'The Australian government claims that next month's tax on carbon dioxide cannot be blamed for today's soaring costs of living.
This tax, however, is just their latest assault in the decades-long war on carbon that is already inflating the cost of everything.
For at least a decade, power companies have been obliged to source 10-15% of their power at inflated prices from costly and unreliable sources like wind and solar. And for every wind or solar plant built, a duplicate backup gas facility is needed, increasing the demand and price for backup gas, hitting other gas consumers. Moreover, the threat of more carbon taxes has deterred the construction of efficient new coal-burning power plants. Rising electricity costs feed into the cost of everything from public transport to building materials.
The climatists are also responsible for numerous policies pushing up the price of food. These include the ethanol/biofuel madness, the restrictions on the fishing industry, the Kyoto scrub clearing bans, the spread of carbon-credit forests over farming and grazing land, the never ending war on irrigators, and the virtual ban on building new water-supply dams.
Then we have all the hidden costs of the climate industry. Thousands of our smartest graduates are lured into well-paid dead-end desk jobs in the overheads industry devoted to climate red tape, while real entrepreneurs are unable to find workers to develop our continent of under-utilised resources. There is an overpaid bureaucracy devoted to climate "research", alternate energy, international junkets, Kyoto give-aways, and administration, auditing, enforcement, accounting, law and propaganda for their empire of climate taxes and subsidies.
Finally we have income tax implications from all the money being flung around to bribe people to accept their carbon tax? Every Australian will get these bills somewhere, sometime. And who pays for the hundreds of millions poured down subsidy rat-holes like carbon capture, solar panels, pink bats and the IPCC?
Australia's crippling carbon tax is but the latest symptom of the costly Climate Madness infecting the well-fed elite of the western world.
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Text from Viv Forbes, photograph from Jennifer Marohasy taken near Lithgow, NSW
I've been in an unpleasant debate with the so called academics who blog at "The Conversation". One Peter Ormonde, claims he is a farmer and an economist. He's also admitted he's a catastrophist. "It's too late" - we're all gonna die.
In answer to one of his debating points - about sea levels - I provided a detailed answer with many useful references. I'll post my comment below in case others here find some of the information and links useful.
"Peter Ormonde,
What period are you asking about, and where? The land goes up and down. There are many places where sea level was higher and many where lower at any given time.
For earlier periods the maps here http://www.scotese.com/earth.htm show where sea were and where continents were in the past. Click on each period listed on the left:
The start of your second paragraph seems arrogant to me. It is also naive. The fact we weren’t here is irrelevant. We know life thrives when warmer and struggles when colder. We know humans struggles in cold times and thrived in warm times. Your comment is not about science. It is emotional, scaremongering talk.
Do you realise that only 0.1% of world population and 0.1% of world production is below 1 m elevation? http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf Figure 7-5, p145.
Figure 3 here http://www.springerlink.com/content/g02124153m05410k/fulltext.pdf shows the total population and assets exposed to extreme sea level rise is effectively zero for Australiasia.
The DCCEE estimates are massive exaggerations and simply scaremongering as I’ve highlighted here: http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2012/06/05/conservatives-who-think-seriously-about-the-planet/#comment-112290
Do you realise there is no persuasive evidence of catastrophic consequences of AGW? Nordhaus (2012) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2011.01544.x/full says “Not so dismal conclusions” and “We conclude that a loaded gun of strong tail dominance has not been discovered to date.” I.e., not so scary after all, and not dangerous or catastrophic.
What do you know about the estimated damage costs of sea level rise? Anthoff, Nichols and Tol (2010) “The economic impact of substantial sea-level change” http://www.springerlink.com/content/851112j434t26502/fulltext.pdf
estimates the damage costs, for the whole world, for a 1 m sea level rise would be about $1 trillion (Figure 2). This is present value using a discount rate of about 2% (I think), being the sum of 1% ‘pure rate of time preference’ and (my rough estimate) 1% per capita growth rate of consumption (average for the world for the period 2005 to 2100) (see text and equation (6), p325).
Let us compare this $1 trillion estimated damage cost for a 1 m sea level rise with world cumulative GDP from 2005 to 2100 (the same time period). First let’s calculate it without discounting, then we’ll discount. I’ll assume a world GDP growth rate of 3% pa and use constant 2011 dollars (standard practice).
World GDP in 2011, according to IMF was $79 trillion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
World GDP in 2100, using 3% GDP growth rate, would be $1,095 trillion
Cumulative world GDP for 2005 to 2100 would be $35,405 trillion
If I apply a discount rate of 2%, the present value is $10,249 trillion
I may have the discount rate wrong. Nordhaus (2007) in DICE model used a discount rate of 5.5%
If I apply discount rate of 5.5% pa, the present value is $2,377 trillion.
The estimated damage cost of $1 trillion for a 1 m sea level rise over a century, is negligible compared with the world GDP of $10,249 trillion (or even compared with $2,377 at 5.5% discount rate).
I conclude: $1 trillion total cost to the whole world, spread over 95 years is absolutely trivial.
Anthoff, Nichols and Tol (2010) language is more cautions; they state (p325):
“While the damages from sea-level rise are substantial, they are small compared to the
total economy, provided that coastal protection is built. This remains true for the largest 2-m rise scenario.
I’d welcome corrections.
Summary message: Cooling would be really catastrophic. Warming would not be catastrophic. Cooling is the real risk. Therefore, there is no justification for massively costly mitigation policies. Rational policy is adaptation to whatever happens, not mitigation. Furthermore, if you want mitigation then convince the loony Greens and socialists/progressives to get out of the way and stop blocking economically rational solutions."
https://theconversation.edu.au/why-the-global-environmental-movement-is-failing-7819
This is one of the most informative posts to date about this lunacy of a Tax.
"$390 billon is ten times the cost of the NBN and we get absolutely sweet FA for it." Yes, in respect of the CO2 tax and the NBN.
And of course, if the lights go out, the idea of a cost tends to fall by the wayside.