I believe repealing the carbon tax is the dumbest thing ever done by an Australian government.

1/ It will make stuff all differences to prices.

2/ The government has just lost more revenue which it badly needs.

3/ It is supposed to be replaced by a scheme funded by the tax payer which will cost some $2.55 billion dollars and will achieve very little.

4/ The removal was not based on any rational reasoning it was only based on spin to stick to the labour party.

5/ A price on carbon prices will return probably within 3 years and it will have wider scope than the one they just got rid of.

6/ Changing the regulations will harm some states particularly Tasmania which stands to lose considerable revenue.

7/ It demonstrates a level of ignorance among our politicians on science issues that does not bode well for Australia future.

8/ So far the only poll I have seen on the subject says 66% are angry at its removal and only 19% are in favour.

warmair, The tax ripped some $9billion out of the economy and made negligible difference to the climate, which after all was the intended purpose in the first place.

Now back to the $9 billion.

That's $9 billion that business did not have to invest, which in turn costs jobs, because without investment, business can not properly forward plan.

As for the tax payer being perhaps subjected to paying a tax in the future, why shouldn't we, because after all, we are the ones who are using the energy.

"The tax ripped some $9billion out of the economy and made negligible difference to the climate, which after all was the intended purpose in the first place."

This is a common misconception and shows little understanding of the 'tax' and of 'climate science'.

The revenue raised was to assist in transitioning the economy to one less dependent on fossil fuels - this market-based mechanism was working.

Prime Minister Abbott has said the best way to do this is to impose a carbon tax - most economists agree.

Unfortunately, he is just a politician - not a leader in moving forward.

Not sure where warmair gets his stats. The Coalition was elected to repeal the Carbon Tax, full stop.

The science is not settled and it appears there has not been any global warming for 13 - 17 years.

Taxing the air does not change the climate but it does serve to redistribute the wealth.

Australia's contribution to atmospheric CO2 is miniscule. If we cut back a 100% it would not make one iota of difference.

Find another hobby horse instead of flogging this dead one.

Quote
“The tax ripped some $9billion out of the economy and made negligible difference to the climate, which after all was the intended purpose in the first place.”

There is no logic to removing the carbon tax why would anyone rather pay the cost so other people can pollute. A good principle is let the user pay or in this case the polluter.

A tax on pollution makes a great more sense than a tax on salary or wages. It also has an ongoing benefit in that it encourages people to move to energy efficient devices. I have heard of a number of cases where updating to more efficient equipment has lead to a reduction in costs greater than the small increase in power prices due the carbon tax.

Regardless of any view on global warming it makes a lot more sense to use clean energy sources rather then coal which is generally bad news from a health point of view.

The government has two very simple choices increase taxes or cut spending. The government when it increases taxes will usually spend that money somewhere, so it is not ripped out of the economy. It is only when the government pays off debt that the money is possibly removed from the economy.

Quote
“The company (Hydro Tasmania) recently announced 100 of its staff would lose their jobs, and partly blaming the repeal of the carbon tax.”
http://www.energybusinessnews.com.au/carbon-economy-news/carbon-tax-repeal-to-cost-tasmania-70-million/

To remove the carbon tax was the choice of the Australian voters. The removal was one of the 2 major promises of the coalition. They were elected, therefore the removal was supported by the voters in a democratic way.

Sometimes the voters get it right, and sometimes wrong. With the asylum seekers issue the voters got it horribly wrong in supporting the inhumanity of these measures, and they got it wonderfully right in rejecting the badly devised and costly carbon tax.

warmair "A good principle is let the user pay or in this case the polluter."

Except thats thats not what they did, instead Labor set it up as a mechanism for transfer of income (not necessarily wealth). So much support for those Labor deem to be vulnerable without regard for peoples actual circumstances that it became yet another big hit on what one former PM was so fond of referring to as working families.

Labor failed to convince the population that the tax was actually going to benefit the environment and certain didn't lead by example when it cam to curtailing OS travel (and I'm not suggesting the LNP will travel less) and embracing other measures that gave any sign that AGW was an issue they really believed in. If they really believed that cutting carbon emissions was vital a lot more teleconferencing by politicians, not adding in their passion for "wealth" redistribution to the solution and more honesty with the electorate might have made a difference.

Some of those same concepts are applicable to the reasons the LNP is doing so badly in the poles, they have not convinced the population that they really mean it when they talk about the age of entitlement being over, they mislead/lied to the electorate about the measures they would take.

Sometimes what politicians claim to be trying to achieve has value but the means used to achieve it and the lack of committment to the underlying concept by those same politicians undermines the whole thing.

R0bert

"The science is not settled and it appears there has not been any global warming for 13 - 17 years."

Another 2 misconceptions.

1. Science is never settled - even a conservative hippie could spontaneously combust tonight.

2. Conservative hippies are not oceanographers or atmospheric scientists - most of the warming is going into the oceans (causing even more instability and extreme wet weather events for example, when coupled with atmospheric influences).

Redistribution of wealth is socio-political, not scientific.

One can understand why the big-end of town and the business-as-usual power-controllers want to keep it that way.

warmair, Let the user pay you say, this time it's the polluter.

This is where the tax was arse up, as it's the users of the power that should be paying, if anyone, not the generator as they are simply generating on demand.

Now if you tax the user, then their immediate reaction is to reduce their usage. What does this do, it reduces output as demand slows, with the end result, less carbon emissions.

The option that really needs more research is carbon storage and one option would be to promote plantation hardwoods then legislate so that all new houses must have a certain percentage of plantation hardwood as timber stores about half it's weigh in carbon and remains trapped until burnt of rotted.

To simply say we are going to cut emissions by 2020 will destroy jobs as we need to grow our economy to meet future demands, both locally and globally, and you can't do that by cutting back.

BTW, it was always a pointless exercise to cut our emissions while at the same time allow our coal to be burned globally as the planet shares the same air.

So in short, the best way to cut emissions is to tax the user, as they will then reduce their usage. Qantas was a fine example as they paid some $300 million in the first year, whereas if all airlines were ordered to charge customers a green travel tax, calculated on distance travelled, they (airlines) would all be on the same playing field in that respect, whether they were local or not as the tax should be charged on all flights to any country.

People who support the old carbon tax conveniently forget that CO2 emissions is a global problem, not just a local problem and, until it is globally tackled, any country, like Australia, who goes it alone will be disadvantaged.

@Warmair,

Take a look at this:
http://allafrica.com/download/pic/main/main/csiid/00151919:bc2bb20d30d997dc831400b4fa7c8223:arc614x376:w614:us1.jpg

I'll bet they didn't have to have a SIGNAL DRUM TAX to motivate this character to transit to mobile technology

Even the science is becoming skeptical.
Face it the AGW scare is fading, and I suspect it will become history
not far into the future.
It has been long known that it is a better proposition to mitigate
the effects than try and stop them.

However it does not matter, as it is only a marginal problem even if
true compared to what we do have to worry about.
Sometime between 2025 and 2035 world peak coal will occur.
Note I said "World Peak Coal" !
Australia is in a good position in that our peak will be well after
the world peak.
This gives us an economic advantage, whether we sell it or use it.

The same cannot be said for gas. We just do not know how much we can
access and how fast we are selling it.

What we do know is that there will be a lot less fossil fuels burnt than previously.
The quality of US coal is falling and is becoming more expensive as
the seams become harder to access.
It is a very similar process as for peak oil.
Rising extraction costs cause higher prices and lower overall demand
but for particular users, they have to buy no matter what the cost.

That is where we are now, but the politicians of all governments just
don't understand what is going on and will not plan for a new energy regime.
Of course the politicians may be well aware and as the IEA whistle
blower told us they were afraid to let us know about peak oil.

We will need in the future all methods of making energy, solar, wind,
waves, tidal etc etc unless we overcome our nail bighting worry about nuclear.

Just as, you wont need a carbon tax to sell me on one of these:
http://www.toyota-global.com/innovation/personal_mobility/i-road/

Whooohee! It's on the top of wish list

Wonder how long before we see James 007 in one of these?

Ahh yes SPQR I wonder how long.
I think that link shows the end of the transition not the start.
People will take up cars like the Nissan Leaf electric car first as it
is very close to their present cars, yet has very low running costs
and a range that suits many people.

The iRoad of that link has a very short range and might in the future
be what someone would have for a second car.
Until the price of electric cars in Australia becomes realistic they
will not take off like they have in countries like Norway, the UK and the US.

At $51,900 it is a Nissan joke. $21,500 more than the US price.
I had a driving test of the Nissan Leaf and it is a magnificent car
to drive and use and I would buy one in a flash if the price was sensible.
Actually they offered me the demo car for $45,000 but that was too
dear. The dealers are trying to get rid of them for around $39,000.
There is a rumor that the Ford eFocus will be here next year.

Why would anyone want one of those in Oz? There is no way they can get a decent V8 into one.

As for the Nissan Leaf, the only places they can sell any have either huge taxpayer subsidies on the things, or special conditions, like congestion charges.

All this stuff will go the way of the rotary engine, which was going to rule the world a couple of decades back.

Come 2030 everyone will be required by government to produce a minimum amount of CO2 to try to stop global cooling.

It will have no effect just as it has no real effect on global warming, but the UN will not give up it's con job, as long as we keep paying them to exist.

Oh dear the planet's going to fry! Oh that's right snow is falling everywhere the warmist predicted it would not. Lets have an earth hour and turn on all the lights in celebration of the idiotic tax being abolished.

Ahh Hasbeen the petrol head !
The driver of V8 dinosaurs !
Well,when I drove the Leaf I gave myself a fright when I put my foot
down to get away from oncoming traffic.
It had better acceleration than any car I had previously driven.

I guess that is why F1 is now getting serious about electric racing cars.
Electric cars are getting some subsidies, but not in Norway as far as
I know.
The Leaf has displaced the Golf in the popularity stakes in Norway.
Total Leafs are over one million with the majority are in the US & UK.

If the CSIRO's prediction of $8 a litre by 2020 comes anywhere near
true there will be a big increase in electric cars.

The term Carbon Tax is a misnomer anyway. The correct term would be academic hangers-on & other brainwashed, cradle to grave charity contribution.

Bazz the subsidy on electric[erry] things in Norway is about 45% at last information.

Incidentally, all the cars I drive are 4 pot & light weight, much lighter than the new stuff, petrol or battery powered.

I reckon we will have developed methane clathrate, long before petroleum fuels become too expensive. This will be on the way to cars driven by steam, or perhaps electricity, generated by a nuclear chip, installed on the production line for life.

We are certainly not going to be able to generate electricity for cars, unless sanity returns, & we use coal, gas or nuclear to do it.

From another point of view, we just might run out of the economically available rare earths required for battery & electric generator/motor production before petroleum becomes economically unviable.

Hello Hasbeen,
45 % oh that seems a very big subsidy. Oh wait, did you mean 45% on the electricity to charge the car ?
Now a steam car does take my fancy, that could be a real goer.
What is methane clathrate ?

The only problem I have with electric cars, other than the price, is
that the number of miles I do a year is so low that petrol price is no problem.
A friend of mine has a Mitsubishi iEMEV as a second car which he drives
to work everyday and uses at weekends.
His weekly charging bill is under $2.
There is still a long way to go with battery development but there
may be fundamental physical restraints that will never enable 1000km
range electric cars.

"generated by a nuclear chip,"
I do not see that happening ever !
The weight of the shielding would rule that out.
Unless of course they get cold fusion to work.

So it is horses for courses.

Give the Death Penalty to stupidity & you'll reduce the world's need for energy by 85 % instantly.
We could use the empty University buildings for other, more practical applications anyway.

Bazz methane clathrate is a form of methane & water ice. They have recently found it is much more common than previously thought. Apparently there is a great deal of in in ocean trenches.

The Japanese recently did some experimental harvesting, sort of like hovering it up, off their coast, & suggest it would not be hard to develop a commercial harvesting technique.

Well like all these things, I'll believe it when I see it, but who would have believed 15 years ago, that we could harvest oil with horizontal drilling 5000 Ft down in the ocean.

Wikipedia has a good description of the different types of the stuff, try a Google. They have not caught up with how plentiful the stuff has been found to be, but gives a good idea otherwise.

Ahhh yes I had heard of it, I just did not realise that was what you were referring to.

Quote;
Well like all these things, I'll believe it when I see it, but who
would have believed 15 years ago, that we could harvest oil with
horizontal drilling 5000 Ft down in the ocean.

Well actually it is a quite old technique and has been used for many
years but of course it is now more frequently used for tight oil.
The reason Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait was because they used
horizontal drilling under the border to get at Iraqi oil.
I have not heard of them using it underwater. I presume they are not
fracking with it.

The drilling in tight oil formations is going at a frantic pace and
they are starting to have credit problems with Wall St getting a bit
touchy about the poor returns.
It is the Red Queen syndrome, running fast to stay in the same place.

Warmair,

You were probably only looking at a poll in your local greenie news. The reliable polls showed that the carbon tax was as popular as a dose of clap.

The real result is that there were a stream of large energy users closing down and their loss of production was taken up overseas, as unemployment increased, and an independent study showed that the true effect of the carbon tax reduced Australian emissions by 0.1%.

The carbon tax is the most efficient tax if and only if the tax is spread evenly over all countries. Shifting production from a high tax country to a low tax country has zero effect on total emissions.

Bazz and Hasbeen, I have a portable saw mill and it charges it's own battery via what I think is called a stator.

Why couldn't electric cars use a similar system to recharge as the go?

Perhaps it's not possible, but maybe you guys can tell me.

Shadow I accept that prior to the election, polls consistently showed only about 30% in favour of the carbon tax. This was primarily due to the spin put out by the liberals so they could claim Julia lied. Unfortunately the liberals also decided that they would mislead people by suggesting that all the large rises in electricity prices were due to the carbon tax, whereas in fact most of the price increases are related to other issues such as failure to maintain the network. Further to this the liberals and nationals also claimed that there would be huge increases in the price of things like a leg of lamb costing $100 and places like Whyalla closing down. The whole thing was a scare campaign with the aims of defeating the labour government at the election and helping the big polluters.

There are several problems with the liberal strategy. First of all people will not notice any reduction in prices. The compensation for carbon tax remains in place but the source of revenue to pay for it has been removed, and to cap it all off the taxpayer now will pay to reduce the effects of the big polluters.

The rapid rise in electricity prices has virtually nothing to do with the carbon debate, if you want the truth read this...

http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2014/july/1404136800/jess-hill/power-corrupts

rechtub, you don't have a handle on the most basic laws of physics (an electric car recharging itself, FCOL!) yet advise us scientifically on AGW?

To those claiming carbon pricing closed energy intensive exporting industries, two words, "carbon credits".

PS. Where is the mighty cohenite?

Looking forward to my $550, tee hee.

Luciferase, Where have I advised on climate change

What I'm referring to is that advising sequestration in tree growth and timber buildings demonstrates no scientific appreciation of the scale of emissions reduction needed to halt the progress in the CO2 level and its consequences, and to reverse these. No doubt, however, paying farmers to grow trees will be a part of a direct action farce ahead.

You reject that a domestic carbon price with credits to exporters to maintain their international competitiveness has, and could continue to, drive efficiency and reduce emissions. Australia can and should have an ETS. All you ever do is argue about who bears the cost. Please look beyond this tiny fixation and recognize that we all bear it, and, that a market based mechanism is the only sensible way to encourage each of us to make decisions that minimize our share of that cost while income tax and pension adjustments ensure equity. I know a few very wealthy people who accept the science, accept that Australia has a role to play regardless of what other nations do, and do not begrudge the little extra they pay to ensure equity exists.

Australia can go it independently while other ETS systems are cropping up around the world. These systems will eventually merge. Instead we adopt the ostrich stance. Why doesn't the LNP just come clean and make the announcement "AGW is crap" and dispense with the pretense of "direct action". They're pretenders and liars, that's why.

Well of course if we had linked to the European system we would be
paying almost nothing now. Christine Milne etc would be having a fit
wanting us to abandon the trading system.

They just cannot get it right can they ?

BTW, it now appears that the temperature rise precedes the CO2 rise.
Chickens and eggs anybody ?

*Why would anyone want one of those in Oz? There is no way they can get a decent V8 into one.
As for the Nissan Leaf, the only places they can sell any have either huge taxpayer subsidies on the things, or special conditions, like congestion charges.*

Well one good reason would be as below.

We are closing down refineries so even the small amount of oil we have left has to be shipped overseas to be refined and then shipped back.
Google “export land model” and it will explain how other countries will stop exporting to Australia as their oil runs low and that is excluding the much higher price that oil will be by then.
Australia WILL be out of oil by 2020
Without oil, modern civilisation doesn’t work
by Mark O’Connor
Treasury’s last Inter-generational Report http://archive.treasury.gov.au/igr/igr2010/report/html/07_Chapter_6_A_sustainable_society.asp
contains, hidden away on page 91, a simple stunning statement: Australia’s oil will be gone by 2020. The timing could not be worse. By 2020 Peak Oil is likely to have rendered oil imports precarious and costly. And without oil, modern civilisation doesn’t work.
The media ignored this part of the Report, so the ministers of our two major parties and the bureaucrats who advise them, have rarely been required to explain why they let this happen. On those rare occasions the question has been brushed aside with assurances that either market forces will always supply oil (or a substitute) at reasonable prices or Australia has vast reserves of natural gas.

"BTW, it now appears that the temperature rise precedes the CO2 rise. Chickens and eggs anybody?"

Bazz, there is a great deal in the scientific literature about this. You should read it before you comment.
Out-of-context comments mislead and misinform people.
Although I don't think you are, some people here do it intentionally.

Davidk, yes I am aware of the controversy over which came first.
However it is so fundamental that it should be hammered down for good.
I heard a talk by a scientist of very considerable note just last week
that made that point.

Robert, the prices in the US & UK I quoted are before subsidy prices.
In the US they get a tax credit in the UK citizens get a fixed sum.
I would pay their unsubsidised prices but not the Great Australian Ripoff.

Quote Robert;
The media ignored this part of the Report, so the ministers of our two major parties

Yes indeed I have spoken to pollies and I feel they are totally
aware of the problem. Just like the pressure put onto the EIA by the
US government to "Don't frighten the horses" to play down peak oil,
so our pollies do not want to frighten the voter by talking about
such terrifying things as petrol rationing, food shortages etc.

When discussing the problem there seems to be a well rehearsed mantra
of "We have good solid commercial arrangements etc etc" and "No
shortage is thought likely in the foreseeable future".

Are these the phrases you hear ? I certainly got the same wording
from three different politicians.
I even suggested to two of the pollies that the owner of a car should
be issued a card that he had to present when buying petrol or diesel
and each purchase be transmitted to the rationing computer and his
ration deducted from his entitlement.

I could see that this was beyond the pale to them, one even remarked
the public would not stand for it !
My suggestion was they should just plan it in case as if Iran closed
the Strait of Hormuz (it was a hot topic at the time) they would only
have a couple of weeks to have it working.

I thought we paid politicians to do this sort of thing to protect
the public just in case.
Are not the armed forces an insurance policy ?

Bazz, there is no significant controversy, except in the minds of a few so called 'contrarian' scientists.

Why didn't you name him/her?

Well, I would not put his name up here without his permission.
So I guess you will just have to take my word for it.

Bazz yes there is a problem in relation to the availability of conventional oil but you are mistaken in thinking that it is an immediate problem. We may well have reached peak oil globally, but that means we have still have a similar amount left compared to the amount we have already burnt. There are plenty of unconventional oil sources such as tar sands which we have barely touched. We also have alternatives such as
making petrol from coal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands
http://www.tarsandsworld.com/australia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_liquefaction

It is quite likely that these alternative resources will be exploited, but by exploiting them we will go way past the target for emissions that the scientists suggest we can practically adapt too. The obvious solution is a price on CO2 emissions and incentives to move to a low carbon economy. So what does our government do, it acts to discourage taking any sensible steps to deal with the problem

DavidK it is pretty obvious you are a gravy train rider.

It would appear you are one of a long line of gravy feeders who drew the short straw, & were handed a spanner, with instructions to try to reattach the wheels falling off the train.

I should advise you there is more chance of success with that task with reasoned argument. Appeals to a no longer respected authority just don't work. Of course the reasoned argument is hard to find with global warming in it's now 15Th or so guise of climate disruption. It must be hard arguing in favor of something that stopped happening 17 years ago, & for which the only evidence is in a computer program.

Arrogance also doesn't go very far. If you have any logical argument in favor of your allotted task, trot it out. Failure to do so just labels you as yet another twit, who is desperately trying to keep the cash flow going.

I would suggest you try a new line of work. Garbage truck driving is pretty similar to trying to sell global warming. Don't leave it too late, the lack of sunspots should warn you. They are like the writing on the wall. Ignore them, at your peril.

Perhaps you don't have enough science to know what happened last time the sun spot count dropped this low. If not, I suggest you do a bit of study.

Garbage truck driving?

Genuflect to a self inflicted 'hasbeen'?

Yeah, right.

Logical argument is "trotted" out all the time dear 'hasbeen', you're obviously not going to the right places.

"You will just have to take my word for it."

Well Warmair,
It is an immediate problem because to reley on the unconventionals
such as the tar sands puts you in the situation where as the
conventional oil declines you have to increase the ratio of the mix.
As the conventionals have a price around $40 at the well head and the
unconventionals are around $80 to $90 it means a fairly fast rising
price. However it gets worse because the tight oil declines very fast,
40% to 60% a year.
The ERoEI of the examples you gave are very poor.

I had a look at that link to Queensland you gave.
It is not tar sands but shale oil.
Shale oil is not oil but kerogen which was to be oil that stopped
before the process was completed.
Shell among others have tried to make it work but they gave up
because the energy needed to complete the process was too great.
ERoEI again !

If we get desperate enough we could go down the Toepish Fischer route
ie coal to oil. The Sth Africans have a plant which they built
to bypass the apartheid era bans. Again ERoEI is a problem.

Many suggestions come up like these but there is always a catch22.
What you have to ask yourself is if these schemes are so good why
are they fiddling around up in the artic, digging around in the
Canadian tar sands and drilling at enormous cost miles under the
sea bed and risking all the problems BP had ?

Thank you DavidK, your last post proves my point completely.

You're not quite right there Bazz,

The Rundle oil shale pilot plant proved the deposits & the extraction system was profitable at the time, producing oil to market at $70 a barrel, when the oil price was at $100.

The oil companies refused to buy the oil, & the project failed.

It just disappeared very quietly, with very little reporting.

My guess is that it did not suit the oil companies plans to stop refining in Oz, & the primary interests in the project were bought off to make them go away.

I did not have the time, or capacity to look into it at the time, so did not try to follow what was going on, or why.

The oil is there over a pretty large area. There was a shale project in the area just after WW11. The project engineer in charge of it moved to run the Townsville Hospital project in the late 40s. He lived with us for a few months, while he organized a home for he & his wife.

I remember him holding forth on the subject. He reckoned it was all fully feasible, but was shut down for political reasons.

We do have plentiful oil, but for some reason, the powers don't want to harvest it at the moment. I sometimes wonder why?

Very snotty Hasbeen, typical of someone who thinks they've been there, done that ... delusions of grandeur.

People like you will tell their cardiologist they haven't got a clue either.

Jealousy is a curse with a chip on your shoulder, Hasbeen - you've got it in spades!

Enjoy your opinion while you can.

One thing I have never been Jealous of is an arrogant, opinionated peanut.

Boy was I right when I formed that opinion.

Hasbeen,
Interesting, I wonder what was the ERoEI. It must have been reasonable
your friend thought it should be a goer.
That is the sort of facility that the government should fund.
Just like paying insurance premiums.
It is no good waiting for there to be a need because if the shortage
was war instigated, you just cannot do it in two or three weeks.

Three weeks is what the NRMA report says we would have before it all
fell apart. Also that included fuel on ships at sea and we all know
that cargoes can be sold while a ship is at sea, so what we have is
about two weeks before the the supermarkets are empty and deliveries stop.

I know that people think what I have been pointing out is just a lot
of baloney, but a moments thought about the effect on the whole
country would be if ALL the service stations were empty.
There would be no point in going to work, there would be no work.
The only people working would be police and ambos and hospitals.

The government's own reports have warned of this risk but all they do
is suppress the report.

In your dreams.

warmair, it amuses me when people actually think we can reduce emissions in the future, when we can't even provide for ourselves today.

Of cause you lot not only want to reduce emissions, but you also expect industry to do the heavy lifting, yet you also conveniently forget that they are the ones who create the jobs.

Keep dreaming as long as you like, but unless you want to see us lower our living standards, reducing emissions is just a dream. Dealing with carbon would be a far better option.

I don't think it is baloney Bazz. At this present moment we are terribly vulnerable to any interruption in refined fuel imports, & becoming more so by the day.

I can't imagine what the government agenda is, in allowing oil companies to close refining in Oz. Without refining capacity any oil we harvest is useless to us without a round trip to Singapore. Just how stupid is that?

That is the greatest threat to our wellbeing & security, leaving nebulous things like climate change far behind. Only allowing the wrong people to migrate here is the only threat to rival it in sight.

Here here Hasbeen

Quote
rehctub
“warmair, it amuses me when people actually think we can reduce emissions in the future, when we can't even provide for ourselves today.”

The main reason I believe it is because it has been happening for the last 4 years.
Electrical energy consumption has fallen over that time but yet GDP has continued to rise.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/australia-gdp-growth.png?s=aunagdpc

http://theconversation.com/why-is-electricity-consumption-decreasing-in-australia-20998
Quote
“Of cause you lot not only want to reduce emissions, but you also expect industry to do the heavy lifting, yet you also conveniently forget that they are the ones who create the jobs.”

Having worked in industry all working life I don’t forget it for one moment.
Do I really have to keep pointing out that there are many ways of making electricity with out burning coal and particularly brown coal
for example

Burning brown coal produces 400 units of CO2
Burning black coal produces 100 units of CO2
Burning gas coal produces 33 units of CO2

Don’t forget there has been a considerable improvement in the efficiency of most electrical equipment for example lights by a factor of 10 or any of great number of other innovations.
Cars and trucks have both improved mileage and if we could just get the heavy haulage off the roads that would give us an improvement factor of 18 for every truck we moved to rail.
It should very obvious we can reduce are CO2 emissions considerably and not affect our living standards

warmair why the hell would we want to reduce our output of CO2. Here we have the population paying to provide the fertiliser our crops & flora need.

CO2 has been so low for such a long time now, that flora, & our crops have been on a starvation diet. The increase in CO2, be it from SUVs, or some natural phenomenon, is greening the planet. Green is creeping back into the Sahara & other desserts.

When you finally wake up to the fraud perpetuated long after the perpetrators knew the truth, you will see this.

“warmair why the hell would we want to reduce our output of CO2. Here we have the population paying to provide the fertiliser our crops & flora need.”

Yes Co2 does boast growth unfortunately it also will raise the temperature. Lets just consider one problem.

Every 1 deg C increases in temperature increases the rate of evaporation by 17% permanently. This in turn causes a 40% reduction in run off or 40% less water for our irrigators. It would be great if we got 17% more rain unfortunately what we get is increased heavy downpours, producing flash flooding and flooding generally. So we get the worst of both worlds more severe droughts and more floods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floods_in_Pakistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floods

I wonder why the list gets longer and longer during each decade from the 1970 onwards.