Are we all looking forward to the Carbon Tax?

[chrisp]

So a labourer, say, should there fore be paid more than an office worker?

I thought they were

[Big Shed]

I thought they were

Touche...

[rhancock]

I'd like to keep discussing this all night but I have to go to work tomorrow (on my bike).

I'm researching the issue of how much the government will make each year, and I'll post tomorrow when I have more information.

Big Shed, that's the article I"m working from, but I can't find where the Climate Institute says that, or Garnaut for that matter.

Watch out for Ross Garnauts draft report tomorrow - it'll have more recomendations, although the government is starting to suggest they might not listen to Garnaut...

[Big Shed]

I'd like to keep discussing this all night but I have to go to work tomorrow (on my bike).

I'm researching the issue of how much the government will make each year, and I'll post tomorrow when I have more information.

Big Shed, that's the article I"m working from, but I can't find where the Climate Institute says that, or Garnaut for that matter.

Watch out for Ross Garnauts draft report tomorrow - it'll have more recomendations, although the government is starting to suggest they might not listen to Garnaut...

this bit.......

The Government must be making a lot of money. What should they do with it all?
Modelling by the Climate Institute says the Government could eventually reap as much as $20 billion a year from emissions trading. What Garnaut says on how this should be spent seems a moot point - Treasurer Wayne Swan has already committed to spending every cent on households.
But the Garnaut Review has suggested it should be divided between a larger number of groups. Candidates for help include: poor households needing help coping with price rises; communities built around the coal industry, such as Gippsland's Latrobe Valley and the Hunter Valley in NSW; research and development in clean energy technology; energy infrastructure to connect new developments to the main grid; public transport; helping cut emissions offshore; and heavy-polluting, trade-exposed industries.

(Editor: Bolding by The Age, wasn't me your honour, honest!)

[damian]

Yep, there are plenty of websites that have this info.... and plenty that do a very convincing job of presenting exactly the opposite too. You can't believe everything you read on the 'net. Problem is when a good deal of it is contradictory it's hard to know which one to not believe.

Peter

It's easy for me because I'm a mechanical/research engineer. I know a lot about climate physics, and I know the few people in Australia who know more than I do. Thermodynamics is my best subject.

"Climateology" isn't a discreet field. It encompasses climate physics, palentology, oceanography and even some biology. If you want to analyise how heat flows around the planet the examination is complex. If you consider the planet as a whole system it is easier to grasp. I've done a lot of reading, and was doing so long before this hippy panic ensued, on long term weather patterns. I didn't read the conculsions I studied the data sets, and having spent most of my life in research, even in areas not my specialty, I can still reduce data as well as anyone.

If you filter out the vested interests on both sides you'll find that:

The climate is moving, always has.

The recent changes are well within the noise.

It is extremely unlikely that man made pollution is making a signifigant contribution.

It is almost certian that even if we're causing it we can't change it.

Note I am in no way advocating pollution. Quite the opposite, I argue that we don't need science to know we shouldn't pollute. It is intuitive. What I object to is damaging people's lives to sate fear and panic based on propoganda.

[damian]

WOW.
snip...

Yes its gonna cost & damn right its gonna hurt like hell but the simple fact is the sooner we start the cheaper & easier it will be. If people hadn't used the very same excuses that u are sprouting right now 20 years ago then we wouldn't have the crisis we have now on our hands.
& we DO have a crisis. Don't doubt that for a moment.

OK so it turned into a min rant. If i offended anybody, well good. It means at least some of my rant got thru.

PS, In 20 years i hope like hell that all of u will be able to point at me & laugh & say 'see, told u you were wrong fool'.

Actually your absolutely wrong. Sorry.

30 years ago we had acid rain, our cities were covered with a thick brown haze and people were collpasing in the streets of some cities from respiritory problems. The fact is we have been addressing pollution for decades, centuries in fact.

The difference between your approach and mine is I believe we should make a consistent considered effort to modify our behaviour over time, giving people time to adjust. You are suggesting a panicked response to bad data.

[dazzler]

And you were doing so well till this little pearler;

It is almost certian that even if we're causing it we can't change it.

Mmmmmmmmmm.....maybe if we slowed up on the use of it then it may lessen the effect

[m2c1Iw]

And you were doing so well till this little pearler;



Mmmmmmmmmm.....maybe if we slowed up on the use of it then it may lessen the effect

Well that's the end of the forum then we are wasting electricity running our puters

[Big Shed]

Its not a carbon tax. You don't pay money to the government.

If a company is emitting more than a set level of carbon, they have to buy a permit from another company which is emitting less carbon. Since (coal generated) electricity and oil companies will emit more carbon, they will need to buy a permit, and so they will pass that cost on to consumers.

The only money the government can get is by auctioning the first set of permits, which could net up to $20 billion for the government. Its most likely the government will use that money to compensate those affected more than the average. If they compensated half of the poplation, you'd get $2000 each, as a one off payment.

Once that money is gone, there is no more income for the government.

According to Prof Garnaut the $20billion, or whatever the yearly figure will be, is definitely not a once off windfall to the government. It will be on an on going basis.

Also, only 50% of this windfall will be used to compensate households, 30% to compensate some industry and the remaining 20% to fund R&D in to alternative energy supplies.

So your assertion above is not correct.

[rhancock]

Still researching, but getting ready to stand corrected!

So far, I can find a report in which Garnaut says that $20 billion could be generated by an initial auction, and a reference to "multi billion dolllar" income for government after that. Still reading though...

I don't see anything terribly wrong in allocating some money to households directly, and some to industries who will be unfairly impacted, and some to stimulating R&D in new technologies.

[Big Shed]

From an article by Tim Colebatch in today's The Age:

Garnaut proposes that of the $20 billion or more to be raised every year from emission permits, 50% be directed at households, through a combination of tax cuts, higher welfare benefits and energy-efficient renovations of battlers' homes. The bulk of this would go to low-income households, where fuel bills take up twice the share of spending as in well-off homes.
Another 30% of emissions trading revenue would go to business, mainly to emission-intensive industries competing with developing countries. And 20% should be invested to research, develop and commercialise technology — such as the solar power station at Robinvale, and the demonstration "clean coal" plant announced this week for Loy Yang.


Ergo, your statement that the $20b was a once off was patently wrong.

[ptc]

Damian.
I agree with you.
I remember the Ice Age coming in the 50,s

[damian]

And you were doing so well till this little pearler;



Mmmmmmmmmm.....maybe if we slowed up on the use of it then it may lessen the effect

It's rather more complicated than that. First of all there isn't any really good data on how much CO2 is produced in any given timeframe (lets say per year), the data on how much we create is worse. Then there isn't any really good data on how self perpetuating the effect is of the existing raised levels. Finally what is known is that to have a really dramatic effect, say a measurable reduction in atmospheric CO2 over the next 100 years the reduction in human CO2 production would have to be dramatic. REALLY dramatic. When I say CO2 BTW I'm referring by inference to all the other so called greenhouse gases like methane.

Forget what I said before about water vapor being 95% of the insulating effect of the atmosphere, that's just an inconvenient truth. Lets jump the next mile high hurdle. I said above that the data is pretty ordinary, but what there is shows pretty clearly that the human contribution to CO2 etc is only a few percent of the total production. Most CO2 is actually produced by nature. We don't make 70%, or 30%, more like 5% of the total CO2 released into the atmosphere is human derived. The number is argued over endlessly these days depending on which faith system your promoting, but I invite you to find a credible source that suggests it's a BIG percentage of total CO2.

So for human CO2 reductions to change the direction of climate change, stall it or even slow the trend, the reduction in CO2 emissions by humans has to be utterly tremendous.

Now let me offer the essence of my objection to all this.

Suppose we decide to switch off all the carbon producing electricity generation tomorrow. Switch to carbon neutral generation. The number varies tremendously because of the specific replacement technology you employ, your distance from the generation source etc. but for a convenient rule of thumb lets assume everyone's power bill doubles.

I'm comfortable, so if my bill goes from $250/qtr to $500 it's a mild inconvenience. Maybe it's trivial for you also. But answer me this: are you prepared to do that to single income families ? to people who can only just make ends meet ? Are you prepared to uproot the main job source of whole communities ?

You might be surprised to know I am prepared to back that course. BUT! But only if I see a compelling case to damage those lives, to see my taxes and bills increase dramatically, to watch whole communities uprooted.

This is one example. If this is allowed to run out of control there will be multitude ramifications. Change is constant, inevitable, and people's lives get damaged all the time, but I'll be damned if I'm going to help that process when the catalyst is politics, vested interests and pressure to accept the "common belief" off the masses. The majority once believed the world is flat, doesn't mean they were right.

I'll say it again. I am not on any level advocating pollution, nor a contempt for our environment. The case for nursing our planet should be obvious, intuitive and need no scientific justification. The devil is in the details of how we administer that care.

2c.

Oh wait, I'm not finished yet.

Do you think solar cells are green ? In fact it takes more energy to create them than they can produce in their working lives. Trains ? Rubbery number but for a rule of thumb if there are less than 50 people per carriage on an EMU your making more CO2 than 1.4 people per car to transport them per mile/km whatever. Hydroelectricity ? a holistic analysis I read years ago revealed more greenhouse gases released by damming and tapping the river than a coal fired plant. Hybrid cars ? The total pollution load of a car incorporate the pollution in manufacture as well as disposal, not just running costs. Amusingly you can build a model that shows a Bentley produces a smaller environmental footprint than a Prius.

And finally (no really this time) it never ceases to amaze me that most of my hippie greenie friends live as far away from the environment as they can. Inner city suburbs. I live on Brisbane's rural outskirts and am confronted my the reality of nature every time I step outside. It astounds me that these people can believe we "rednecks" want to destroy the very natural environment we choose to live in and that people who only see it on the occasional holiday clearly know better than us how it should be managed.

Life....

[dazzler]

HI Damien

My little stir is that frequently we like to make statements bout the other side being wrong and post something just as wrong.

It is not an us and them arguement. I dont sit in either camp, they being man made climate change will destroy us all OR keep on burning baby and she'll be right. What concerns me with regard to carbon is the fact that carbon has an atmospheric life of a minimum 50 years to a max 200years. Our use of fossil fuels is accelerating and will continue given the expected increase in population. The carbon % in the atmosphere is also growing. You are correct that man made carbon is a small percentage of the total released into the atmoshphere, some suggest about 4% of the total at the moment. Here is the prob. If thats correct, and we continue to add to this percentage, then it becomes 5%, 6% 7% ETC and that is not natural.

So if what we put up there lasts for a min of 50 years then by the middle of this century all the oil/coal/gas we burn around the world goes up there and stays there. As of 2005 we were using 83,000,000 barrells of oil a day. So all thats going up there and that accounts for less than 30% of the fossil fuels we use. Which means, if I have my maths right, that yearly we are using over 30billion barrells. So between now and 2058, even if we stayed at 2005 levels, we would have put the carbon from 1,500 billion barrels of oil into the atmosphere a year. And thats just a third of what we are putting up there.

I am no scientist but have a reasonable IQ. I can think for myself and I dont think it can be helpful to do that to our one and only living place. Add in the fact that carbon has ppm% have greatly increased since the industrial revolution I begin to worry a little more.

This is where I sit. Man is effecting the world in ways that we (or our children) may very well pay harshly for. The problems are far worse than climate change.

My view is a holistic one. The world is a bubble. We are a small part of life in the bubble but impact it in ways that have never occurred before. We are overpopulating, over using the worlds resources and damaging the balance. The earths population is dependant on fertilizer from petrochemicals to provide enough food to feed us. What happens when this is no longer available, mass starvation?

And this is why we ARE being conned by our govts. They will make small changes to shut up the GREENIES at the expense of the world making the serious and very hard decision to move the world to a sustainable footing.

What to do and how that could occur is beyond me.

[Durdge39]

Here's my thoughts.

Since the creation of the Earth, the volcanic activity on the planet has changed the climate from an acidic blend of gases into a relatively balanced system that can support life, if I'm right, then that's quite a climate change right there.

I think we can all agree that there has been dramatic changes in the earth's surface/ambient/whatever temperature in the past (namely the ice ages). So, we can safely assume that the climate changes whether or not we have our lean mean polluting machine butts on the planet or not.

Now, we have been screwing around with forests, the environment and the atmosphere since we got past the stone age. But in the last, 100 years or so, we've really pumped out the nasty crap. HOWEVER, in 100 years of sending this gunk skywards, without even including before it, the temperature has changed what? A couple of degrees.

Now let's think, that means we need to pump out the same amount of stuff for the next 100 years to keep this oh so horrid disaster from happening.
Ever stop to think that fossil fuels are only estimated to last a lot less than that, and once it's gone, it's gone. And people aren't going to start foresting wood to make electricity.

Also, because of this depletion of raw materials, costs will inevitably rise, and either force people to rely more on people power, or find an alternative.

And that alternative will come in long before fuels run out. Less than 20 years ago, computers could barely handle graphics to a screen, now, I have something on my desk that can do 9.6 billion processes in a second.

Things like hydrogen fuel cells are already moving out of their infancy, and my bet is that the economy will drive these technologies to blossom, and they will essentially take over, even if it's 20 years away, we might devastate our environment by what? 0.1 of a degree?

And for all those who see this as a CRISIS, have you walked outside and honestly thought "my gosh, it is most certainly 2 degrees hotter on average today than it was 30 years ago"?

We are not ready to drastically reduce emissions, and make peoples pocket and life standards suffer, but we will get there, and the apocalypse isn't going to come in that time.