Carbon Credit Forests
- the CO2.con
28 April 2012.
A print-ready copy of this issue of "Carbon Sense" can be downloaded from:
https://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/co2-dot-con.pdf
CO2Australia boasts of planting three million carbon credit trees. This is "just the beginning" of a new bubble industry, the CO2.con.
This bubble is set to inflate rapidly. To offset just one day of Qantas operations, CO2 promoters must plant more than 200,000 trees in permanent forests covering 130 hectares. How much land is required to offset all Australian power stations, industry and transport?
Yes these trees will consume carbon dioxide. However CO2 levels today are well below what is ideal for plant growth. While they are growing strongly, these trees will suck the gas of life from the atmosphere, competing strongly with nearby crops and plant life for the traces of carbon dioxide remaining.
Then as the trees mature, growth stops. The aging forest just sits there, some trees growing, some dying and net carbon sequestration ceases. It becomes a sterile shrine to the green religion whose main impact on the biosphere is providing a haven for feral animals and noxious weeds.
Green spruikers claim that they only use land not suitable for anything else. Wrong! Every bit of Australia not covered by road, cities, parks or deserts can support crops, timber-getting or grazing animals. Carbon-credit forests gnaw away at this national land asset every year.
Moreover, CO2.con investors, like all speculators, want quick returns. Their quick return demands rapidly growing trees in arable country - deserts and salt pans are uneconomical. Thus the wheat/sheep belt is shrinking.
No one can demonstrate any climate or environmental benefit from the CO2.con.
Forcing consumers and taxpayers to fund this large scale permanent land sterilisation is clearly unsustainable. All Australians fund this destruction via increased prices for electricity, cement, steel, air tickets and rail fares, and reduced land for food production. The carbon tax will increase their burden.
Like all bubble industries, the CO2.con industry must end in tears, and the sooner it ends the better.
Vested Interests in the Climate Debate
A personal response by Viv Forbes to several attacks in the media
It seems that whenever global warming alarmists have no supporting evidence or logic, they resort to name calling using terms such as "vested interests".
Warmists claim that earth's climate is controlled by man-made carbon dioxide, mainly from coal and oil. A huge climate industry has been constructed on this flimsy foundation. Is Australia best served if we base energy policies solely on uninformed or emotional opinions from rock stars, lawyers, economists, union leaders and the climate industry? Surely it is sensible to also listen to scientists and engineers with training and experience in the origin, history, chemistry, geology, physics, extraction, utilisation and waste products of coal and oil and the behaviour and role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Why is all government industry "pure" and all real industry "suspect"? There are venal people and those promoting vested interests everywhere.
Another tedious slur is that those who opposes climatism are supporters of big coal and "lobbyists are paid by multinationals to produce this stuff". In my case this is very easy to refute. Just look at what I have said and written and check that against policies supported by coal industry lobbyists such as the Queensland Resources Council (QRC).
(It can be found here: https://www.qrc.org.au/_dbase_upl/Minerals%20Industry%20Principles%202011.pdf ).
The QRC people ARE paid to promote the views of the coal industry – I am not. They promote three key policy pillars – a global agreement to ration and tax carbon, emissions permit trading, and subsidies for green power.
Never have I or the Carbon Sense Coalition ever supported any of these shaky pillars. We have repeatedly urged rejection of the Kyoto agreement; we have been consistent critics of emissions trading and the carbon tax; and we oppose money wasted in subsidising green energy toys and silly schemes like Carbon Capture and Burial.
Other superficial critics gleefully report that anything I say is merely promoting my vested interests in Stanmore Coal, a small Australian owned and managed explorer in which I hold shares. The reverse is true – Stanmore will be less harmed by the carbon tax than many other Australian businesses and may even derive some benefits. Stanmore's main asset is an open cut thermal coal deposit planning to export coal, probably to Asia for power generation. The carbon tax in Australia will fall more heavily on gassy underground coal mines and will also drive our power intensive industries overseas, probably to Asia, thus increasing Asian demand for coal from projects such as Stanmore.
Naturally the snipers never reveal my long and continuing interest and experience in pasture management, grassland conservation, sustainable soils and the carbon cycle. I do not condone pollution or environmental degradation.
Every Australian has a vested interest in the outcome of this suicidal war on carbon – some will get unearned benefits, most will be lumbered with hidden costs. So instead of smearing, name calling and name dropping, it's time for the green side to put up some relevant facts and logical arguments.
Or find a real problem to solve.
Solving Three Problems
We have three problems in Queensland, all created or made worse by the federal government.
Firstly, Canberra is about to drain our savings down the Green Hole using the Gillard carbon tax.
Secondly, the Greens want to close every coal mine, promising that non-existent Green power plants will keep the lights on.
Thirdly, orchardists and small towns are besieged by plagues of flying, squealing fruit bats which are protected by Canberra.
Here is the solution to all three problems.
Use Canberra's carbon tax receipts to build a wall of wind turbines around every orchard and town plagued by flying foxes.
Three problems solved.
We get our carbon tax money invested back into Queensland, Greens get their sacred green windmills built, and the scything blades slice up the invading foxes (humanely of course).
But be sure to stock up on candles for when the wind does not blow, and ear plugs for when it does.
The Rice Video
Carbon Dioxide in perspective
“THE CO2 LIES … pure fear-mongering … should we blindly trust the experts?”
Flogging a Dead Horse Back in July 2009, when Penny Wong’s Ration and Tax Scheme was the talk of the town, “Carbon Sense” made a forecast: “The aging galloper “Ration-N-Tax” from the Wong stable is knackered. “Anyone with any economic or political nous knows that the carbon cap proposals are neither politically nor economically possible in Australia or the USA. No electorate in the western world will sit by to see their standard of living reduced until their carbon emissions per capita are equal to those of India or China while they transfer their businesses and technology to these growing industrial giants of Asia. “From now on, those pushing the RAT Scheme are flogging a dead horse. Public opinion is changing swiftly and any time soon even Malcolm Turnbull will switch his bets. “But the canny handlers anticipated this result and have another nag saddled and ready.” Read on: https://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/carbon-tax-saddled.pdf However the backers have overloaded “Carbon Tax” and he is already having trouble getting traction. Larry Pickering captured the scene on the Molonglo Training Circuit recently: |
| Wind power – more accurately wind impotence, since turbines operate at just 24 per cent of capacity – is the curse of Scotland. One of the most beautiful landscapes in Europe has been brutally ravaged, families have been driven into fuel poverty, pensioners have been presented with the lethal dilemma “heat or eat” – all to appease the neurotic prejudices of global warming fanatics. Gerald Warner, Scotland on Sunday 11/3/12 |
Two Green Prophets Recant
Benny Peiser in Ccnet brings news of two leaders of Climatism who have suddenly recanted.
Fritz Vahrenholt was the best-known environmentalist in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Now, even Fritz Vahrenholt no longer believes in the predictions of global warming:
"Until two years ago," he says, "I believed the IPCC and represented its recommendations in my lectures." Doubts came to him when he was a reviewer of the IPCC report on renewable energies. "I discovered many errors and asked myself if the other IPCC reports were similarly inadequate."
At the same time, the fact that, contrary to the predictions, the average global temperature has not risen for more than a decade made him ponder. Vahrenholt wondered if man-made greenhouse gases are really the most important factor in the climate system. After talking with dozens of scientists, he considers the influence of the sun to be underestimated. Finally, Vahrenholt cast doubt that warming is fundamentally bad for people and nature.
https://thegwpf.org/international-news/4923-solar-shift-rock-germany.html
James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.
The Last Word
The war on carbon is moving into a new phase, getting nastier and less democratic as the alarmists get cornered.
They have lost the debate on the science of global warming, their leaders are wobbling, the weather is refusing to obey their computer models and the economic damage and dislocation caused by their massive meddling in the energy markets is becoming obvious to all. Most western governments are broke and their only real source of new funds is to claw back green energy subsidies.
But they fear retribution from an aroused electorate. Their only way to stay in power is to bribe the voters again with new handouts.
| “Everything you get from the government was taken from someone else.” Kit Pharo |
The government media apparatus and their apologists will now try to dampen debate on the carbon tax. They want the whole tax and handout apparatus to be so ingrained that the next government will be too scared to repeal it.
But it must be repealed. The whole lot.
Combine it with a few real reforms like abolition of income tax and devolution of much of the federal apparatus back to the states. It is becoming too late for tinkering, we need real reform. We have had our test of centralism and it has clearly failed. Let's try repeal and decentralisation for a change.
However the hidden agenda is in the opposite direction. They aim to take decisions out of the hands of locals, handing over more and more power to bureaucratic bodies, "independent" commissions and organs of the United Nations. Anti-industry, anti-democratic, anti-west forces are already planning this. They meet in Rio in June. Having failed in open debate they now will seek to close debate and make decisions far from our control and oversight.
The global warming gambit has failed – the new buzz word is "sustainable development". They will find this too is a weak reed – almost none of the government energy policies are sustainable, so we will be turning their own sustainability searchlight back in their faces.
According to stunning U.N. documents examined by Fox News, the upcoming United Nations environmental conference on sustainable development will consider a breath-taking array of carbon taxes, transfers of trillions of dollars from wealthy countries to poor ones, and new spending programs to guarantee that populations around the world are protected from the effects of the very programs the world organization wants to implement.
The main goal of the much-touted, Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, scheduled to be held in Brazil from June 20-23, is to make dramatic and enormously expensive changes in the way that the world does nearly everything—or, as one of the documents puts it, "a fundamental shift in the way we think and act."
See:
https://ppjg.me/2012/03/14/agenda-21-on-steroids/
Please keep the debate alive by passing this on. We need to shine the light into all the dark corners.
Authorised by:
Viv Forbes
Rosevale Qld 4340
Phone 0754 640 533
| “Carbon Sense” is a newsletter produced by the Carbon Sense Coalition, an Australian based organisation which opposes waste of resources, opposes pollution, and promotes the rational and sustainable use of carbon energy and carbon food. Please spread “Carbon Sense” around. For more information visit our web site at www.carbon-sense.com Literary, financial or other contributions to help our cause are welcomed. Chairman Viv Forbes MS 23, Rosewood Qld 4340 Australia. info@carbon-sense.com |