KAEP,

I didn't actually say "The massive increases in domestic electricity bills in recent years are a direct result of all that (Carbon Taxes)".

You have inserted the words "carbon taxes", while I was referring to the past couple of decades of global warming propaganda, which have led to the current policies of solar and wind subsidies, renewable energy targets, gross input tariffs and then on to rises in electricity prices, public transport price increases, rate rises and so on. If that was not clear from my post, I apologise.

The carbon dioxide tax has not actually bitten yet, but people should also be aware that, separately from the "clean energy" package of 19 carbon dioxide tax bills, the Gillard government has also snuck through a substantial new tax on refrigerant gases and increases in fuel exise, which have received no publicity.

The refrigerants tax will affect 800 importers and raise an estimated $270 million in its first year, which will likely be passed on to contractors (with margin) and their business customers (with margin).

All of that will be passed on to consumers, plus GST (a tax on a tax increase) so the government is deliberately misleading us when they talk about the carbon dioxide tax affecting only the "top 500 polluters". The prices of every refrigerated food product and many pharmaceuticals will be affected.

If you are running a refrigerated transport company you will get the double whammy (refrigerant tax plus fuel exise increase) and you may soon be in deep trouble.

KenH,

Global warming has nothing to do with rises in electricity prices, public transport price increases, rate rises and so on. Its all a result of the externalised costs of immigration which are being outsourced to the community while CEOs from consumables to property get rich on expanded markets & governments get POWERFUL on extra votes , GST and taxes.

My point is that global warming is just a tool megalomaniac federal and state governments are using to play Sim City with our lives. It highlights the abject failure of democratic government in Australia. It also highlights the way in which non competition in the 'Coonanesque media' has allowed governments to use them in "WE & OUR" style upbeat propaganda when all our lives are going down the toilet along with the environments that "support our dwindling food bowls". Its alarming how THAT media always speak about that 'food bowl' issue in soft voices in some kind of fool attempt to play it down. The only reason they mention it is to prepare us for more price hikes with the emphasis that "WE" are to blame for this situation and are obliged to pay extra. The phrase "what a tangled web they weave" springs to mind.

I find any attempt at aiding in this megalomania by blaming ANY part of global warming for these rising costs to be abhorrent PROPAGANDA.

The truth is that if government instigates POLICY to immigrate people into a desert island beyond its carrying capacity then Government is to blame. The people who elected them, trusting that THEY would take the consequences for their own failures should not pay for megalomaniac failures. If Australia had BIG Rivers like the Mississippi then we could immigrate more people. We DON'T & there is insufficient coal, 'tricky-dicky' energy intensive liquefied seam-gas or dwindling Oil supplies to teraform this desert continent into an erstwhile United States Of America.

Essentially we are living in a state every bit as opaque, corrupt & fundamentally unintelligent as Nazi Germany before WWII. We are at a crossroad & very soon something's 'gotta give'.

Ozandy,

Tell us again how useful weather forecasts are:

>> Two top US hurricane forecasters, famous across Deep South hurricane country, are quitting the practice of making a seasonal forecast in December because it doesn't work.

William Gray and Phil Klotzbach say a look back shows their past 20 years of forescasts had no predictive value.

The two scientists from Colorado State University will still discuss different possibilities of hurricane seasons in December. But the shift signals how fare humans are, even with supercomputers, from truly knowing what our weather will do in the long run. <<

blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/gone_with_the_wind/