If we allow cheap energy, any global warming that does occur will be net beneficial. This is because, according to a recent analysis using the climate orthodoxy's inputs, the cost of energy is the dominant negative impact of global warming. If energy becomes cheaper than assumed in the analyses, global warming would be net beneficial for all this century and beyond and to above 4 C of warming above today's temperatures. This is the conclusion that can be drawn from Figure 3 in this recent paper by world authority on the impacts of climate change, Professor Richard Tol: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/climate_change.pdf

From Figure 3:

The most significant negative impact of Global Warming is energy cost. It dominates all other costs, especially towards the end of the century.

‘Agriculture’ and ‘Health’ impacts are both strongly positive to beyond 4 C temp increase.

The impact of “Storms’ and “Sea level rise’ are about zero net benefit/cost.

‘Water’ and ‘Ecosystems’ are small negative impacts but the positive benefits of agriculture and health greatly exceed the negative impacts of “Water’ and ‘Ecosystems’.

Conclusion: allow cheap energy and the impacts of global warming will be positive to at least 4 C increase above today average global surface temperature and to well beyond the end of this century.

Great article. More.

Yes we are facing an epidemic of religious hysteria. The carbon tax is just a modern version of the selling of indulgences, and all other carbon policy is in the same category.

Although Evans overstates the case, one area where reason and commonsense fly out the window is renewable energy.. The amount of carbon saved by rooftop PV installations and wind farms is highly debatable, for various reasons, and at the very least should be the subject of a through, independent analysis using actual results from the existing network.. this has never occurred.. no-one has ever thought to consult the network operators about just how much carbon might be saved.. in fact, most of the policy in this area has been put in place to win votes, not to save carbon..

Is this supposed to be an informed understanding of the dynamics of Western "civilization" in the last 100 years or so?
If so I would give it an F tripple minus fail!

By comparison this essay gives a much more realistic and very sobering assessment of the self-destruction of Civilization altogether as a result of the destructive process caused by the two world wars.
http://sacredcamelgardens.com/wordpress/reality-humanity

Plus this spontaneously given 1980 talk re the drive to total power and control at the root of the entire Western cultural project, including its religion.
http://www.aboutadidam.org/readings/bridge_to_god/index2.html

There has been some work done Curmudgeon.

"Three French CRNS scientists – Olivier Vidal and Nicholas Arndt of the University of Grenoble and Bruno Goffé of Aix-Marseille University – issue this warning in Nature Geoscience.

They say that to match the power generated by fossil fuels or nuclear power stations, the construction of solar energy farms and wind turbines will gobble up 15 times more concrete, 90 times more aluminum and 50 times more iron, copper and glass. Right now wind and solar energy meet only about 1 percent of global demand; hydroelectricity meets about 7 percent."

The full story here
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/renewable-energy-needs-huge-mineral-supply-16682

and here with a bit more about neodymium magent production
http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2013/11/the-insanity-of-renewable-energy.html

I think Howard and Abbott are on right track.

They are democratic politicians; they listen to a variety of opinions and adopt a pragmatic policy stance in accordance to debates of day.

That is why they are successful politicians. I think they also rightfully concerned about the possible adverse environmental effect from human activity.

Chris,

"I think Howard and Abbott are on right track.

They are democratic politicians; they listen to a variety of opinions and adopt a pragmatic policy stance in accordance to debates of day."

How naive/partisan are you.....

Abbott thinks it's "crap" and only adopted his dodgy "Direct Action" because he regarded it (then)as a political imperative.

Mr Howard said a few words regarding bushfires in 2006 and their possible connection to global warming: http://www.smh.com.au/news/scorchedearth/pm-expect-extreme-weather/2006/12/13/1165685752372.html

"THE Prime Minister, John Howard, last night embraced a key climate change forecast, warning Australians to prepare for more extreme weather events such as the current bushfires.

Visiting north-east Tasmania, he repeatedly made the point that the region was not normally associated with bushfires, and neither were they usually so common early in the summer.

On his last stop in St Helens, Mr Howard was asked if he accepted the scientists' predictions of more extreme weather events.

"Let me put it this way," he said. "I think the country should prepare for a continuation of what we are now experiencing … I think the likelihood of this going on is very strong."

.... in the intervening years he's obviously been instructed by his masters that that was a tad unwise. So he's giving us the benefit of his scientific ignorance...commonly known as "instinct".

Joke!

The reality is that there is only "one" premise for AGW "skeptics"..and that is that tens of thousands of scientists are involved in a massive conspiracy.

That's it - there's nothing else to it.

Certainly nothing to do with science.

Ray,

A good insightful article. You have nailed the motivations of *many* of those spruiking AGW. One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist (or a climate scientist!) to see that --except for a few notable and honourable exceptions-- those pushing acceptance of AGW on this forum and others are not in the least interested in "the science". They have a darker political agenda, checkout some of their posting history. They are on nothing short of a jihad and AGW is just one of the weapons in their arsenal.

I echo JKJ's call --more please.

Good grief, this article just about plumbs the depths of burning strawmen.

The characterisation of the political left is the sort of thing you would expect from an Elementary School student. The old “reds under the beds” bogeyman. The fact that the author would bother creating such a strawman to attack demonstrates he is not interested in reality, only politics.

The argument about electricity pricing is so poor and lacking support, that I can only conclude the author made it up whole cloth to suit himself.

The leftist Garnaut Report http://www.garnautreview.org.au/update-2011/update-papers/up8-key-points.html points out that the biggest factor in increasing electricity costs in Australia has been increasing network costs due to the age of the network. The leftist Australian Government says the same http://www.ret.gov.au/Department/Documents/clean-energy-future/ELECTRICITY-PRICES-FACTSHEET.pdf and there is a nice little info-graphic about it from that leftist magazine Choice http://www.choice.com.au/~/media/Files/Consumer%20Action/Sustainability/Take-the-Power-Back/electricity-price-increase-graphs1.ashx

The argument presented about wind power simply ignores the sophistication of the leftist power network to manage power inputs.

SPQR,

"....They have a darker political agenda, checkout some of their posting history. They are on nothing short of a jihad and AGW is just one of the weapons in their arsenal."

Yup....it's all one big nasty old conspiracy.

Lol!

Agronomist, it would seem that you have little, or no, knowledge of electrical generation and distribution. Your statement "The argument presented about wind power simply ignores the sophistication of the leftist power network to manage power inputs." clearly proves my point. Load management is an integral and complex part of the system. Rapidly swinging inputs make the job very difficult and you don't simply turn off generators with the flick of a switch. There are also further problems from wind with power factor and harmonics, an area too complex for discussion here. The management of these changes is costly and adds to network costs.

Further, the network costs as discussed in your links are quite deceptive. A lot of these costs can be attributed to "reverse engineering the grid", mainly due to solar. It is not so much the age of parts of the grid that is the problem, rather the capacity to "collect" electricity generated by solar, particularly that it is typically generated it low demand times and in excess of the normal supply demands. Thus transformers and conductors had to be uprated to allow solar generated power to utilised. Hence the limits placed on the capacities of systems allowed to be installed on homes.

The cost of “renewable energy” is much greater than the installation of solar panels and bird beaters, and it is business and the general public who are footing the bill.

Oh god.

Poirot talking about someone elses scientific ignorance.

That has to take the cake.

Sparkyq
thanks for the links.. actually I was asking those questions more about whether the green energy projects would save carbon after they'd been installed, rather than the amount of carbon generated in trying to make PVs and turbines.. no work on this in Aus as far as I know. Some overseas but quickly howled down by the green movement as the studies didn't give the right result.. but tnks..

People are not talking about climate change, nor gay marriage, nor boat people, nor nbn, nor, surpluses, nor debt, nor leadership dramas, nor politicians lies nor incompetence
In fact they have realised the only people who ever talked about that cr_p were lefties.

Now there are so few of them and very few listen to them anyway.

Most of us love Tony because none of that cr_p is being forced done our throats any longer. Politics is and politicians are now in the backgound

imajulianutter,
The only people making noise (shrieking) about that stuff were Abbott and his media lickspittles who had only one agenda - a change of government.

Now they see their job is done things seem to have quietened down - for the time being.

Despite the lies, policy hypocrisy, broken promises and public expense rorts they have had a clear run up to the opening of Parliament next week. Imagine the noise if it was the ALP.

No wonder Abbott has gagged his MPs from speaking without permission.

Where are the weekly and fortnightly polls that the media feasted on for the last 3 years?

The first published poll showed a drift away from Abbott but nothing has been mentioned since.

Oh poor little wobbles. Not happy are you? "Despite the lies, policy hypocrisy, broken promises and public expense rorts" Obviously you are pining for your beloved KRudd and Juliar.

Sparkyq, I suspect you, like the author of this piece is making things up. Even the leftist Reserve bank of Australia states that:

“The increases in regulated retail electricity prices over the next few years are primarily driven by higher network costs.”

And

“The sharp increase in network charges in recent regulatory determinations reflects:
• higher capital expenditure in the period ahead due to network expansion, higher regulatory standards for reliability of supply, the need to replace ageing assets and higher input costs
(Graphs 3-6); and
• a jump in the revenue requirement between regulatory control periods due to higher borrowing costs (and a higher WACC) and the partial pass-through of excess costs or revenues in previous regulatory periods to customers”

http://www.rba.gov.au/foi/disclosure-log/pdf/101115.pdf

Must be hard finding reliable information with all these leftist government organisations around.

I started reading this article for a paragraph or two, thinking it might be a reasoned response to the Abbott erratic energy policy, before the alarm bells went off. I then checked the author and realized that he has zero, zip, 0 credibility.

Ray Evans is one of the principals of The Lavoisier Group; a global warming skeptic organization, based in Australia. Ray Evans describes the 90-odd Lavoisier members as a "dad's army" of mostly retired engineers and scientists from the mining, manufacturing and construction industries.

Noted by Australian economist John Quiggin, the Lavoisier Group is "devoted to the proposition that basic principles of physics...cease to apply when they come into conflict with the interests of the Australian coal industry."

The Lavoisier Group variously publishes totally erroneous and conflicting opinions such as;
- There is no evidence of global warming.
- If there is evidence of global warming, then it is not due to human activity.
- If global warming is occurring and it is due to human activity, then it is not going to be damaging.
- If global warming is occurring and it is due to human activity, and it is going to be damaging, then the costs of avoiding it are too high, so we should do nothing.

Totally confused, irrational, biased and untruthful...pitched at the acolytes on OLO and symptomatic of the general deterioration of this site's contribution to a serious subject

Peter King,

Your comment uses 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 of "10 signs of intellectual dishonesty": http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/20/10-signs-of-intellectual-honesty/#comment-320223

"1. Arrogance or “I am the messenger of truth”. Look for arguments that send the following messages:

“What I am telling you ARE the facts and these facts have, and always will, withstand any test.”
“ Anybody that disagrees with ‘us’ is either stupid or is trying to undermine ‘our’ dedication and hard work.”
“ They have access to the same evidence, but they either ignore it or deliberately misinterpret it to suit their own agenda or hypothesis.”

2. Handwaving or “Your views have no merit”. Look for ‘arguments’ that dismiss other views out of hand. Often accompanied by Sign #1 with the opponent usually being dismissed – not specifically their argument.

3. Unwavering commitment or “I know I am right – why bother arguing?” Anybody who refuses to accept that they may not be 100% correct, or might be looking at the evidence through their own preferred colour of glasses is not being honest to themselves or to their readers/listeners.

4. Avoiding/Ignoring the question or “ . . . and let’s not forget about . . .” Anybody who refuses to admit that their argument is weak in an area and, worse still, avoids answering difficult questions in that area is being intellectually dishonest. If they don’t ignore the question, these people are easily recognised from their efforts to change the subject.

6. Employing double standards or “Your evidence is unacceptable (because it’s your evidence)”. This is a question of how high the bar is set for the acceptance of evidence – the bar is set at a much higher level for the other party, while it is set far lower for his/her own evidence.

7. Argumentum ad hominem or “You’re a [insert label/stereotype here] . . . and you have a secret agenda” This is a favoured approach used by those who might be arguing from a weak position. It is typically employed to avoid answering a difficult question (Sign #4) or used in conjunction with handwaving (Sign #2).

Peter Lang,

What?

Please provide some (any) correlation between your bizarre rant and my posting on the author?

For those suggesting that renewables use more GHG in manufacturing than they save; your inference being that without your superior intellect these issues have been ignored.

Hate to tell you but the IPCC has spent considerable effort to address these issues and have developed Life Cycle Assessment Harmonization analysis for each energy source. The key being Lifecycle not one off manufacturing costs; costs means in this context GHG emissions not monetary cost.

For each of solar, wind, nuclear, coal etc there are discrete reports in excess of 80+ pages each. However, to distill the key values...
coal: 114 g CO2e/kWh
solar: 44 g CO2e/kWh
wind: 10 g CO2eq/kWh
nuclear: 13 g CO2eq/kWh
geothermal: 80 g CO2eq/kWh

So we can see that solar is less than half the GHG than coal but wind is incredibly effective in GHG reduction. Nuclear is a good option when considered in GHG reduction terms but is an order of magnitude more expensive than solar and wind.

Peter King,

Sorry, but those IPCC figures are irrelevant. What is relevant is the cost per tonne CO2 abated. On that basis renewables like wind and solar are very expensive options. The CO2 abatement cost with residential solar PV in Melbourne, for example, using realistic defensible inputs, is around $600/tonne. That's about 100 tines the EU carbon price.

There can be no rational justification for subsidising solar or wind for electricity generation.

If interested, read this: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/4/1406

You can also see that nuclear power would be by far the cheapest way to reduce CO2 emissions from the Australian NEM:
http://oznucforum.customer.netspace.net.au/TP4PLang.pdf