Menzies House

Kevin Rudd Wins the Golden Fleece Award

The Carbon Sense Coalition has awarded its Inaugural Golden Fleece Award to Kevin Rudd and coal industry leaders for “flagrant fleecing of community savings" writes Viv Forbes

Its appropriate that the Golden Fleece award would recognise futile ‘research’ on Carbon Capture & Sequestration. A costly and complex process designed to capture and bury carbon dioxide gas produced by burning carbon fuels such as 'coal, oil and gas'.

It is obviously possible, in an engineering sense, to collect, separate, compress, pump and pipe gases, so new “research” is largely a waste of money. Engineers know how to do these things, and their likely costs. But only foolish green zealots would think of spending billions to bury a harmless, invisible, life-supporting gas in hopes of cooling the climate some time in the century ahead.

Ram Rudd not sheepish

The Inaugural Golden Fleece Award – for Flagrant Fleecing of Community Resources

The Carbon Sense Coalition has awarded its Inaugural Golden Fleece Award to Kevin Rudd and coal industry leaders for “flagrant fleecing of community savings in futile ‘research’ on Carbon Capture & Sequestration – a costly and complex process designed to capture and bury carbon dioxide gas produced by burning carbon fuels such as coal, oil and gas”.

It is obviously possible, in an engineering sense, to collect, separate, compress, pump and pipe gases, so new “research” is largely a waste of money. Engineers know how to do these things, and their likely costs. But only foolish green zealots would think of spending billions to bury a harmless, invisible, life-supporting gas in hopes of cooling the climate some time in the century ahead.

About 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide are produced for every tonne of coal burnt in a power station. To capture, compress and bury it could take at least 30% of the electricity produced, greatly increasing the cost of the limited amount of electricity left for sale - more coal used, increased electricity costs, for ZERO measurable benefits.

We have come to expect stupidity from politicians, but coal industry leaders who agreed to waste money on this should be sued by shareholders for negligence. Maybe they were just drooling at all the extra coal they would sell in order to produce the same electricity?

Foggy Thinking on Smog

Viv explains the source of smog in Asia. It seems the safest, smog-free place to live is beside a modern coal-fired power station. Perhaps I'll forget about cremation and go for a burial instead. GC.Ed.

Coal gets blamed for all the bad things, even the Asian Smog.

What causes this smog?

Dust is a significant component. Winds whip up dust from dry land, roads, construction sites and the huge Gobi Desert, or an up-wind volcano explodes. No dust comes from a modern well-designed coal-fired power station.

Smogs may also contain soot and ash. These come from open-air fires all over Asia burning wood, cow dung, paper, cardboard, plastic, rubber tyres and other rubbish; from stoves and heaters using unwashed high sulphur coal or high-ash briquettes; from forest fires in Indonesia, cremations in India and yeontans in Korea. Some comes from ancient combustion engines, coal boilers and furnaces. None comes from a modern coal-fired power station.

Some smog contains compounds of sulphur, nitrogen or other chemical pollutants. These fumes are produced by open fires and vehicle exhausts, especially from badly-maintained vehicles and phut-phuts. They are not released by modern power stations.

Those blaming coal power for smog need to read the history of last century’s deadly smogs in London and Pittsburgh. These were cleared by bans on open-fire heaters and cookers and the provision of “clean-coal-by-wire” – electricity produced in modern power stations with good emissions controls and burning washed high-quality coals.

Replacing dirty open fires with clean electricity will also work wonders in clearing up the Asian Smog.

Viv Forbes, 

Rosewood    Qld   Australia

forbes@carbon-sense.com

 

Time to Build Better Infrastructure

Viv Forbes knows only too well what a massive waste of money climate-change and "green schemes" are. Policy changes are needed, urgently! GC.Ed.

Floods, fires, cyclones and drought are ever-present features of the Australian landscape and have been here far longer than cars, cattle, coal miners and timber getters.

Yet every time we have a natural disaster, we find government infrastructure washed away, burnt down, blown apart or lacking water. Meanwhile billions of dollars of community savings are wasted on vain attempts to cool the climate of the next century. 

This surely is the year to stop wasting money on climate-change follies in order to allow more spending on real present-day problems like disaster-proofing government controlled infrastructure and land.

Two policy changes are needed.

First, stop all federal, state and local government spending or legislative support for climate commissions and bureaucracies, UN-Kyoto junkets, carbon sequestration, green energy, biofuels, carbon taxing and accounting, global warming research and climate change foreign aid. In short, abolish every department, position or budget with “climate”, “warming” or “carbon” in its name or description.

Second, re-build government infrastructure and manage government lands to standards that can better withstand the inevitable floods, fires, cyclones and droughts.

Viv Forbes, 

Rosewood    Qld   Australia
forbes@carbon-sense.com

Amazing Magic-gas Discovery

Viv takes aim at "an Australian guru" for his failed predictions about rain in Queensland in particular. But, does the great guru feel like a complete fool when he watches Brisbane drown for a second time in two years? GC.Ed.

It has been discovered that Australian coal has a magical property – it is one of a small group of coals which produces an invisible gas with super-natural properties.

This magic gas, carbon dioxide, first became famous for its claimed ability to warm the whole world, thus removing the threat of a new ice age. The British academic who reported this magic power claimed that winter snow would become “a very rare and exciting event”.

Then an Australian guru predicted that just a tiny addition of magic-gas to the atmosphere would abolish floods, and billions of dollars were spent constructing water desalination plants to combat his forecast of never-ending droughts.

Then after massive snows in Britain and huge floods in Australia, it was widely reported that magic-gas could produce both heatwaves and snowstorms, floods and droughts and even bushfires, cyclones and tornadoes, depending on the way the political winds were blowing in that country.

Strangely, only a few countries are able to produce “magic-gas”. A special exclusive club called the Kyoto Club was formed for these lucky countries. Membership fees are stratospheric, but members are rewarded with invitations to lavish UN conventions at top tourist destinations. However, many founding members have allowed their membership to lapse, leaving only EU, Australia and New Zealand as fully paid up members.

Alien Environment Fuels Firestorms.

This article by Viv Forbes should be mandatory reading to all those bureaucrats who make decisions about our land husbandry, the damned Greens in particular and special mention to the failed NSW premier, Bob the blunderer Carr. GC.Ed.

A recent report from friends who suffered terrible losses of buildings, fences, pasture and cattle in the Coonabarabran fire commenced with the ominous and oft-repeated message: “a raging fire came out of the National Park straight for us”.

There is only one way to limit fire damage – reduce the fuel available.

Fuel load can be reduced in three ways – by grazing animals, by planned small “cool” fires, or by mechanical reduction with slashers, mulchers or dozers.

Australia’s grassland landscape was created and managed by generations of Aborigines who were masters at using man’s most useful tool – fire. Every explorer from Abel Tasman (1642) and Captain Cook (1770) onwards noted the smoke in the sky and the burnt trees whenever they landed. This burning created the open grassland landscapes that dominated pre-European Australia. Aborigines lit fires continually, so their small patchwork fires caused no permanent damage to the environment and created and maintained the healthy grasslands on which many animals and Aborigines depended.

Using Food for Fuel is an Evil Exchange.

As Viv writes: practical logic is not common to all people. GC.Ed.

In the fuzzy “science” of economics, one law stands out like a light-house in the fog – the law of supply and demand.

That law tells us that when the demand for any commodity is increased by subsidies or tax breaks, or by mandating its use, its price will settle higher than it would otherwise have been.

When ethanol is subsidised or mandated, its production will become more profitable, more ethanol will be produced, and demand for the ingredients of its manufacture will increase. Thus more cereals, sugar, molasses, soy-beans and palm-oil will be diverted from producing food to producing ethanol. Consequently, their prices will also rise and less of them will be left for stock feed and human consumption. As a result of these higher prices for ethanol ingredients, more marginal land will be assigned to ethanol crops, and the cost of producing them will be higher.

Count your Blessings

Viv, our cash-strapped leaders are not listening to reason. The only thing they hear is the sound of money.

GC.Ed.

 They complained about the coal mine, sitting quietly beside its own power station and producing cheap reliable electricity.

So we gave them 500 gas wells, each with its own access road and a network of pipelines taking gas to the distant power station.

Then they complained about the traffic, and the maze of pipelines and wells, and coping with the waste water, and the rising cost of electricity.

So we gave them 5,000 noisy wind turbines and 10,000 dust-collecting solar panels, with a vast spider-web of access roads and transmission lines.

And the price of electricity soared.

But then the wind failed, clouds obscured the sun, the grid suddenly became unstable, and the lights went out.

Now they wish they had stuck with the coal mine and its neat and dependable power station.

Viv Forbes,

Rosewood Qld Australia

forbes@carbon-sense.com