “carbon credits” from Australia at all? It is not like China, India, Brazil, US, anybody really, are not free to emit as much CO2 and Methane as they please and nobody’s going to dictate to them that they must not. Australia, incidentally, sequesters naturally more CO2 than it emits, both naturally and artificially [1]. Australia does not have a CO2 problem at all! There is no reason at all for Australia to be reducing CO2 emissions.
[1] https://doi.org/10.1260/0958-305X.26.3.457
NASA OCO-2 satellite measurements
“The net flux distribution shows that the top net emitting continent is Asia, followed by Africa and Europe. North America is also emitting significantly, while South America is net sequestrating. Antarctica has a net flux close to zero. Australia (Oceania) is finally the top sequestering continent”.
School of Engineering and Physical Science, James Cook University, Townsville QLD, Australia
https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/42832/1/Discussion%20of%20the%20NASA%20OCO-2%20Satellite.pdf
The EU must immediately commence paying Australia for sequestering their members’ evil carbon.
Wealthy countries must set the example so Germany first; Angela we demand payment now!
China & India have a UN free pass so the UN can pay their share as well.
Josh Frydenberg; where are you?
I wonder if big banks are getting any kind of profits off of these carbon trading scams? My guess is that they are.
Why would anyone buy Australian carbon credits when no one seems to want to buy UN carbon credits?
ICE CER Futures
Current price is 26 euro cents per tonne of CO2.
Cents. Not dollars.
The article leads me to ask this: How easy would it be to counterfeit “carbon credits” and sell them on the open market, say on eBay? Also: What organization is the clearing house for these “credits” and can they be bribed?
For the period 2006–2015, only 45% of anthropogenic emissions are estimated to stay in the atmosphere. Estimated uptake from the land accounted for 30% of emissions and 25% was by the oceans.
Global GHG emissions for 2016 = 36 Gt
Australia GHG emissions for 2016 = 0.41 Gt
55% natural uptake of 36 Gt global emissions = 19.7 Gt. Assuming all nations are credited for a share of oceanic uptake proportional to their land area, Australia’s share of natural uptake = 1.0 Gt. Considering uptake by land area alone, Australia’s share of natural uptake is still 0.54 Gt.
(Note: A study published in Science several years ago on CO2 uptake by soil in desert areas found uptake comparable to moderately vegetated areas. The mechanism is unknown.)
No matter how you figure it, Australia is a net CO2 sink. This is also affirmed in global CO2 monitoring by the Japanese Ibuki satellite. The high per capita emissions for Australia is a red herring. Australia is in fact the only advanced economy that is a CO2 sink. We are absorbing emissions from other nations and should be receiving an emissions credit. Obsessing over our emissions and saddling ourselves with the highest electricity prices in the world is beyond stupid.