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Plan B: shifting to a low carbon future : Comments
By Julien Vincent, published 11/6/2009We need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in a way that reflects the urgency of climate change.
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Posted by Wing Ah Ling, Thursday, 11 June 2009 10:32:33 AM
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Senator Steve Fielding is now doubting the popular hysterical 'warming' caused by humans theory after a trip to the U.S.
Why had had to go there to come to the conclusion that we are being lied to and mislead is anyone's guess,but the useless and costly legislation proposed by the Government might be in for a rocky road in the Senate. Posted by Leigh, Thursday, 11 June 2009 11:00:39 AM
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I have six grand children. I read extensively on this subject. I believe that if we continue on our present track to maintain the economy, there won't be any economy at all for them!
Posted by poddy, Thursday, 11 June 2009 11:52:51 AM
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Great piece Julien. It is clear that immediate action on climate change is required on all fronts, at all levels of society, and a fundamentally flawed market instrument like the current CPRS is only going to hinder any such efforts. The actions laid out in Plan B are no-brainers, and critical elements to achieving a low-carbon, truly sustainable future - emissions trading or no. So well done to the groups involved in putting Plan B forward!
Wing Ah Ling - perhaps consider some basic research before using the pseudo-statistics of the climate sceptics, whose profound (or simply contrived) environmental and scientific ignorance blinds them to the realities of climate change: "1998 was a record high year in both the CRU and the NASA GISS analyses. According to NASA, it was elevated far above the trend line because 1998 was the year of the strongest El Nino of the century. Choosing that year as a starting point is a classic cherry pick and demonstrates why it is necessary to remove chaotic year-to year-variability (aka: weather) by smoothing out the data. Clearly 1998 is an anomaly and the trend has not reversed." http://www.grist.org/article/global-warming-stopped-in-1998/ The two most reputable globally and seasonally averaged temperature trend analyses, the NASA GISS and the CRU direct surface temperature analyses, amongst other indicators, unequivocally indicate that the earth is most definitely warming. Posted by Tee, Thursday, 11 June 2009 11:53:36 AM
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thanks julien.
two points in response to wingahling : It's suggested that "such production is now keeping large numbers of people alive" but I really feel that it's our planet that's keeping us alive : rampant overconsumption of the earth's resources is now keeping small numbers of people unnaturally wealthy. I think it's wrong to suggest that clean energy advocates 'speak for killing people on the basis of a Grand Plan' : did you notice the recent bushfires, not to mention the heatwave that preceeded, in Victoria? Have you heard of our island neighbours whose homes are being lost to rising sea levels? I want to see a rapid adoption of the renewable energy alternatives as an important step to reducing the deadly impacts of global climate change. I don't accept the claim that 'renewables don’t actually exist in anything like the scale that is necessary'. I see renewable energy all around me : most rooftops in my city have solar hot water; our tip produces grid power from a small methane plant for biomass waste; a number of nearby communities are powered by arrays of sun-tracking solar dishes with battery storage. And I've read about the world's largest solar concentrator plant being built to provide baseload power in Mildura; and the world's largest solar thermal plant being built to provide continuous power in Whyalla, based on an ammonia storage system. These renewable energy alternatives are not only inevitable; they're here, they're working, and in a carbon constrained economy, they're not merely viable, but increasingly competitive. Fuel costs are zero, and the potential for Australia to grow jobs and an export industry on the back of home grown technologies, and our abundance of renewable resources, is too good to ignore. Posted by justin@da.r-w.in, Thursday, 11 June 2009 11:57:50 AM
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Justin
Then in that case, there will be no need for any compulsion in order to force everyone else to comply with your opinions, will there? By the way, have you stopped your own unnaturally wealthy overconsumption? Poddy Then why don't you stop consuming at over the level that you consider sustainable? What are you doing using fossil fuels to type your opinions on the internet? Tee The argument you cite merely shows that professional climatologists themselves dispute the statistical significance of the distinction between weather and climate. Let us control for government-funded bodies that have an interest in the climate panic industry, and see what a different landscape of opinion emerges! But in any event statistics, and any other positive science, do not supply value judgments, remember? Even if all you are contending for were conceded, which it's not, you still haven't got to square one in justifying *any* kind of policy action whatsoever. And you don't even seem to understand that. The nations of the western world are lurching towards fascism and a repeat of the ideology of total government control of every aspect of human freedom that failed so miserably in the twentieth century. Yet we have the cheerleading neo-fascists of the environmental movement urging the same destructive delusion of central planning of everything, based on exactly the same the same errors and fallacies. Truly socialism is the religion of self-deification. "Everything would be fine" they seem to say "if only I had the power to decide what everyone should be forced to do. Such a pity everyone else isn't as clever, and as good, as I am." Why not simply have opt-in measures? That way those who believe we face a catastrophe justifying force, could voluntarily cut down on their own over-consumption, and those who didn't, would prove thereby that they don't agree. What's wrong with that as a policy position? Admit it. This is not about climate. It's about your desire for a power-trip based on fake moral superiority and a belief in violence and threats as the basis of social co-operation. Posted by Wing Ah Ling, Thursday, 11 June 2009 2:30:22 PM
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The globe is not warming.
Though carbon emissions have increased, the globe has not warmed since 1998. The government-funded computer modelling on which the entire hysteria is based can't even predict the present, let alone 100 years into the future.
Guessing for entire continents the outcome for micro-climate in every kilometre, and the distribution and abundance of species, including the 99 percent of species that are microscopic, would be laughable if the purpose – total government control of any aspect of human life that might affect ‘the environment’, ie everything - were not so evil.
Furthermore, it’s all very well to talk of reducing productive activity but you conveniently ignore the fact that such production is now keeping large numbers of people alive. When confronted with the fact that the global warming alarmists are advocating measures to reduce activities that keep people alive, polite speak for killing people on the basis of a Grand Plan (sound familiar?), all they have to answer is the pious hope that the deficit in energy will be made up by renewable resources.
But firstly, these renewables don’t actually exist in anything like the scale that is necessary to stop the reduction in the use of fuels from resulting in major economic destruction with consequential loss of life.
And secondly, the reason they don’t exist is because it costs much more to produce a given unit of energy by these alternative methods than by fuels. You assume that we can get the necessary inputs from a moonbeam, by government simply passing a law. In fact, the greater costs of the alternatives you are advocating is just another way of saying that they use *more* natural resources than current energy options.
In other words, the proposals that the alarmists are putting forward actually make the situation worse *when considered from their own standpoint * and it is only their profound economic ignorance that blinds them to this fact.
What concerns me most about the new puritan fascists is that they don’t even seem to understand the issues, which are fully thirteen layers deep in bulsliht.