Two up for Brendan
FEDERAL Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson says he will ask police to investigate whether an art magazine broke the law when it used a photograph of a naked six-year-old girl on its cover.
and;
BRENDAN Nelson has abandoned support for an emissions trading scheme without international action, warning Australia would be sacrificing jobs by going it alone.
I am becoming very concerned with the Rudd government and their seemingly blind acceptance of the Gospel of the Latter Day Alarmists. I would rather we didn’t lead the world in this matter – when we can see everyone else is catching the bus then we should step on board.
Until then lets look at what we can do with technology.
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Kev
Technology should hold the answer, but what is the question? Both sides of politics agree that action needs to be taken on global warming. They differ in the timing. Both are trying to spin the issue to gain maximum political advantage. Both are using fear.
This is not an issue that fits well with the political process.
For mine, I believe a version of Pascal’s wager holds true in regard to climate change. If we spend lots of time and money developing cleaner energy solutions and, in the process, we lower worldwide GDP by less than 1 per cent (as suggested is likely by Nicholas Stern and others) and then find out the science was wrong, we have a cleaner, healthier, smarter, more comfortable world to live in and hand on. The reduction of wealth will be imperceptible. On the other hand, if we judge the science to be wrong now and take little action, and the science is ultimately proven to be right, it’s too late. Incidentally, “we” means an international consensus.
I’d regard that as a conservative position.
If we could lock Rudd and Nelson in the same room, and refuse them food and water until they came up with as agreement on the issue, we’d all be a lot better off.
You need to drop the Global Warming tag and resort to Climate Change. Climate change is an established factor of life on earth and has always been with us. Global warming is only a part of the cycle.
Next we need to have a debate over how much us humans impact on climate…are we driving the change or is it just a part of a cycle to long for us to comprehend or is it a bit of both and therefore what is the ratio.
Having said all that we do need to be smarter but that’s what we are anyway. If no one mentioned Global Warming society would still be researching smart and clean power even if it was only for commercial reasons.
The politics of the issue are clear. The Left generally has signed up in the Church of the Latter Day Alarmists en masse while the rest of us look at them askance. The media itself have a lot to answer for with their ‘Great Barrier Reef dead in ten years’ type scare mongering as there are people who believe everything they read – hence the ‘most people believe we need to do something drastic about Global Warming’ polls.
The Left are heavily into this sort of shit and love the symbolism of Kyoto and banning four wheel drives but the rest of us are looking for something more pragmatic.
Plant a billion trees is doing something – signing Kyoto is symbolism. Supporting research and sales of solar power cells (not give them the boot as Rudd has done) is doing something – starting an ETS in obscene haste in the face of a a lot of offered caution is symbolism but more to the point it is also anti capitalism and that suits the Left and as usual, what suits the Left, damages the economy.
I agree we can do something to make our presence cleaner and greener but it actually doesn’t have to be at the expense of anyones GDP. We should do it because it smart and a better use of natural resources not because the IPPC entered 2 degrees climate warming into a computer and come up a new gospel.
We need to slow down and THINK.
Kev, blindly dismissing the science that links burning of carbon dioxide to global warming is irrespnsible. Your grandchildren are the ones who may have to deal with this “if” the science is correct. It makes good sense from a rskk management point of view to place controls in place to deal with what could be a catestrophic outcome. By us leading the charge not only could th eeconomy benifit from the science, we can also demand polluters like China pick up their act by not buying environmentally unfreindly products. Apart from that the development of energy from the sun, wind etc will make the way of life we have now economically viable into the future.
Not blindly dismissing anything – I’m just not rushing into believing the alarmists. We can demand China does what we want to all day but they will still do what they want. While developing countries are having difficulty feeding their people it is a bit much for us to demand they feed them less.
I’m not demanding we do nothing but blindly believing the shit that some put out, including Garnault, is more irresponsible. You’re a Greenie and will not be swayed but you should be aware there are people of science and reason all across the world who are concerned that we are going to fast.
As we recommend caution, thus not complying with the radical “fix it immediately or we are all doomed” gospel then they just ramp up the threats to bring us to heel. Millions dead, worse that a nuclear war, Barrier Reef destroyed, farmers bankrupt…….the list goes on.
I agree that Solar energy will improve our footprint and I support expenditure of billions in research and that is what it will take before it replaces coal as our main energy source. What do we do in the meantime? The Greens and other soothsayers would have us shut the industry down regardless of the economic disaster it would produce.
The question of whether the science is right or not is moot. It’s the ideological haste and radical interpretation of that science that worries. We obviously have a responsibility to do something to improve the situation, I’m just suggesting we can the ideological alarmist/threatening approach and stick to reasoned science
Guys it’s not climate change any more, it’s ‘carbon pollution’…
Dear Leader said so while he was ‘blow torching’ the G8 leaders (or wherever Kevin 747 is at the moment).
It’s also a crock – CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas and has very little to do with the extremely slight warming the planet experienced until recently.
Guano and his fellow travelers have delivered a dishonest polemic in the guise of a report. His risible attempt at proselytism contains 548 pages of ill-informed declaration and hyperbole.
The terms of reference reveal the document’s bias:
“To report … on:
1. The likely effect of human induced climate change on Australia’s economy,
environment, and water resources in the absence of effective national and
international efforts to substantially cut greenhouse gas emissions”
So how much of the planet’s slight warming is ‘human induced’? How much is part of the natural cycle of climate change as we continue to climb out of the ‘Popsicle’ like state of the world during the last great ice age.
‘Modern’ temperatures, measured using thermometers from about 1850, show the same rate of warming to around 2002 with a couple of peaks and downturns along the way (especially at the moment).
The amount of ‘carbon pollution’ in the atmosphere has risen steadily during the past 50 odd years yet the observed climate change does not match the rhetoric of the Rudds and Flummeries of the world.
There would be absolutely no impact on the Earth’s climate if all 20 million of us switched off every appliance, ceased farming, mining, manufacturing and transporting or in other words just curled up and died.
For Rudd and Guano to run around the country bleating about drowning Kakadu or being able to poach eggs in the Murray if WE don’t pauperise ourselves is deliberate deceit delivered for purely political reasons.
The Indian government released a paper recently entitled ‘National Action Plan on Climate Change’ in which it states it WILL NOT reduce its rate of growth until its 1.2 billion people have the same CO2 emissions per capita (currently 1.02 tons per annum) as those of developed nations such as the US and Europe (between 9.4 and 20.01 tonnes per annum).
The Indian government goes on to claim that not withstanding its commitment to less polluting energy producing technologies its priority is to alleviate the poverty of the bulk of its people.
It further states that the ‘consensus’ in Indian science is that a link between CO2 and climate change has not been established.
To argue as Rudd does that we should ‘take the lead’ even though India and China have assured us over and over again they intend to continue to grow at their current rate means we’d be cutting our own economic throats for absolutely no gain.
It is a stupid and dangerous proposition.
That said, I want Australia to develop solar, nuclear, tidal, geothermal, compressed natural gas, liquefied coal and whatever energy producing technologies are around the corner to get rid of our dependency on the corrupt and unstable oil producers in the Middle East.
Lemme see, the maths goes something like this…..
CO2 makes up 2% of greenhouse gases.
Australia contributes 1.5% of CO2.
Ah, so 1.5% of 2% is, err, a very very very small amount.
It’s a croc.
That doesn’t mean that I support pollution, but heck, how come no one is supporting nuclear power?
We have plenty of raw material, and no CO2.
It’s a croc.
ps my daily driver is a 5.0 litre Ford V8!!
Cav
Convert it to LPG. You get $2000 in your pocket, and you’ll be paying 69cpl. The big Fords run well on LPG providing you get the right conversion. Sequential Vapour Injection is the way to go.
Fuel tax will start to apply to LPG after 2011.
“blindly dismissing the science that links burning of carbon dioxide”
Your full of shit (a combination of generally noxious gases, although not far removed from the proportionate gas mix of the standard atmosphere) How do you ‘burn’ carbon dioxide? It’s an input into planetary flora photosynthesis, largely produced by the expiration of mammalian vapours, as a conversion of O2 and other gases through the lungs/blood system. Of note is the fact that the planet was a formally sulphur rich atmosphere, partially the reason why reptiles evolved in the manner they have. Perhaps humans driving 4WD had a hand in that process too? Go and stick your head up your methane producer.
The excise (under the previous government’s legislation) will go up to a ceiling –
“Under the changes announced today, LPG for cars, previously free of excise, will be taxed by 2.5 cents per litre from mid-2008. That’ll go up to an eventual rate of 12.5 cents per litre by 2012.”
(Source PM – 16th December 2003)
That’s a lot better than the 38.5cpl we pay on unleaded, and on current prices means that the ceiling will be 82cpl. I wonder what unleaded will cost by then?