All of the crap about plastic bags and light globes is just another government ruse which makes them seem to be doing something. All it does is inconvenience the population for absolutely no gain, while the government continues to bring in more immigrants to tell the same rubbish they are telling us.

Why do Australians believe anything politicians say about climate change when our population has now reached 21.5 million – 65% more than the optimum population for the hottest, driest continent in the world?

According to this author, the Rudd Government’s ‘big ticket’ ideas are not much use either. Nor is the author’s suggested “conversion to large-scale renewable energy supplies” of much use: currently, not enough private money has been put into research of alternative energy (even less now in a global recession). Added to this, ‘hot rocks’ are far too expensive and the ‘obvious’ (to Greens) one, wind power, is unreliable.

“During the heat wave of late January this year, the output from South Australian wind farms was a maximum between 1am and 3am and NEGLIGIBLE during the hours of MAXIMUM DEMAND between noon and 6pm.” (Ray Evans electricity engineer, Tom Quirk former deputy chairman Victorian Energy Networks Corporation; ‘Quadrant’, March 2009)

Evans and Quirk also state that: “This performance from an investment of some $800 million whose profitability is guaranteed by statute should lead to a public outcry and a royal commission.”

Solar power doesn’t fare much better due to cost of panels, and “Solar power stations based on collecting the sun’s radiation and focusing it on small steam generators have been tried and found wanting.” Added to this: “The CSIRO’s experimental solar station at White Cliffs in outback New South Wales…was given much publicity when it was first commissioned, but it was an economic failure.”

The renewable energy producers are described as “rent seekers” who got at John Howard in 1997,and he was persuaded to “commit to requiring electricity suppliers to purchase electricity from renewable resources such as windmills, whenever the windmills happened to be delivering power.”

Continued...

Evans and Quirk raise another matter not generally broadcast about wind power:

“In practice, every wind farm has to rely on someone else providing back-up generating capacity. This means that the wind farm is entirely superfluous to the electricity system and that WE ARE PAYING FOR ELECTRICITY OVER WHICH THE SYSTEM OPERATORS HAVE NO CONTROL, but which they are REQUIRED BY LEGISLATION TO ACCEPT AT THE GOING SPOT PRICE. The wind farms gazump all the other generators so that even at times of minimum demand, if the wind is blowing somewhere over a wind farm, a scheduled generator has to reduce its output (and thus reduce its revenue.) Nonetheless, because the coal-fired stations have to maintain their output, albeit at reduced levels (and therefore at reduced efficiencies), the wind farm electricity has virtually no impact at all on emissions of carbon dioxide.” Apparently varying output of coal-fired generators is difficult and costly.

We are paying “over $600 million more for electricity as a consequence of John Howard’s MRET legislation. Most of this is pure profit, and so the wind farm operators will be prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying for extension of the scheme, and Kevin Rudd has obliged them with his commitment to mandate 20% of our electricity production from renewable by 2020.”

The only practical way to deal with climate change is to adapt to it, not let politicians and people with money to make fool us that any of their hare-brained schemes will make one iota of difference. This includes scientists, always hungry for grants.

The first step is to reduce our population and demand for water in the driest continent on earth. No more immigration; no more handouts for having babies; no more first home-buyer hand outs or ‘stimulation’ packages. Learn thrift, and knock globalisation on the head.

I've guessed that "trading" will not save us from the polluting effects of CO2 emissions, and it's good to have Kim Hudson shine a light that penetrates the smoke and mirrors of the Emissions Trading Scheme.

But I need to know more about the person behind the light. We are told that
"Kim Hudson has been admitted as a barrister and also conducts voluntary global warming educational presentations as part of an international program."

I'm pleased to read and judge this well-written essay on its merits, but I live in a global village, and would now like to know a bit more about the author and his/her fellow villagers.

Who sponsors this international program? What interests do they declare?

Ray Evans, Tom Quirk and 'Windschuttle's' Quadrant Leigh?

Straight shooters in their collective mind's eye.

Adapt yes, but you would do well to learn a little more (from other sources) about alternative forms of energy.

Leigh, I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph about population. I have consistently banged on about it in these columns and elsewhere. Why do we have to continue to expand our population to an already unsustainable level ? If we just lower our so called standard of living a little and lower our expectations a little, rather than chasing our tail with the a "granite bench top" syndrome, we will all be better off. I recently read the following which surely must add to the combined pollution on this planet with all the infrastructure required.

Consider some of these notes from National Geographic Traveler:

In the past 20 years, the world added about 3 million people a week to its urban populations

More than half of the world's populations live in cities and more two- thirds will by 2030

The fastest growing cities are all overseas: India has 40 cities with more than a million people; some Chinese cities are growing at more than 10% per year; and Africa's population should double by 2050.

Ps Leigh

"Learn thrift, and knock globalisation on the head."

I couldn't agree more ... but like the population issue, it is easier said than done - it will take time.

The pollies are going to have to burn the midnight oil (P. Garrett MHR included) on the question of offsets. A few places where I have dipped into the 400 or so pages of draft ETS legislation it has said 'offsets are disallowed'. So I dunno if there is a glitch somewhere. If you add tree planting to 'clean development' offsets you find they are generally exaggerated, mistimed, unverifiable or an accounting fiction. Yet places like the Netherlands have a policy of avoiding 50% of emissions cuts through offsets. No wonder it's getting warm in here.

The second punch to add to recessionary production cuts in fossil fuels is depletion. Even under business-as-usual credible commentators say crude oil will decline globally 30% from 2008 to 2015. Some say China can't get the quality of coal it needs. However global warming could still continue after fossil fuels just by methane release and less light reflection from polar snow. It would be good to get world coal production figures by say 30/6/09 to compare with the previous year but the stats are usually slow in coming.

The government's ETS scheme looks like going the same way as the Alcapops law. Why? Failure to adequately consult come to mind. Rudd decided not to engage the Greens and Independent senators in drafting the legislation, preferring to play bluff with the Opposition. Is it any wonder the bill is being torn to shreds?

The government has yet to take the bold policy decisions that would result in the conversion from coal to large-scale renewable energy supplies. After a year in power, we are yet to see a national feed-in tarrif that would see solar massively taken up by home owners and businesses. Instead we see blind faith in unproven and high risk CO2 sequestration solutions to appease powerful vested interests.

Back-room sweet-heart deals with recalcitrant gross polluters have made their carbon credits worth little more than Zimbabwe dollars in their value for money.

All up, the government has failed to take the tough decisions and will end up looking like a scrag on a rock in Copenhagen.

For once there is some sort of agreement. All efforts to limit carbon dioxide emissions are a waste of time, in part because they require political will that is just not forthcoming. Nor is there any real hope of cleaning up power plant emissions in the short term. Wind farms, as one correspndent notes, are also largely a waste of time and money.

The only realistic solution, if you bleieve the science, is adaption. But there is a curious blindness among some of those who mention adaption, in that they push for population reduction as approach. Forget it. There is not a ghost of a chance of getting a population reduction in Australia - not this side of the 22nd century, anyway.

What to do? Well, sorry as a long term fix (for carbon in Aus at any rate) you are looking at spending big on ways to clean up existing power-generating technologies. No I'm not talking about burying carbon. This is to nominate one area of practical action. Adaption to higher population is also possible. All this may be highly unpalatable to the activists but it is politically feasible. the bulk of the solutions proposed by the activists, on the other hand, are simply not going to happen.

I said it to him many years ago when he first came to me for career guidance. "Son," I said "get into carbon trading".

It will be the biggest money-spinning rort the world has ever witnessed. And the kicker will be, that it will accomplish precisely nothing in terms of "saving the planet".

The true picture is contained in the article's penultimate paragraph.

>>Ironically, the only thing that looks like slowing, and maybe even reversing emissions, is the greed of bankers and the blindness of politicians like Bush; but it does so by causing misery and poverty world-wide.<<

"Reversing emissions" in any way, shape or form, and substituting them with a cleaner and more durable form of energy, will inevitably cause "misery and poverty world-wide"

To imagine that a solution will suddenly, magically present itself, one that will be simultaneously embraced by governments, polluters, energy barons and consumers alike, is a pipedream of mythic proportions.

The ugly truth is that our post-democratic system is entirely unsuited to solving a problem of this nature and magnitude. Only a government that is irrevovably committed to a switch from planet-destroying to planet-saving energy technology, and one that is able and willing at the same time to enslave entire populations to its will, has half a chance of bringing it about.

We have created societies around the world that are fundamentally resistant to change. Even when/if there is a majority that believes in the drastic changes in our lifestyle that we will all need to subscribe to, they will have to live with a constant stream of objections from people who don't believe.

They will do so, of course, under the flag of freedom. Which is why hard-handed dictatorship will inevitably be the only viable means to this particular end.

Not looking forward to it.

And the lost and the left still think they can sell this global warming malarkey. Ask businesses who do not rely on government favor, employment or revenue to generate jobs about this cockamamy con job and then check your reality. There is plenty of budding Henry Fords out their, but none of them work for or rely on government except demanding urgently to get off their back before they can employ any more of your children in constructive enterprise which generates something we all need.

You are wrong, Q&A. The population problem can be solved quite quickly. Nature has a method which involves four horsemen.

Well firstly there are many Greens who do not support ETS or Carbon Trading in its current form. The Greens cannot be blamed for the government's approach to climate change particularly when it does not address the root cause.

Following on from Leigh's point, we have become too greedy and wasteful and unlike our grandparents, take energy for granted. Consumption and population issues should be included in the discussion.

Allowing polluters to continue to pollute by shuffling carbon credits around only looks good on paper but does little to reduce greenhouse emissions.

"All of the crap about plastic bags and light globes is just another government ruse which makes them seem to be doing something. All it does is inconvenience the population for absolutely no gain, while the government continues to bring in more immigrants to tell the same rubbish they are telling us."

I agree with this comment. It is the equivalent of white settlers first coming to the site of future Melbourne and buying the land from the Aboriginals for a few tins of bully beef. Keep the natives happy in the cheapest way possible in the short term and then capitalise on the situation when no one's looking.

plerdus

<<The population problem can be solved quite quickly. Nature has a method which involves four horsemen. >>

Well yes, in geological time you are quite right, but not in the 3-score-and-10.

I am not the religious type but doesn't the four horsemen of the apocalypse represent pestilence, war, famine and death – in that order?

What do you think of the following analogy?

1. Pestilence (plague/disease): already we are experiencing increased problems and incidences of vector borne diseases due to climate change (dengue, malaria, Ross River, Barmah, etc) – they are spreading.

2. War: The IPCC got the Nobel Peace prize because climate change threatens world peace. Increased pressures on food and water resources, energy supplies, and some countries borders (due to rising sea levels and extreme weather events) have already put some country’s military establishments on high alert, not to mention the UN’s Security Council.

3. Famine: While some regions will be better off (in the short term) due to global warming, most will not (our own ‘food bowl’ is at risk). In the longer term, all countries are likely to experience food shortages, particularly with the world’s population to hit 9 billion in 40 years.

4. Death: Humanity has been on this planet for a blip in time. We have had the most impact on the environment and ecological biodiversity than any other species – and we are supposed to be smart, intelligent? At the rate we are going, we won’t just be responsible for our own death, but the death and extinction of so many other species – both animals and plants.

So, I don’t think Nature (in your context) is the most important thing at play here – it is humanity.

If there is an omnipresent almighty ‘Mr X’ out there, s/he/it didn’t put us here to not use our brain. If we have in the slightest caused this current episode of global warming, I would understand why s/he/it would expect us (humanity) to curb our excessive ways ... otherwise, ‘death’ (in the larger sense) is inevitable, and the prophecy will be fulfilled.

Gee after reading all that , what to do , given that everybody in exec positions are BS Artists and anti irresponsible Unions dudes like me are are now totally disenfranchised ................? My attitude needs a tsunarmi shift ....I think I'll just 'no worries' and when the time comes stick me head between my legs and kiss my freckle goodbye

Excellent piece. We have used an incredible amount of ingenuity to get to this point. We can either use the same creative skills to develop a way of living that does not assume that there are infinite resources available to us for our consumption or passively wait for the four horsemen of the apocalypse to finish us off. If the earth is unlucky then we may find that a small number of breeding pairs will survive to start the whole crazy cycle again. Of course if our communities apply their imagination we can build an even better life. For some ideas look here: http://groups.google.com.au/group/transition-initiatives-sa

Yea yea we are over populated even know here in Australia we live longer, have more toys, better food, better houses, more comforts then ever before and waste more Government money than any time in history. Let's keep it all for ourselves and whine on about being victims. Zimbawe has proven to have the capacity to feed Africa but its a lot easier to blame climate change and over population instead of facing the real truth. South Africa prospered financially years ago but now is a basket case due to corruption but let's just say its over population. Those 'evil tykes' who want to ban the condoms are the problem. This over population mantra just like climate change is nothing but an excuse to not address real issues. I am sure some pre computer model told us we were over populated before Europeans arrived in Australia. Stop stressing folks our great Southland of the Holy Spirit (Australia) still has plenty of crumbs to share with others.

Runner, a fundamentalist Christian who thinks that evolution "is crap" and from his own account, has not been to university, let alone studied science or mathematics, tells us that overpopulation is not a problem. Britain's Chief Scientist tells us that it is an extremely serious problem, that world food stocks are at their lowest level in 50 years. The UN-sponsored Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, to which 1360 scientists contributed, says in its report that "the ability of the planet's ecosystem to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted". I wonder who we should believe?

If Runner lives in a city, perhaps he can test his view that there is plenty of water for a lot more people by watering his garden on the wrong day in full view of one of those white water restriction cars.

For those who share's runner's views you do not need to have been to university to know that unlimited growth is a problem. A very easy way to understand why it is an issue can be found here http://globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461