The main claim that the RET greatly reduces emissions is bogus. The biggest form of renewable energy in Australia is hydro built before 1997. According to BREE's July energy bulletin wind provided 2.9% of Australia's electricity in 2013 and solar 1.5%. They got renewable energy certificate subsidies of 2.5c to 4c per kwh for which the much bigger hydro was largely ineligible.

The consultant's report found the most effective form of abatement was wind power with a cost of CO2 avoided of $54 per tonne. Funny thing is we just threw out a scheme where CO2 cost $25.40 a tonne. The claim that the RET will lower retail power prices seems to need rubbery assumptions on future gas prices. If as expected gas prices rapidly escalate then wind and solar become more competitive without the need for quotas.

Then there's the 40% of primary energy needed for transport for which the RET is largely irrelevant. To get emissions way down there's no realistic alternative to nuclear baseload electricity. Dogmatic support for the RET is a weak gesture that doesn't make a big enough difference to overall emissions.

The urgent action needed on climate change is to expose the fraud perpetrated on the populace , in attempting to present the false assertion that climate is catastrophically affected by human activity, and that carbon dioxide is pollution. Carbon dioxide is an odourless, colourless gas, without which, life on earth in its current form could not exist.

Science has demonstrated that the human effect on climate is so trivial that it is not measurable. The fraud-backing IPCC says that CO2 causes warming, while, at a time when CO2 content in the atmosphere has increased, global warming has stopped, and food crop production has increased, worldwide.

The fraud promoters want this beneficial gas branded a pollutant. We need action to stop the perversion of science, and the waste of funds and resources on the basis of lies.

This is a disgraceful article.

Carbon trading schemes predicate that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a fact and humans must do something about it no matter how futile to avoid a specified catastrophe.

I claim that AGW is a paradigm on the way out.

• Defenders of AGW must explain the following: Why no global warming for at least a decade and a half (some claim 18 or 19 years). This in spite of increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.

• Can the defenders advance data on the sensitivity of mean global temperature to CO2 levels? My guess is that the atmospheric system is insensitive to CO2.

• Over the last 150 years dedicated people have conscientiously recorded local temperatures with a variety of instruments and local conditions. Weather stations have moved site but retained same name. Local environments have changed, such as building nearby, buildings, roads or even changing farm crops, etc. The met offices apparently base their historical claims not on raw data, but data homogenised (massaged) by generally unknown methodology.

• Antarctic ice coverage has increased. Is the defenders explanation of this fact believable? They claim it is due to wind and water currents induced by global warming which as remarked above, has paused.

• Lastly it is claimed that the excess heat has gone into the Oceans. How can this be true when accurate Ocean temperature between Latitudes 60S to 60N dates from the inception of the Argo Buoy System introduced about 15 years ago?

Wind and solar; wind and solar; wind and solar!
Talk about head hurting, redoubtable rigid bubble thinking, within a very limited, extremely narrow, circle of ideas!
Anyone would think these wind and solar advocates, were wind and solar "shareholders", so narrow is their view of the available alternatives!
Were it down to me, I would now abandon wind and solar, in favor of cheaper than coal thorium. [If other nations want to cut their economic throats, we're under no obligation to asininely ape them! Albeit, you can put what you like on your roof; after all, it's your money!]
Also favored, the other even cheaper option, endlessly sustainable, homemade, and used exclusively onsite, biogas.
This bladder stored gas, scrubbed onsite and fed directly (no expensive pipes or wires) into onsite ceramic fuel cells, will more than provide all the power the waste maker needs, to power their homes, free domestic hot water, or collective domiciles 24/7! (Corroborating offshore high rise examples)
And given the huge energy coefficient of this combination, (80%), for just quarter of what we currently shell-out for coal fired, Wholesale electricity. Or around a cent a KW.
And given that same 80% energy coefficient, immediately able to create a 50% salable energy surplus! [And those are the very reasons the so called greens,(anti development brigade) don't want it?]
Or simply added freely to very local micro grids, to power common convenience, say traffic lights, trams and trolley buses, street lights, public common area shopping malls/playgrounds/parks and what have you, as public amenity?
And offset say, by lower local rates?
Rhrosty.

Yakitty yak, bah, blah, bah blah; yakitty yak, bah, blah, bah, blah.
That's all I hear all day, wind and solar!
Rhrosty.

"To speak no ill will, to do no harm, to practice self-restraint according to the fundamental precepts, to be moderate in eating, to live in seclusion, to devote oneself to higher consciousness, this is the Teaching of the Buddhas."

Rusty, most of the yakitty-yak emanates from you and Bigmouth.

Why don't you wrap your mind around the above, thrill us with your wisdom and intellect?

the 'scientist ' who tried to scare the heck out of kids in the 1970's warning of the upcoming ice age have not changed the methods of propaganda. Thankfully the more people look at facts the less concerned they are about gw religion. btw anyone been to the Barrier Reef lately. It was meant to be destroyed 40 years ago. And how is the dams in Sydney? You guys out of water yet?

Let's see if I've got this straight.

During the high fashionability of fascist national socialism in the first half of the 20th century, governments throughout the western work centralised energy production in huge state bureaucracies and instrumentalities, on the assumption that government knows best, and built societal reliance on coal-fired power stations.

Now these same governments are telling us this was the worst mistake in the history of the world and threatens the very habitability of the planet.

And now you're telling us the solution is for government to dictate control of the supply of energy, and pick favourites in detail?

Excuse me? Are you guys listening to what you're saying?

I don't give a damn what Abbott does with the rules, goal posts or anything else, provided he gets us off the hook of those crazy Renewable Energy Targets.

We can see everywhere in Europe trying like hell to get out of them, except the UK of course, who really must have a suicide wish. The past leader in foolishness Germany, can't get out of the business quickly enough.

We have Obama organizing pay back to his campaign funders with it, & us poor fools with targets only because Gillard used them to buy support from people like this author & the Australian Conservation Foundation he is campaigning for here.

Hell no one actually believes this stuff any more, but it's been such a great gravy train, they find it hard to let go. Can't you people find something useful to campaign on Guy, surely we haven't fixed everything all ready.

I agree with article for the following reasons:
- the government's RET review was fundamentally flawed as it was headed by a climate change sceptic. Despite findings that the RET will reduce electricity prices in the longer term, the recommendations were still to slash the RET
- any slashing of the RET will be economically damaging - investment will be lost, jobs will be lost
- renewable energy is not just about solar and wind energy - a recent ABC Landline episode covered the concerns of sugar producers in Australia with any reduction in the RET - they are producing biogas from cane waste, reducing pollution, and running the the refineries with it and feeding remaining power into the Queensland electricity grid. These producers have invested $ into the biogas plants which they won't recoup any time soon if the RET is reduced
- completely apart from global warming, it makes environmental sense to move to renewables due to the population health benefits of reduced pollution. Coal power is filthy- just ask the Chinese., and finally
- anyone who thinks that the existing mostly coal fired electricity grid was built without government funding doesn't know their history. A lot of it might be privatised now, but the majority of it was originally built by governments - local and state. it makes sense for governments to assist in the conversion from a polluting fossil fuel electricity system to a clean renewable one.

David G:
Thanks for all the compliments.
So I thrill you with my wisdom and intellect do I? I'm almost blushing!
And as to the Buddhas, I can find no reference in any of their teaching, to wind or solar, let alone any other alternative energy option, the thread here, or at least it was, until you as usual, used it as an off topic, personal attack platform.
For a minute there I thought you were seriously quoting from the Isil handbook!
I mean, you seem to be one of their most stalwart defenders/apologists/recruiters?
It's is a fundamental truth, that it is impossible to have a foot in each one of those very different philosophies; however personally thrilling, without doing extremely serious, permanent anatomical or quite grievous psychological damage/harm!
Me, I've seen what passive resistance resulted in, and the execution of over six million non combatant Jews; although, the modern example seems to be no better than those who butchered them in such numbers?
As unpalatable it is, I can see no other way to prevent another vastly worse genocide, than taking up the battle in defense of liberty and freedom!
Passive resistance being a recipe or open armed invitation for an even worse genocide!
Frankly, there is just no such thing as a good terrorist!
Even Buddha and Buddhist know that there is a season for everything, including armed resistance; and or, taking the fight to up to an implacable enemy, who only ever represents pure unadulterated evil!
Perhaps we could take a leaf from King David's book, who had his warriors polish their shields, and then all concentrate that reflected light and heat, on the King of his Persian enemy.
Essentially blinding then cooking him?
And the first recorded example of useful solar thermal power?
Wouldn't it be good if we could find a modern, more benign version of that, as a multifaceted laser beam, that merely disabled everyone in its beam (scrambled your automatic motor neuron responses/turned them into completely uncoordinated jelly) for a day or two, rather than killing armed opponents?
Rhrosty.

@ Johnj one consultant to the RET review thought power prices could decline while other consultants disagreed. As they say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence..that paying more works out cheaper. Whether burning biomass is sustainable is a hot topic. I think the bagasse mills could survive without the LGC subsidy. Away from cane harvest time they use a lot of timber waste trucked there with the help of diesel fuel, a fact that is overlooked.

Sure coal is polluting but it currently provides 64% of our electricity. In 2013 wind and solar contributed 4.4% out of the 13.1% renewables. Since hydro is near maxed and biomass is controversial expanding wind and solar will be a very slow and costly way to displace coal. That would also seem to need energy storage which remains generally expensive. As the gas price rises wind becomes more competitive without the RET and rooftop solar has the advantage it eliminates the middle man.

As for perceived bias in the review panel and past help to the coal industry I think we have judge the current facts for ourselves. In my view the RET is a rather weak gesture that won't get us anywhere near the goal of overwhelming decarbonisation. We should strongly target emissions first so perhaps those people could find work in whatever industry reduced emissions the most.

The Queensland government, [Labor variety] built a biomass power station at the Rocky point sugar mill on Morton bay. It was to use waste from the crushing season.

It even worked, sort of. It cost more than "proper" power, but was not ruinously more expensive, in season. That was the catch, the in season bit.

Depending on the cane season they got 5 to 7 months production, & a hugely expensive down time of 5 to 7 months.

I don't know how much was spent trying to find a way of using the plant in the rest of the year, but it was hundreds of millions, by the time they gave up.

They had a very quirt auction of the plant to make it disappear. I gathered at the time the auction realised less than 10% of the capital investment in the place.

Are you really telling me they have done it again. It would have to be another Labor deal, buying ridiculously expensive electricity in the name of renewable energy. How many times are the taxpayers going to have pay for these Labor fools buying a few votes from the ratbag fringe?

Dear Leo lane.

Human condition..

Getting real about the human effect = our understanding of our planet.

Tally

Tally, why address yourself to me? I do not comprehend shorthand or gibberish.

Try again when whatever you ingested has worn off.

It is a wonderful source of amusement to watch the warmertariat thrashing about with the last vestiges of CAGW, the ACF trying to make a case from the tatters of a failed ideology.

The last paragraph in Guy’s article say it all. << When it comes to meeting our Renewable Energy Target, Australia is well ahead at half time. Why would we want to change the rules now? >>

Gone are the references to polar bears, rising sea levels, polar ice caps, climate refugees, CO2 tax, climate commission and even the IPCC has abandoned them. All they have left is the RET so why not keep it?

Why? As a constant reminder of the economic bastardry the likes of the ACF has inflicted on Australia? Or could it be vested interest in maintaining their publicly funded gravy train.

Get a real job Guy, it’s over rover.

As soon as someone posts an opinion favouring renewable energy, the fossil fuel and thorium nuclear lobbyists are out in force.
Try though they may, the reality is that public opinion is in favour of renewable energy, and particularly, in favour of wind and solar power.
And this opinion is being translated into action, as more and more Australians install solar panels, or move to a 100% renewable energy electricity provider, such as Powershop.

Meanwhile, Citigroup predicts that the Australian solar market will reach 14 GW by 2020. Australia’s ClimateWorks and Australian National University's latest analysis 'Pathways to Deep Decarbonisation' show that existing renewable energy technology can almost eliminate coal by 2030.

It's not only in Australia. Despite the power of the fossil fuel lobby, they're fighting a losing battle in America. For example, last week the Rockefeller family sold all their investments in oil, and transferred them to renewable energy.
Yes, fossil fuel and nuclear advocates, you are up against more than tree-hugging greenies.

I have to laugh at these polls where just about everybody loves renewables. If that were really the case, Abbott would be gone. The reality is that the reality of renewables is obscenely prohibitive costs with unreliable supply. The only winners are the likes of Al Gore who has become one of the richest people on the planet while jetting around in his private jet selling this nonsense. If I made that money I would be a believer too. And like him I wouldn't care about the huge cost to the poor and needy.

ChristinaMac1,

Has it ever occurred to you that financial investors make their money out of “investing”?

Fossil fuel prices have hit the deck because the world is awash with them even the USA is exporting cheap surplus fossil fuels. So why not invest in renewables where your profit is paid for and guaranteed by taxpayers and consumers? At least for the moment.

Rockefeller and the likes of Citigroup are not your friends, they just want gullible people like you to help boost their profits.

I can’t decide if your gullibility is based on ignorance or ideology? In the end it won’t really matter because money will always chase more money. It’s the marketing that catches the useful idiots.

In reply to "Thinkers"
Don't worry, Tony Abbott WILL be gone soon - next election.

Families face paying up to £40 extra each year for wind and solar farms to meet climate change targets after the government revised its energy price forecasts. The subsidy required for each unit of renewable electricity will rise after the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) conceded that gas was much cheaper than it had predicted. A glut of gas on the world market means gas-fired power stations have become cheaper to run, making wind and solar farms comparatively even more expensive. --Tim Webb & Ben Webster, The Times, 3 October 2014

ChristineMac, the only shift in the polls is in Abbot's favour.
Your wishful thinking is a poor basis for prediction.
"Carbon Tax Bill's prospects are deteriorating.

Tally, why address yourself to me?
Not sure about that myself, however to respect your point of view.

Short-hand....Whatever I've ingested?

For people like you, the big picture often escapes the combined thinking's of anything worth-while.
Meaning MAN with blinkers on.
The human-race is running by the seat of its preverbal pants and although no-one wants to scare anyone, education and understandings of the global money-making machine which has to run in all four directions to be able to function efficiently so all can enjoy our lives around the world. Well most of them...However, climate models are worthless... For the mathematically minded:
There are a few different methods of how to calculate the SOI. The method used by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is the Troup SOI which is the standardised anomaly of the Mean Sea Level Pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin. It is calculated as follows:


[ Pdiff - Pdiffav ]
SOI = 10
SD(Pdiff)


The Southern Oscillation Index, or SOI, gives an indication of the development and intensity of El Niño or La Niña events in the Pacific Ocean. The SOI is calculated using the pressure differences between Tahiti and Darwin.
“The Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea have become the world’s first entire community to be displaced by climate change.” Papua New Guinea shares an island with Indonesia, another nation.
20 million people are expected to be caused by climate change.
http://tinyurl.com/kqf32db
http://tinyurl.com/l6b5fr5

Sea levels are rising and oceans are becoming warmer. Longer, more intense droughts threaten crops, wildlife and freshwater supplies. From polar bears in the Arctic to marine turtles off the coast of Africa, our planet’s diversity of life is at risk from the changing climate.

I can see why people think your broken record.

Tally

Tally, you have referred us to a nonsense video. You are reminiscent of the liar, Al Gore, who made the totally false statement that climate refugees from Tuvalu, had migrated to New Zealand

The fellow in the video, you linked, is a liar or an ignoramus. A study of coral islands showed that even if sea levels rise, and currently, they are not, the islands grow faster than the sea levels rise.

“the study suggested the islands had a natural ability to respond to rising seas by accumulating coral debris from the outlying reefs that surround them.
"It has long been thought that as the sea level goes up, islands will sit there and drown. But they won't," Professor Kench said”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/tuvalu/7799503/Pacific-islands-growing-not-shrinking-due-to-climate-change.html

The Cartaret Islads have problems, but linking them to climate change appears to be baseless. There is an effort to falsely present the inhabitants as climate change refugees.

In your list of climate lies you left out the false assertion of ocean acidification. I am sure this was a memory lapse rather than any scruple about misinforming us.

Leo, you can’t make a call either way, and the tabloids are a very poor research tool. The problems with us, is that any slight change in anyway what so ever, will be catastrophic to all our dealings as a species given how fragile we humans are compared with other more hardy/robust life forms.

You would agree the earth is just one giant chemical recycling factory and all research points to life on earth will continue, but not in favour of us. Humans are a vertically larger creatures living on the surface of earth, with cities, farmland, etc. The facts on this subject are very real in relation to future economics and that critical stabilizations that we need in order to function, are now under threat by us speeding up the processes we know little about.


According to IPCC (2011) estimates of annual losses have ranged since 1980 from a few billion to above US$200 billion (in 2010 dollars), with the highest value for 2005 (the year of Hurricane Katrina). The global weather-related disaster losses reported over the last few decades reflect mainly monetized direct damages to assets, and are unequally distributed. Loss estimates are lower bound estimates because many impacts, such as loss of human lives, cultural heritage, and ecosystem services, are difficult to value and monetize, and thus they are poorly reflected in estimates of losses. Heat waves are periods of abnormally high temperatures and heat index.

Definitions of a heatwave vary because of the variation of temperatures in different geographic locations. Excessive heat is often accompanied by high levels of humidity, but can also be catastrophically dry. These variations have only come about quite recently and the rapidness of the anomaly can only point to us.

Continued

Because heatwaves are not visible as other forms of severe weather are, like hurricanes, tornadoes, and thunderstorms, they are one of the less known forms of extreme weather. Severe heat weather can damage populations and crops due to potential dehydration or hyperthermia, heat cramps, heat expansion and heat stroke.

Dried soils are more susceptible to erosion, decreasing lands available for agriculture. Outbreaks of wildfires can increase in frequency as dry vegetation has increased likeliness of igniting. The evaporation of bodies of water can be devastating to marine populations, decreasing the size of the habitats available as well as the amount of nutrition presented within the waters. Livestock and other animal populations may decline as well
Leo, calling people lairs effects your Intelligentsia.

Please try to come up with some that backs your denial.


http://tinyurl.com/ohxa9jb

Tally

What am I supposed to be denying, Tally, I simply point out that there is no science to justify the assertion of a human caused effect on climate.
Until you produce science which shows any measurable effect of human emissions on climate, there is nothing to deny.

Are the nonsense videos, to which you link, meant to prove anything?

Regarding Leo Lane's comment about "no science to justify the assertion of a human caused effect on climate" - well, I wonder why I am even wasting my time bothering to comment on that!

Is "Tally" supposed to produce, in a comment, the scientific results of the research of thousand of climate and meteorological research agencies across the globe?

Not only am I willing to take the opinion of 99% of the world's climate scientists, that global warming is happening and is caused by the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

But even to humble moi, with my relatively modest knowledge of science, the explanation of anthropogenic global warming makes complete sense.

Empirically it is clear that the planet IS warming. Even if human causes were only a possibility, it would surely be prudent to reduce greenhouse emissions. Waiting for 100% certainty before acting might be a recipe for global calamity, for the next and future generations.

ChristinaMac, there is no science to show that human emissions have any measurable effect on climate..
Professor Bob Carter gives a brilliant overview:
“ the key question concerns the magnitude of warming caused by the rather small 7 billion tonnes of industrial carbon dioxide that enter the atmosphere each year, compared with the natural flows from land and sea of over 200 billion tonnes.
Despite well over twenty years of study by thousands of scientists, and the expenditure of more than $100 billion in research money, an accurate quantitative answer to this question remains unknown., the scientific evidence now overwhelmingly indicates that any human warming effect is deeply submerged within planet Earth's natural variations of temperature.
Importantly, no global warming has now occurred since 1997, despite an increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide of 8%, which in turn represents 34% of all the extra human-related carbon dioxide contributed since the industrial revolution.
Few of these facts are new, yet until recently the public have been relentlessly misinformed that human-caused global warming was causing polar bears to die out, more and more intense storms, droughts and floods to occur, the monsoons to fail, sea-level rise to accelerate, ice to melt at unnatural rates, that late 20th century temperature was warmer than ever before and that speculative computer models could predict the temperature accurately one hundred years into the future.
It now turns out that not one of these assertions is true. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/report-gives-the-truth-about-climate-at-last/story-fni0cwl5-1226720428390
It is helpful to have an honest scientist , who tells the truth

Leo Lane is right about one thing - that's for sure. The public have been relentlessly misinformed by the Murdoch media, by the massive lobbying and publicity machines of the Koch brothers and their likes - yes, relentlessly misinformed in the interests of the fossil fuel industries - to swallow garbage like the article Leo Lane recommends.

No science to justify your position, Christina?
I thought you based yourself on ignorance, as you nave demonstrated your ignorance of science, and how it works, but your last post shows your dishonesty.

You are a typical fraud-backer, with baseless malice against those who propagate the truth, and a disdain for science.

You refer to an article by a top climate scientist as "garbage".

Ha ha, far from being a "top climate scientist" in fact Bob Carter is one of a tiny few climate denialists, the ones chosen and touted by the likes of Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones
Bob Carter used to be an adjunct research fellow at James Cook University, but was axed from this position by the University. Carter has little credibility in the mainstream world of science.

Now - for a reference to someone whose opinion should carry far more weight than my humble scribblings, I strongly recommend the editorial in today's Age (8 Oct) - "Government drops ball on climate change" http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-editorial/government-drops-ball-on-climate-change-20141007-3hhgq.html

'morning ChristinaMac1,

Oh dear, you put foot in mouth on this one did you not?

Any talk of "real scientists" just encourages me to point to small inconsistencies in your ignorance.

Might I ever so gently point out that the head of the IPCC, Rachender Pashauri is, ahem, a railway engineer and part time soft porn writer. I might also mention that the IPCC's Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) has not one single scientist of any description on its panel.

Just thought I might take this opportunity to show just what an ignorant prat you are.

Smile, reality might just pass you by.

Christina, pretending that you are stupid enough to believe that an editorial of the Age, criticising Tony Abbot and commending the climate liar Obama has any relevance, convinces no one.

It would be a positive step for you to read Robert Carter’s book, “Climate: the Counter Consensus”, where he sets out the true science of climate, as opposed to the nonsense of the mainstream consensus.

ChristinaMac, there is a sensible editorial for you to read, about the IPCC backing away from the global warming fraud which it promoted:
“OCTOBER 1 marked an important anniversary: 18 years during which the earth average temperature has remained unchanged.
Satellite data available from 1988 has allowed very precise measurements of global temperatures. These at first confirmed a warming trend.
But the satellite recordings, greeted with such enthusiastic fanfare by the warmist fraternity, have, for the past 18 years, bitten the hand that fed them.
A number of hypotheses have been advanced to explain the inconvenient truth of this data. But NASA has just reported that there is no evidence that the increased heat is hiding in the deep oceans.”

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/ipcc-calculations-show-global-warming-wont-be-harmful-if-it-resumes/story-e6frg6zo-1227083037892