July 9, 2012
Julia Gillard’s carbon tax in action!
From news.com.au
AN apology has been issued to a grieving family by a cemetery which told them they were being charged a $55 carbon tax to bury a relative. …..
The family claimed that the cemetery slapped them with a $55 carbon tax bill for burying a relative – saying “even the dead don’t escape the carbon tax” – just days after the tax was introduced.
The outraged family complained to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, describing it as a “tax on the dying”.
Erica Maliki said the Melbourne cemetery told her and two other relatives that a $55 charge would be applied to her father-in-law’s burial due to the carbon tax. …..
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said it would be “reprehensible” if any cemetery took advantage of grieving families by misleading them over funeral expenses.
It comes as three companies were reprimanded by the consumer watchdog for cashing in on the carbon tax.
The ACCC said that it was investigating solar panel suppliers
Polaris Solar and ACT Renewable Energy for providing false information on the cost impacts of the tax, while bakery chain Brumby’s was caught advising outlets to raise prices and blame the carbon tax.
While cemeteries are not liable entities under the carbon tax, the funeral industry has previously warned of indirect price rises for both burials as well as cremations through higher energy prices and councils passing on their carbon tax costs.
And as ACM points out:
In any event, technically, burial is carbon sequestration. If it had been a cremation, however…
Tags: Australia, Carbon tax
Posted in Alarmism, Politics, Trivia | Comments Off on “Even the dead don’t escape the carbon tax”
July 9, 2012
Recovery of gas and oil from shale is more than just a game changer – it is a mind-changer. The recoverability of oil and gas from shale postpones “peak oil” and “peak gas” indefinitely. For 3 decades we have suffered from the rampant pessimism of the alarmists and the coercive politics of fear. A change of mind-set from pessimistic environmentalism and backward-looking conservationism is called for. A shift of attitude from the joyless “glass half-empty and we are doomed” to the entrepreneurial “glass half-full but can be filled” is over-due.
Resource depletion with usage is a trivial truth – though matter at the elemental level is never destroyed by human use. However utilisation of resources does alter the composition and concentration of materials remaining available. But every alarmist and doom-sayer who has ever lived and has forecast impending catastrophe has been proven spectacularly wrong. Human ingenuity has faced every challenge and trumped the doom-sayers – every time.
The pictures say it all:
The scope of the US oil shale resource
The scope of the US oil shale resource
Related: “Peak Oil” hypothesis is following “Peak Gas” into oblivion
Moving peaks
Tags: "Peak" gas, Business, Energy, oil shale, Peak oil, Resource depletion
Posted in Alarmism, Conservation, Development, Energy, Environment, Gas, Oil, Politics | Comments Off on As with peak gas, peak oil and rampant pessimism need to be postponed
July 6, 2012
I don’t believe in subsidies.
In over 30 years in power generation I have yet to see a convincing case of public subsidies in the market place actually helping to commercialise new technologies. I have seen cases where Government support at the research stage has helped to bring new areas into focus and which has eventually led to commercially driven investments which have deployed the technology. But temporarily distorting the market place by means of public subsidy is unsustainable and does not – in itself – help to make a new technology commercially viable. In fact an artificially distorted market in favour of a new technology only helps to cuccoon and insulate it such that there is no incentive left to make it competitive. Subsidies shift the focus from technology development to subsidy maximisation and when subsidies begin to be removed all creativity is wasted on prolonging subsidies.
The case of subsiding the market place for the deployment of renewable energy is a case in point. Developing technology for wind and solar power is desirable but distorting the market place to deploy wind and solar is just plain stupid and unsustainable.
1. Der Spiegel
Solar subsidies cost German consumers billions of dollars a year and are widely regarded as inefficient. Even environmentalists are concerned that Berlin’s focus on solar comes at the detriment of other renewables. But the solar industry has a powerful lobby, and politicians have proven powerless to resist.
…… A new study by Georg Erdmann, professor of energy systems at Berlin’s Technical University, reveals just how far Germany’s current center-right governing coalition — made up of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU and the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) — has strayed from its own self-imposed goals. Erdmann has calculated the effects that the latest changes to the EEG will have between now and 2030. He believes that subsidies for renewable energy, including an expansion of the power grid, will saddle energy consumers with costs well over €300 billion ($377 billion). ….
2. BBC News
Fight on for wind power subsidies
Wind power firms warn they may take the government to court if they get caught in a political row over subsidies. After conducting technical studies, the energy department proposed a subsidy cut of 10% for power from onshore wind. But the chancellor is under pressure from back-benchers to scrap subsidies, and is said to favour a 25% cut.
The industry body, Renewable UK, says it may take legal action if the government makes a decision that overrides its own technical evidence. …
3. GWPF / IVN
California’s Green Suicide
New economic impact study on California’s Global Warming Solutions Act finds that the average California family will end up paying an additional $2,500 annually by 2020. In addition, the state is expected to lose an additional 262,000 jobs, 5.6 percent of the gross state product, and a whopping $7.4 billion through decreased annual state and local tax revenues as a result.
The California Manufacturers and Technology Association released a new report last week that suggests costs associated with AB 32 may be a lot higher than previously estimated. AB 32, otherwise known as the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, was signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger- propelling California to the forefront in the fight against global warming. Successful passage of the law effectively turned the state into one of the most stringent regulators of green house gas emissions in the nation and globally. Some would argue that the move all but eliminated California’s competitive edge in today’s market. ……
Tags: Energy, Renewable energy, Solar power, subsidies, technology commercialisation, wind power
Posted in Business, Energy, Politics, Renewable Energy, Technology | 1 Comment »
July 3, 2012
It is not only scientists in social psychology who indulge in fraud. Anthropology for example has had its share of frauds. While corporations – such as Glaxo Smith Kline– can be held liable and sanctioned for fraud, it is very rare for individual academics who fake data in pursuit of their own agendas to be held liable. Why cannot a concept of tort or “product liability”apply to scientists? The members of the medical profession who aided and abetted GSK are unlikely to face any sanctions. But the recent scandals of social psychologists faking data to show statistical correlations between sets of propositions and then inferring causal relationships have demonstrated two things which I think apply in many more so-called “scientific” disciplines than just social psychology. :
- The ease with which sampled data can be faked or cherry picked by workers from reputed institutions to show apparent correlations can then be provided a stamp of authority through the publication of “peer-reviewed” papers, and
- that there is a need to return to the scientific method of focusing on propositions that are falsifiable and to avoid the temptation of concluding that any positive statistical correlation provides proof of a causal relationship.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: academic misconduct, climate science, Diederik Stapel, Smeesters, Social psychology
Posted in Academic misconduct, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Social psychology falls from grace
June 29, 2012
Sami flag
Just back from our “Midsommar” tour of Northern Sweden. A fascinating 3,500km trip and I learned a little more about the Sami peoples and their history. I had not known how coercive and oppressive it had once been in Sweden when the Sami religion and language(s) were banned. There are some 80,000 Samis today ranging across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
Wikipedia
….. In 1913-1920, the Swedish race-segregation politic created a race biological institute that collected research material from living people, graves, and sterilized Sami women. ……
The strongest pressure took place from around 1900 to 1940, when Norway invested considerable money and effort to wipe out Sami culture. Notably, anyone who wanted to buy or lease state lands for agriculture in Finnmark had to prove knowledge of the Norwegian language and had to register with a Norwegian name. This and similar actions in Scandinavian countries, e.g., the sterilization of Sami women by Swedish authorities, are debated to be an act of ethnic cleansing, and perhaps a genocide.
We did not have too much rain but it was never very warm. Reindeer had calved (a little late this year) and the Sami were busy marking the new calves. While we saw many reindeer we only saw one moose (a large male) munching by the roadside but we were travelling too fast to get any good pictures. Midsommar itself was a very traditional Swedish experience in Sundborn.
Raising the Midsommar pole in Sundborn June 2012
June has been a cool month throughout Sweden (the coldest June in 92 years):
Temperatures have remained below average for the month, at just 13.3 degrees Celsius, compared with the usual 15.2 degrees, SMHI said.
For the month of June, Stockholm usually has an average of 5.3 days with temperatures above 25 degrees, but this year the high for the month was just 21.6 degrees.
That is only the second time since 1920 that the temperature has failed to hit 25 degrees in June in Sweden.
Tags: Sami, Sami peoples, Sundborn, Sweden
Posted in Sweden, Trivia | Comments Off on On tour during coldest June in Sweden in 92 years
June 21, 2012
A week away from blogging as we travel north through the hinterland and into the Arctic Circle for a Swedish Midsommar! With the midnight sun and consequent shortage of sleep I suspect I shall not be blogging much.
Tags: Arctic Circle, Midsummer, Sweden
Posted in Sweden, Trivia | Comments Off on Midsommar
June 21, 2012
I have a theory that political correctness is transient and driven by electoral advantage. But common sense – over time – provides the restoring force.
The move away from wind power euphoria is becoming all more evident in the UK. It is a shift that is inevitable since – eventually – common sense does prevail. And as with all such shifts of political correctness it is accompanied (or is it caused) by a change which appears to provide some electoral advantage for somebody. Causes which once provided electoral advantage to the Greens across Europe – because they were seen (partly) as being the “minority” view being suppressed by the establishment – are now themselves part of the establishment view across most parties. But these views are now perceived as being suppressive and coercive and the backlash is beginning to move us back towards common sense.
No doubt the coming Age of Gas will be supported by all the political parties as reduced energy costs provide electoral advantage. And being cynical, it will also – just like wind power – be exploited to excess, to the point where it becomes coercive and suppressive of other alternatives and then political correctness will shift again.
Benedict Brogan writes in The Telegraph:
A government re-think on costly green energy resources is a winning statement of intent. ..
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Age of Gas, political correctness, Renewable energy, Renewable Obligation, Shale gas in the United States, wind power
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Energy, Politics, Renewable Energy | Comments Off on Political correctness shifts away from wind in the UK
June 20, 2012
Two decades of waste in the name of alarmist “environmentalism” are coming to an end.
The BBC’s Richard Black reports that a text has been agreed at the jamboree in Rio to be “approved” by country leaders later this week. The text appears to be watered down and to be largely meaningless in terms of binding commitments by any country for moving towards the politically correct view of “a more sustainable future”.
But actually the lack of commitments is itself of great significance. History will show that the Rio meeting of 2012 was the symbolic end of the era of profligate “eco-fascism”.
BBC:
Negotiators have agreed a text to be approved by world leaders meeting this week in Rio in a summit intended to put society on a more sustainable path.
Environment groups and charities working on poverty issues believe the agreement is far too weak.
The Rio+20 gathering comes 20 years after the Earth Summit, also held in the Brazilian city.
The text has yet to be signed off by heads of government and ministers, but it seems that no changes will be made.
“We have reached the best possible equilibrium at this point; I think we have a very good outcome,” said Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Earth Summit, Rio, Rio+20, UN CoSummit on sustainable development
Posted in Alarmism, Environment, Politics | 1 Comment »
June 19, 2012
The Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview has talked to Sebastian Thrun:
One of these ideas was for a self-driving car, not through a desert, but on the streets of San Francisco and beyond. Crazy. But Mr. Thrun and 12 engineers created a car that could drive itself down twisty Lombard Street without a human driver. How did they do that? “We should question all the rules—we should break the rules,” he says. “I like to put myself in the most uncomfortable position. There’s so much baggage we take on. Why is that so? We should have the courage to put everything overboard.” ……
At Google X, Mr. Thrun brought in University of Washington Prof. Babak Parviz to create a set of eyeglasses that are capable of displaying Web and Google search results. Not easy—yet another cross-discipline challenge to make the device ultra lightweight and natural to use. It was announced recently as Google Glass. It works like bifocals in that you look up to see the display so your normal vision below is never blocked. “We discovered this is not some crazy moon shot, this is real. It turned out we were closer to something interesting than all of us thought.” Every geek is itching for a pair.
To be able to state that “something” cannot be done we must first be able to articulate that “something”. And to articulate it we must be able to imagine it. And when we find “it cannot be done” we can qualify it to be “it cannot be done now” — and the process of innovation starts.
I suppose I am an optimist. I am sure that tomorrow will be filled with things “we cannot do now”. In less than 10 generations from now the current fears of global warming and the mass extinction of species and of unsustainable populations and of resource exhaustion will be seen on a par with primitive peoples fearing that the moon was being swallowed up during an eclipse. And 10 generation from now they will have found new things to fear and new things that cannot be done.
There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
Donald Rumsfeld
Tags: Google X, Innovation, Sebastian Thrun
Posted in Behaviour, Innovation | Comments Off on Innovation – To do what cannot be done
June 18, 2012
Football as the indicator for politics??
Greece and the Czechs stay in but Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, the Netherlands and Russia are already out. Germany stay in comfortably while Portugal scrape through.
Today’s matches will probably see Spain staying in and Italy may edge out Croatia while Ireland are already out.
And tomorrow France and England will probably confirm that they stay in and the second host nation Ukraine will also probably crash out.
A football match is a great leveller.
And so is the European Union – but unfortunately it levels down to the Lowest Participating Economy (LPE). How the profligacies of the tiny economy that is Greece can shake the mighty European Union is still a mystery. But the Greek voters seem to have realised that remaining subsidised by the Eurozone is probably their best option. In the long run however it is probably best for the Euro that the Eurozone shrink and for any monetary union to wait for a true fiscal and political union – which is at least some 200 years away.
Cristiano Ronaldo
The useless trappings of the bureaucracy in Brussels and the pig-trough that is the European Parliament need to be dismantled. Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain need to to leave the EMU. Sweden and Denmark and Finland need to get out from under the weight of oppression of Brussels. Poland and the Czech republic would grow faster without the shackles of the EU. There is no flair or brilliance on display in European politics which is suffocating, smothered by “consensus” and political correctness. Individualism and excellence have become “undemocratic”. Unlike politics, football still allows for excellence and flair and individual brilliance — a la Cristiano Ronaldo and Mario Gomez.
Tags: Cristiano Ronaldo, Euro 2012, European Union, football, Lowest Participating Economy - LPE, Mario Gomez
Posted in Football, Politics | Comments Off on Greece stays in the Euro! Football or is it the state of the European Union?
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