"The Anti-Carbon Virus"

Neither Kevin Rudd nor PM Julia are fit persons to be Prime Minister. Both politicians are infected with the anti-carbon virus and have enacted economically damaging legislation based on the erroneous idea that carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere constitute "pollution".

Tomorrow's Caucus poll will it seems support the continuation of PM Julia who appears to have some 2/3 of the vote. Kevin Rudd will be confined to the back bench. Both politicians are mad as hatters and dangerous to the well being of Australia. Very soon there will come the opportunity for a successful vote of no confidence in this awful Labor Government and a Federal Election will be called. The Australian people have in aggregate the sense to put out of action for a very long time the pollies Rudd, Julia, Swan, Combet, and Wong who have a bizarre understanding of climate change and carbon chemistry.

A new National-Liberal Coalition Federal Government will have the immediate task of dismantling Labor's anti-carbon legislation. The "Carbon Tax" must go immediately which is an insult to the most important element in the Periodic Table and is the basis of all life forms. How can it be a pollutant? These pollies are quite mad and are infected by the anti-carbon virus.

The Renewable Energy Target (RET) legislation must go, or made ineffectual by changing the target date from 2020 to the year 2200. This would give us a leisurely 200 years to develop new technology whilst still utilizing our enormous coal resources to generate electricity and later liquid HC fuels. The idea of moving the country to a low carbon economy must be scrapped for reason that it is a complete nonsense based on demonizing the element carbon for political purposes.

Use of fossil fuels is compatible with having a healthy environment and a prosperous economy for the next few hundred years at least. See various Helium articles on the subject:
Fossil fuels and the Environment
Climate change and global warming: What we should do about it

Andrew Bolt reports on demise of Rudd's Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute fiasco.

Extract from the Bolt Report 15 Feb 2012
Quote; "In 2008, the Rudd Government unveiled a typically grandiose plan to fight global warming, with spending of Ruddish dimensions:

Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson AM MP, has announced four projects which will move to the next stage of assessment in the $2 billion Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Flagships Program… The $2 billion CCS Flagships Program was announced in the 2009-10 Budget and is part of the Australian Government’s $4.5 billion Clean Energy Initiative.

One of those four projects:

* ZeroGen power plant project west of Gladstone in Queensland, generating 400 MWe and aiming to store up to 2.0 mega tonnes of CO2 per annum;

In 2011, ZeroGen collapsed:

Documents filed with ASIC this month show the company, which had proposed a “world-first” $4 billion clean coal power plant storing carbon emissions underground, is under external administration after a liquidator was appointed on October 11…

The Opposition yesterday demanded an inquiry into what they claim is a bungled project after the Commonwealth contributed almost $52 million before recently winning a refund and limiting its losses to about $43 million." unquote.

Query by Allano: When will our pollies acknowledge that CO2 is NOT a pollutant but an essential and valuable component of the atmosphere? It follows that the idea of moving to a low carbon economy is crazy and having legislated targets to achieve it are a nonsense best got rid of. The RET bill of targeting 5% energy from renewable sources by year 2020 must be negated, easily done by changing the date to year 2200. This gives us 200 years to develop the technology.

"No Easy Choices: Which Way Australia's Energy Future?"

So titled is the Grattan Institute's latest Energy Report (6th Feb 2012) presented to Government today by Tony Wood, the program director. It concludes that we must quickly change the way electricity is generated in order to meet the Commonwealth's goal of reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 2000 levels by 2050. The possible role of technologies that generate electricity with near-zero emissions (viz., wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, carbon capture and storage, and bio-energy) is reviewed.

The underlying supposition is that the introduction of a price on carbon (CO2) emissions by the Labor Government will move investment towards renewable energy production, particularly wind and solar and away from coal, or to coal with the costly addition of carbon capture and storage. The conclusion of report is a nonsense since it is based on the false idea that carbon dioxide is an atmospheric pollutant and that it is sensible to proceed to a costly low carbon economy. The idea of actually burying CO2 emissions is bizarre since it is essential for growth of the biosphere; the plants and trees love it! Any Federal legislation dealing with CO2 emissions and the Carbon Tax must be revoked. Our future prosperity is dependent on sensibly using our vast resources of coal, gas and uranium, NOT with costly and intermittent wind and solar energy.

Tonight on 7.00 TV News we see Tony Wood explaining the details of his new report and saying that "Climate change is real" (ditto Tony Windsor interview). Really! Climate change is what makes the Earth a dynamic planet and it has been thus so for 4.5 billion years. Perhaps all pollies and members of the Grattan Institute should do and pass an elementary course in Geology?

Where to go the flood waters?

The media always highlights the environmentalists concern about lack of water for the Murray River and how it is essential to steal more water off the irrigators for "environmental flows" to maintain an idealistic "healthy river". So far not a squeak about the enormous amount of flood waters presently building up in the headwaters of the Murray-Darling Basin and what all to do about it.

Today we learn that at St George, Queensland, hometown of Barnaby Joyce, the Balonne River has risen to a record 14 metres and is expected to peak at 15 metres on Wednesday. These flood waters are heading south west to the town of Burke which is located on the Darling River. The people of Moree, NSW, are recovering from record flooding of the Gwydir River whose waters eventually reach Burke and flow southward to the Murray River at Wentworth on the Victoria border, and thence to Renmark in South Australia.

These flood waters are God's gift to Australia. Logically one would expect that downstream in NSW, VIC, SA that water users (farmers, town suppliers) would be extracting, using and storing as much river water as possible before the flood waters arrive in a few weeks time. I wonder what the latest unreleased MDBasin Plan has to say about it all, since this action is of great importance to the future prosperity of the Basin, which is Australia's major food bowl.

"Healthy River" model not acceptable for MDBasin Plan

The "Healthy River" Model of the Murray should be consigned to the dustbin. It is promoted by Don Henry, CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation, as the solution to the problem of water allocation for the Murray Darling Basin. "Healthy river" is spin terminology. It has limited reality. It is more like simplistic eco-religious bunkum.

The objective of the MDBasin plan we are told is to have a "healthy river", says Don Henry. However, alternative objectives must be considered and priorities made when there are multiple objectives. Residents of the region should demand the major objective be "to maximize the agricultural production of the basin", which is already the major food bowl of Australia.

The healthy river idea is concerned with reducing draw-offs by irrigators by 3000 GL for environmental flows, which are supposed to flow into the Lower Lakes (viz., Lakes Alexandrina and Albert) so as to keep them fresh water and then flow out at the ocean mouth. Sounds wonderful, but the idea is not feasible in Australia which has extreme climatic conditions that vary from decade to decade. Such model healthy rivers may be found in the UK or NZ where there is plentiful rainfall year in and year out. .

Australia is different. We have the talent to study the system in all its complexity. First the geography ... what is the MDBasin? Does it include the Lower Lakes? How can a "river" be a "lake" ? A river is a river. A lake is a lake, by definition. The Lower Lakes are not a river but are (were) a sea water estuary that periodically gets flooded with fresh water. A study of the geological system reveals this to have been the case for the past 10,000 years. Prior to that during the last ice age the sea level was ca 120 meters lower and the Lower Lakes did not exist.

We have found out that in times of drought it has not been possible to maintain stable fresh water levels in the Lower Lakes from "environmental flows". The idea is crazy when there is an unlimited supply of sea water available from the Great Southern Ocean which unfortunately is kept out by the Barrages built at the ocean side of the lakes. Sea water floats your boat just as well or better than fresh water, and has a more plentiful supply of edible fish.

Any future MDBasin Plan must consider the merits of a sustainable sea water estuary system. This can be achieved by building Lock Zero at the lower end of the Murray (near Tailem Bend) to control the out flow of fresh water into the lakes. The whole Lower Lakes region including the Barrages needs redesigning by hydro-engineers to maximize its potential for the benefit of the community. More on this later. Allano