I think John Quiggin will soon be posting an article about the same topic, and that will be worth reading too.
Update: and if you want complete lack of nuance from someone who used to take climate change seriously, but then decided to culture war instead, have a look at angry man Mark Latham -
Update 2: Gee, just how much of the new year am I going to have to spend asking "whatever happened to Jason Soon?". Clearly, it would seem he doesn't think Australia's enthusiasm to sell coal overseas is an issue, because he's stuck on saying "1.5% of global emissions, nothing we do makes any difference". But take these comments from the Fickling thread about how our involvement in emissions is much bigger than the 1.3% often quoted by Scotty From Marketing:
If Australia's fossil fuel imports, containing an estimated 135.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, are netted off, Australia's share of the global emissions from fossil fuel combustion falls from roughly 4.8 per cent to roughly 4.4 per cent, while Australia's share of total emissions falls approximately from 3.6 per cent to 3.3 per cent.Update 3: Warwick McKibbin tweets today:
Update 4: something good to come out of this? Young Liberals with the "radical" idea of believing scientists unreservedly, and more aggressively tackling emissions?:
In early December, delegates representing Young Liberal branches across the state voted overwhelmingly in approval of a motion recognising the reality of climate change and the need for action.They're going to have to wait to outlive some of the fogeys still in Parliament, though.
The NSW Liberal party’s youth wing recognises this a particularly important issue facing our generation, as our generation will have to face the risks brought about by climate change.
27 comments:
Mark Latham is completely correct. And we see it in any comment on Quiggins blog or this blog by a leftist. Every leftist is playing down real solutions and upholding fake solutions. Any time fires aren't actually burning you will see them opposing fuel reduction.
Graeme, your "real" solution part involves you being chief goat herder of, I dunno, a roaming herd of a million goats to keep down scrub and leaf litter in forests and national parks.
It's an interesting "make work" idea for yourself, and makes me giggle, but doesn't convince me I should you take you seriously.
It is thermal coal that could and should take a hit. cokeing coal is needed still for steel. I would pore fer pepsi coal but that is me
There you go. You are against fuel reduction with goats by your own admission.
When the fires aren't upon us you will be against fuel reduction with fire. You are against land hydration. In your persona as akarog you even tried to confuse people about land hydration. You are against fuel reduction with planned grazing. You are against fuel reduction in all its forms. And its not just you. Its the same with all the left. Show them a fire and they will want to deny us affordable energy.
So this a leftist created problem. These are leftist created fires. Over at Quiggins any sane talk by Harry Clarke is shot down immediately by the mindset that has created these fires in the first place.
Trying to control fuel buildup is not a make-work scheme. Fuel control is necessary and indeed essential work as we have seen in these leftist fires. So this back-burning, its not a make-work scheme. Any other fuel reduction plans are not makework schemes. They are absolutely essential.
Every cell in your body wants to make this fire problem worse. Every nerve in your being wants to deny us cheap energy. These are leftist created problems.
Take you update, it continues your theme of fake solutions for the fires. We might want to export less coal. But exporting less coal won't stop the leftist fires. Because it won't reduce the fuel buildup. Of course we want to reduce the fuel buildup to reduce the power of the fires. But not a leftist. A leftist doesn't want to do any of these things.
We can go over this entire blog. Every word you've said about fires is an attempt to make the fires worse. Every word is an attempt to focus attention away from fuel reduction. There is no exception in the entirety of this blog. These are leftist created fires. There is no doubt about this any more. Even when you leftists try and deny this, you give yourselves away by running down and diminishing fuel control.
There are thousands of coal fired power plants throughout the world and hundreds more being built. If we don't sell the coal someone else will and our coal is cleaner than most other reserves. If the other coal is burnt total emissions will rise. So what will be achieved except a paper figure if we stop selling coal?
John, I tend towards caution on claims about the number of coal fired power plants being built, as it is something that is readily prone to being used in the service in the interests of denialism/do-nothingism. I have read some comments on Twitter to this effect, but have not spent the time to see how much "truth" there is to the misinformation claims. (I think some reputable cites out there list credible figures; but again, without knowing if some are replacing older power plants, and may end up being more efficient, and therefore not as bad as it could be, is the sort of detail you need to know to understand the full import of their construction.)
The issue of our coal being cleaner is not totally irrelevant to the morality of selling it, but again, it's not a simple issue. Making a nation stick to using their own, crappier coal, may in the long run move them towards going away from coal completely, for example.
Quiggin points out that the leftist fires of 2019 will really mean a lot more deaths through particulate inhalation. So where is it that planned grazing isn't part of the solution?
This leftist dishonesty treachery and lunacy has to stop. Obviously at the moment most of the fuel reduction has to come from burning. But the more we do it from graving the better off we are. From a food and health perspective. So these leftist plans to cause more fire cannot be more unacceptable.
Did you find any evidence for CO2 warming yet Steve? No you haven't. I thought I'd found a scintilla, a tiny shade of CO2 warming in the satellite data just in the last few years. It turns out that your mob of fire-starters had merely tilted the graph. They rigged the figures again.
Look at that. These leftist fire-starters wanting all these schemes to subsidise bankers. By their own admission they conspire to have a "carbon price" to give more money to bankers, rather than just pushing up the royalties. Their conspiracies to hurt the rest of us never end.
They caused our fires and now they push for more money to go to banking welfare queens of a certain ethnic group.
Steve there are plenty of coal fired power stations being built. There is also distinct shift towards renewables because it is now often more cost effective than a coal fired plant. The two are not mutually exclusive, I think many countries are having two way bets.
Economics and morality don't work. Never have never will. Just about everything we buy is from China where the production workers are on low wages with no protection, no unemployment insurance, no OH&S. I'm not going down the morality path because all of us are taking advantage of people being exploited not only in China but in many other developing nations.
Even if Australia were to transition from coal it would take decades. We're an idiot country that has failed to recognise that if we don't invest in new technologies and start ups the best we'll ever do is dug stuff up out of the ground. The agricultural and mining sectors demonstrate world class innovation but in every other field we are pathetic. People would rather invest in property which is a dead weight loss in regard to enhancing productivity and innovation. By comparison consider Sweden. Half our population, makes a first class 4++gen fighter aircraft being sold all around the world, designs and builds excellent conventional submarines, has a very low corporate tax rate but a very high personal tax rate, universal health care, high standards of happiness and health, yet has few natural resource advantages than Australia. We are a stupid country and until we are honest about our failure to innovate, our failure to go our own way(as Sweden did), and that we have lazily leaned on natural resources and property investment for economic security we will remain a stupid country.
McKibbin is the real deal
"Economics and morality don't work. Never have never will."
Not sure what that means, really. I think we all agree that economics should not overrule morality - otherwise the South of America might still be chugging away with cheaper agricultural exports due to slavery.
At least some large Western corporations using Chinese factory labour (or Indian or Bangladeshi labour) have successfully taken customer concerns into account to insist on improvements to work conditions. It's an ongoing fight, but there must be some success stories of workers getting a better deal due to Western concerns that it is wrong to exploit foreign workers. That's a moral decision.
Concern with climate change is a moral issue too - and economists role should be to work out the best ways that climate change limitations can best be reached, taking into account various factors, such as the interest of developing countries to have adequate energy for increasing their general wealth too.
Just to say "economics and morality don't mix" is one of those non-nuance declarations of the type Jason increasing makes as part of his neo-Conservative re-birth and get up my nose somewhat (well, a lot actually.)
"There is also distinct shift towards renewables because it is now often more cost effective than a coal fired plant. "
This has to be considered pure propaganda until such time as they drive electricity prices down. Maybe thats what they say when they arrive in the box from China. Wimberley over at Quiggins always makes these claims and everyone there believes them. But until they can do the job unsubsidised this has to be considered marketing material only.
Plus no renewable has been shown to be a substitute for hydro-carbons. They represent hydrocarbon consumption. Since they are so ridiculously short-lived and take such a fantastic amount of energy to produce.
The arsonist Steve is at it again over at Quiggins.
"akarog says:
January 2, 2020 at 7:12 pm
Some of the armchair chatterers have blamed greenies for stopping back burning. This theory is no longer valid, there are fires reigniting in areas just burnt.
These are extraordinary conditions demanding a better than ordinary response."
He misses no chance at all to try and set us up for more and more fires. An obsessive firestarter. It demonstrates more than ever how powerfully these people have gotten in the way of fuel reduction AND STILL WISH TO. They simply cannot help themselves.
This has to be considered pure propaganda until such time as they drive electricity prices down.
It's happening, there is no doubt the use of renewables has increased. My "bet both ways" comment was in reference to governments also building many power stations to secure baseload. It may even be the case that developing nations are investing in renewables because the IMF, World Bank, and UN, and countries that make renewables are willing to offer very cheap loans for those investments but will not finances coal fired power stations.
The use of renewables has increased through subsidies. This is subsidy harvesting. So far they have caused electricity price increases whenever they have been tried. If it was just us I couldn't make that call. But its everywhere. So don't believe the advertising. Until we get the liquid metal batteries they may be an energy source but they ought not be a grid energy source.
But yeah the Chinese keep putting up the coal stations. They are the recipients of the subsidies so they are doing well out of leftist treachery.
After the usual argument over at Quiggins where everyone does everything they can to argue against fuel reduction finally we got a reasonable response from one fellow:
Poselequestion says:
January 3, 2020 at 10:26 am
NW Tablelands Eucalypt forest that had been subjected to “hazard reduction” 6 weeks previously burned like a furnace late last year. The reason is simple, the trees were already stressed from years of below normal rainfall and had created abnormal amounts of leaf drop and litter. The burn went through and further stressed the trees and new litter was created. The following fire was largely in the treetops, stressed trees, low humidity, high temperatures and gale force winds. The Mayor of Glen Innes has documented this from close up, the fire burnt her property. These fires are not the Dorathea McKellar norm, they are unprecedented in every way and are created by unprecedented climatic conditions.
Furthermore it is a waste of time and effort, in many ways pathetic, to get Morrison and his whole cohort to acknowledge this.
The problem is that for months I had been pushing the idea of land hydration via swales. The global warming crowd simply is not interested. So even when they say something sensible its just cover for more distraction to the global warming jibber. Basically these are traitors. They want the fires. This becomes clear after awhile even if you assume good motives early on.
If Poselequestion is correct and supposing his point is a substantial one, then the fuel reduction through burning has to be supplemented with land hydration with swales, logging some areas and planned grazing. Pretty much what I've been claiming from the start. Not just burning. Not just fuel reduction. The left is amazing how they will jump from foot to foot in denial.
John,
Only when it is owned by the government is baseload attractive. Now we have the private sector owning the sector dispatchable not baseload id the preferred method.
The subsidy was a second best method to the price on carbon which was needed to obviate the fossil fuel negative externalities
We should be a word leader bot for the reason outlined by McKibbin but also because os the bushfires have shown we have a lot to lose if nothing occurs.
"The subsidy was a second best method to the price on carbon which was needed to obviate the fossil fuel negative externalities"
Complete bullshit. Subsidies are always a fail. Zero Interest loans may have made a valid impact. CO2 is a positive externality. And we could reduce banker overhead with higher royalties. You leftists are so brain dead you cannot even achieve your own unworthy goals. No evidence exists that any of these subsidies have lead to even one kilo less of CO2 going into the air. They are just a subsidy to the Chinese and their coal use.
Our best guess would have to be that these subsidies have created energy sinks, leading to greater CO2 output and less effective energy consumption.
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