Since the introduction of the carbon tax, children have been forced to line up for servings of thin, watery gruel…
Remember the hysteria prior to the introduction of that “Great Big Tax on Everything”, when the Australian economy was going to spiral into not merely a recession – or even a depression – but back into the Dark Ages?
It was going to usher in a period of madness: men and women impoverished by the tax would be forced to live on the street; cats and dogs living together in sin; fire and brimstone and the wrath of economic gods; parents forced to sell children into bondage; a leg of roast lamb to cost over $100!
According the alarmists such as Tony Abbott, the Liberal National Party and the entirety of News Limited (or so said Andrew Bolt, Terry McCrann and the other lessor lights in its stable of culture-warrior hacks) the very modest price on carbon was going to be the “roon of us!”.
Time and time again the claim was made the tax was going to destroy jobs:
“The coal industry will step up its campaign against a carbon tax, seeking to highlight job losses that will be caused by such a scheme…”
It is an article of faith among all the die-hard climate sceptics. Only a few weeks back the Astroturf and fossil fuel funded Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) claimed such a tax would destroy American jobs:
If you want to know what a carbon tax on emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would do to America you need only look at the destruction of industry and business in Australia, along with the soaring costs for energy use it imposes on anyone there.
“The carbon tax is contributing to a record number of firms going to the wall with thousands of employees being laid off and companies forced to close factories that have stood for generations”, Steve Lewis and Phil Jacob reported in a March 18 issue of The Daily Telegraph, a leading Australian newspaper.
Oh my god its true!
According to CFACT and the Daily Telegraph (Sidebar: Australians’ call it the Daily Terror for its tabloid, over the top style) we poor Aussies are suffering under the carbon tax. In fact, you can see the long lines at the soup kitchens already…
But is that true?
How does the claim a carbon tax will destroy jobs?
Recent employment figures show the Australian economy has added 50,000 new jobs. Here is the data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics for those interested. Numbers – not assertions.
Pesky things numbers: they often refuse to conform to our opinions.
Here is the truth – not the “truthiness” of CFACT and coal miners.
The Australian economy is doing OK.
Now there are a number of challenges facing the Australian economy due to the high dollar (vis-a-vis the USD) and the end of the mining boom. Government revenue has taken a hit due to the aforementioned reasons; also the mineral resources tax has woefully underperformed. I guess that’s what happens when you invite the mining companies to effectively write the law.
Surprise! They don’t get taxed!
But how does the economy-wreaking carbon tax fit into this picture?
Not at all.
Remember the hysteria, the public protests and the shrill braying for blood by the likes of Alan Jones who stated PM Julia Gillard should be stuffed into a bag and drowned?
Ruined?
End of life as we know it?
Hardly.
However, both Abbott and the hacks at News Limited have moved onto their next meme: “The Great Big Deficit on Everything”.
Yes, it will be the “roooooon of us!” again.
Australia has accrued a very modest deficit during a period when most of the global economy is sputtering: actually this is quite an achievement. Australia has had 21 years of continuous growth. The size of the public service, compared to other OECD countries is also modest – despite the fact both population and the need for services has grown, public services numbers have remained stable for years.
There is not a surplus of fat-cat public servants down under. But hey, wasn’t that another thing the carbon tax going to do? Create a unwieldy, bloated bureaucracy?
But let’s not get facts in the way of a good waging ideological warfare eh? There’s the free-market to evangelise and climate science to disparage!
I joke of course. The truth is this: all the posturing, sound and fury generated by the likes of Abbott and his cheer squad at News is divorced from reality.
Indeed, if there are any alarmists in the climate – or any other debate – I think we know where to point the finger.
But don’t believe me.
We’ll be roooooooned! Roooooooooned I tells ya!
Watching the Deniers 
Tony Abbott says a lot of things, none of which can be accepted as “gospel truth”. This bumbling, stuttering, moron is barely capable of putting a sentence together, let alone telling the truth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc5ljcri6Nk
Yes, pretty poor performance.
People who think that life as we know it will change irrevocably with 50% of all species going extinct, mass starvation, mass flooding, multitudes of climate refugees etc etc all because we change the the volume of a minor trace gas from .03% to 0.04% of the total atmosphere, poke fun at people who make hyperbowlic (sic) comments about the effects of a useless tax.
Mr Pot please meet Mr Kettle.
Of course, the hyperbowl wasn’t all one sided. Who can forget Plibersek telling us we’d loose the ability to feed ourselves sans the tax. I never quite worked out if she meant we wouldn’t be able to grow food any more, or we’d forget how to use a spoon..although in the later case surely the NDIS would come to the rescue.
,
Mark just showing he is scientifically illiterate again. You’d think he’d keep quiet and do something about it instead of parading his ignorance.
Just a fact check here Mark, since you insist in parading your fact free ignorance of basic science.
Without that .03% of “minor trace gas”, the Earth would be a snowball, very likely 30 degrees C cooler, or around -20 C. I found the following links after about 5 minutes on the internet. One wonders why you couldn’t have done the same before shooting your mouth off.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=if-carbon-dioxide-makes-u
Or if you prefer a deeper scientific discussion, (not that you would understand it).
http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-would-a-CO2-free-atmosphere-look-like.html
or even this:
http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/carbon-dioxide-prevents-earth-from-becoming-an-ice-world.html
You are in good company with your ignorance though, Richard Lindzen was asked that question too and got it completely wrong, by a factor of 10. So much for his “credentials”, and he claims to be a “Climate specialist” FFS.
So…. Even a small amount of CO2 has big consequences, therefore even small increases are not a good idea if we want to preserve the world that our modern civilisation has become attuned to, and what our modern agriculture depends upon. Are you starting to get this yet?
Thanks for that debunker. Of course, given that I made absolutely no, nil, nada, comment about what would happen in a CO2 free world I wonder how you concluded that I wasn’t aware that some level of CO2 was vital.
I guess its just easier to make up other people’s views for them and then tell them what fools they are for thinking what they don’t actually think.
For the record, I’m well aware that CO2 at around 300 ppm is/was a vital part of giving us the climate we currently have. Given that you struggle to understand the Queen’s, I’ll try to restate my point. The issue is whether increasing the level of CO2 above this assumed base-line will have the massively deleterious affects asserted by the alarmist community.
You are, hopefully, aware that the efficacy of CO2 in regards to IR absorption is logarithmic? That is next tonne of CO2 emitted will have a lesser warming effect than the last. Additionally, you are, hopefully, aware that, at many wave-lengths we are near to saturation levels in regards to absorption. So, hopefully, you are aware that a doubling of CO2 levels won’t causing a doubling of warming associated with CO2.
Sadly however, I suspect my hopes are ill-founded.
You are a bit confused re Logarithmic, your ” the efficacy of CO2 in regards to IR absorption is logarithmic?” is nonsenical
CO2
Radiative forcing is logarithmic in concentration, but the concentration increases faster than linearly with emissions, since the more you emit, the less is taken up by the oceans and the more remains in the atmosphere. That effect turns out to cancel out the logarithmic behavior, giving you a nearly linear warming (at least up to about 5000 gigatonnes total emissions)
Yes, Mark is confused about a lot of things.
After saying that CO2 is a minor trace gas, and that therefore changing it’s quantity is unimportant, he accuses me of accusing him of not knowing that he knows how important small quantities of CO2 are.
Holy crap! And he questions my English comprehension skills! He needs a remedial class in logic as well….
Mark re your comments on saturation. best and most easy understood
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/
Spencer Weart
Oceans CO2 uptake reduced
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091124140957.htm
You then proceed to tell me that,even though the efficacy of CO2 absorption is indeed logarithmic, it is offset by increased concentration.
So I’m confused when I say CO2 qabsorption efficacy is logarithmic, even though it is logarithmic. Makes perfect sense.
when all else fails then read the link,
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/
Mark, what you said was:
“all because we change the the volume of a minor trace gas from .03% to 0.04% of the total atmosphere”
You had no caveats on this, and everyone understood it the same way. What you are saying here is that CO2 is a minor trace gas which implied to all of us that you did not consider it important at all, and changing it’s volume will have no effect. I think it is you who is struggling with English comprehension. (how are the classes going by the way?).
As I said,everybody here understood it the same way, that, as usual, you had no idea what you are talking about. They gave the blood alcohol example to show how tiny chemical amounts can have major consequences. I gave the example of temperature in a non CO2 world to illustrate it.
Hence your comment:
“given that I made absolutely no, nil, nada, comment about what would happen in a CO2 free world I wonder how you concluded that I wasn’t aware that some level of CO2 was vital”
is just hysterical bollocks. I concluded that you weren’t aware of the importance of CO2 because of what you wrote. Read your own words FFS.
By definition a minor or trace gas is one which makes up less than 1% of the atmosphere. Last time I checked that describes CO2. Its a technical term….no surprise therefore that you misunderstood it.
You are making stuff up again Mark. Nowhere can I find “minor” equated with a “trace gas”. “Trace gas” is indeed a technical term and I am familiar with it, but your “minor” qualifier, read in the context of your sentence, means insignificant or unimportant.
I was merely bringing to your attention that CO2 is extremely important as a thermostat regulating the Earth’s temperature, so small changes can have effects out of all proportion to their size.
Every one here got the same impression from your original comment, hence, the general hilarity and drunk driving examples, so the problem was not with our English comprehension, but your English expression.
He’s backtracking and trying to save face. The tone of his comment was indeed to infer that CO2 as a “minor” trace gas has a minor effect. This is a typically ignorant denier meme used to troll. Now he has been shown the error of his ways he is employing the “attack is the best form of defence” strategy. The grown up thing to do of course is admit the mistake and move on. Good luck wringing that out of him.
Perhaps you should read more widely.
In but one of the what I’d think are myriad examples, this is NOAA explaining GW.:
Check here
This nit-picking is so tiresome.
BTW if you google the phrase “minor trace gas” you get over 121K hits.
‘This nit-picking is so tiresome’
Pot… Kettle… Black
The fact that CO2 is a trace gas is not the issue. The point is that it has extremely potent effects in trace quantities. Arsenic in trace quantities can kill you.
Strawman,
“life as we know it will change irrevocably with 50% of all species going extinct, mass starvation, mass flooding, multitudes of climate refugees etc etc all because we change the the volume of a minor trace gas from .03% to 0.04% of the total atmosphere,”
you made that crap up,
Only difference is that the predictions of rising seas, ocean acidification, more extreme weather, etc. have come to pass. Not so, in the case of the deniers and economic doomsayers. Raise the carbon taxes before this is obvious even to you.
“…because we change the the volume of a minor trace gas from .03% to 0.04% of the total atmosphere…”
Are you suggesting that minor traces of molecules cannot have major effects on a system?
Yes. As Admiral Titley explains, that’s why it’s impossible to get drunk.
I never drink and drive but perhaps I might start and when I get pulled over I can explain to the officer that the alcohol in my system at 0.06 or more is just a trace and therefore cannot possibly impair my judgment. It might work in court too.
Also explain that your blood alcohol was much higher in the past, and alcohol is just brain food anyway, and your lack of coordination is actually due to cosmic rays, and scientists in the 1970s said alcohol makes us sober, and your blood alcohol hasn’t increased in the last 5 minutes, and Al Gore, and people on Mars are drunk too, and you’d stop drinking if only it wouldn’t kill poor people, etc…
After insisting that alcohol is a minor trace chemical chemical, explain that Coors Light is such a powerful intoxicant that your blood was saturated after your first sip. Therefore, all the empty cans in your lap are irrelevant.
You don’t have to make sense, just spread confusion.
After implying that minor chemicals can’t have a large impact on coordination, quote scientists but don’t mention that the quoted section is How can minor chemicals have such a large impact on coordination?
Investors are probably betting that carbon pricing will be ditched when Abbott wins.
If it isn’t ditched, our economy will become more like the EU – sky high energy prices and collapsing industry.
Compare that to the industrial revival occurring in America, driven by cheap shale gas, and the lesson should be obvious.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL6N0CE57M20130326
1,000,000 new manufacturing jobs in the US by 2025 if the “shale gas revolution” holds…not insignificant ,but in context 80,000 jobs a year,when employment is expected to grow by a million a year and needs to grow by more.
Unemployment has been falling under Obama…[Republicans grind teeth]…though still 11.7 million looking for work and 2.3 million ‘marginally attached’ to the workforce…and 15% of the population receive food stamp benefits…
I’d suggest that America could be doing better, except for uncertainty created by the Obama administration.
Obama has also stated his hostility to coal on a number of occasions, and on at least one occasion promised that electricity rates would skyrocket – which might be seen by investors as a threat to the stability of currently low American energy prices.
There is still considerable conflict between different parts of the American government, over environmental regulation – Texas and 11 other states, a few weeks ago, recently launched a court challenge against EPA regulations. There is no guarantee of what the outcome of such action will be.
The drop in US energy prices has obviously attracted interest, but if I was an investor considering putting my money into America, I’d still attach a serious sovereign risk premium (risk of a hostile regulatory environment) – which in many cases might lead to investment being delayed, deferred, or routed elsewhere.
Any decision not to invest has a negative impact on jobs.
It’s sad when efforts to legislate on behalf of all citizens are undermined by narrow interests by deeming them a risk to wealth. Happens here a lot, too, as you are happy to remind us.
If the Reuters link I cited is correct, and the American manufacturing renaissance is being driven by cheap shale gas, then Obama is the enemy of job security and prosperity for ordinary Americans.
You might not like it that some people are getting filthy rich from shale gas, and are applying political pressure to secure even greater profits – but if ordinary people also benefit, as new manufacturing jobs are created, surely the greater good outweighs any concerns you might have about wealth creation?
Given Obama has enabled the “shale gas revolution”, your accusations are puzzling.
‘Getting filthy rich’ and ‘wealth creation’ are separate concepts. “Shale gas revolution” and “renaissance of American manufacturing” are Orwellian-speak.
How long is the ‘shale gas revolution’ due to last,again? As opposed to how the spinners would have it?
Which part of “electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket” didn’t you understand?
Obama thinks cheap energy harms the environment – so suggesting he “enabled the shale gas revolution” is a bit of the stretch. A more accurate description might be “he didn’t totally ban it / stomp it out of existence using regulatory instruments”.
As for “how long will the shale gas revolution last?” – who cares. Its helping *now*. Some of the development stimulated by shale gas will have lasting benefits, no matter what replaces it. People who might otherwise not have jobs are working now because of shale gas – and thats making a difference to their lives. When America runs out of shale gas, there’s always methane clathrates (China and Japan are conducting serious clathrate mining experiments), nuclear power, or king coal.
You might not like my phraseology – “shale gas revolution”, “renaissance of manufacturing” – but to suggest they are Orwellian is a little confusing. Its not an oppressive almighty government creating a mirage of prosperity, its actual capitalists forcing down the price of energy, and taking advantage of cheap energy to outcompete China on some fronts. Rather than call it “Orwellian”, why don’t you applaud America’s achievement, in raising their economic game a little?
Let’s see… coal exports from the US are at thirty year highs, natural gas production has grown almost 25% in five years…yep,sure looks like Obama is crushing FF production with his regulatory zeal! But if he thinks cheap energy ‘harms the environment’,he’d be correct…driving costs down drives down environmental monitoring,weakens physical safeguards and worker safety…whatever,Obama is not an environmentalist as US actions show.
As I’ve noted,lunatics are running the asylum, the economy is co-opted and designed to enrich insane elite tax-avoiders..consumerism and its determination to throw stuff away,no matter what is recycled,is the wrong way. It depends on massive energy use from non-renewable sources that generates vast amounts of waste,the costs of which are dismissed by deliberate accounting oversights. Ongoing hyper-consumerism survives through the shunning of our best knowledge of ecology and energy systems…but for you,it’ll be an ‘endless’ romp through the geological history of the planet in search of the next fossil carbon source to ransack, offering the bauble of reputable futility to a few new workers in exchange for a dangerous new climate
And the Orwellian phraseology was not yours! It was Reuters copy!
… coal exports from the US are at thirty year highs, natural gas production has grown almost 25% in five years…yep,sure looks like Obama is crushing FF production with his regulatory zeal! …
Thats the funny part – coal use in the USA is down because it has been displaced by cheaper, less carbon intensive shale gas. But the coal miners aren’t suffering – because green Europe, caught between a kneejerk shutdown of nuclear stations, and the inadequacy of her green power installations, are importing all the coal they can get their hands on.
You couldn’t make it up.
It does though demonstrate my point that, if nuclear can be made cheaper than coal, CO2 emissions will plummet. The coal lobby in America has not been able to prevent the rise of shale gas. Even Middle Eastern oil interests have tried and failed – they helped finance Matt Damon’s “Promised Land”, an attack on gas fracking. Cheap nuclear energy would trump any entrenched interests, if the rise of gas fracking is any guide.
http://cnsnews.com/blog/mike-ciandella/matt-damon-surprised-learn-his-anti-fracking-film-was-funded-foreign-oil-wealth
“cheap nuclear energy”
I have said it before that you should try standup.
Are you going to keep talking out of your @rse Uki, or have you a specific criticism of my detailed suggestions re making nuclear power cheaper?
Of all the people to criticise someone of talking out of their arse. Pot meet kettle.
It must be fun to be one of your students – never a straight answer.
Like Australia,the US mining sector is trying to ship as much coal as possible before we get sensible and globally tax its byproducts.They are actively trying to subvert efforts to impose national and globally oriented environmental tariffs…these are your idols,just doing what it takes to get the current generation of managers paid out.
If European demand for coal wasn’t rising, American coal producers might have been in real trouble. Shale gas has drastically reduced demand for coal in America.
European demand for coal is rising, because the deep greens who run Europe have blocked exploitation of shale gas reserves, while simultaneously moving to shut down European nuclear power stations – which only leaves king coal.
Eric,
PLEASE don’t post on any sites Americans can read about any sort of American renaissance under Obama. Firstly you will infuriate conservatives whose goal in life seems to be ensuring economic catastrophe under Obama. Second, you will be giving them cover for the horribly dire predictions of imminent economic collapse they have been spouting for the last three years.
I see you did not chime in on the “trace gas” comment, or should I assume you need that defense in case of driving inebriation as well?
My view is the revival in American industry has happened despite Obama, not because of him.
As the youtube above shows, Obama wanted to drive energy prices up.
Instead, American energy prices have dropped, because of cheap shale gas.
So suggesting Obama is responsible for cheap energy, which is driving the revival of manufacturing, is a bit of a stretch.
lf you`re talking environmental protection,
carbon tax will fail, carbon derivatives will fail.
For once we completely agree on something. Environmental measures are self limiting – well meaning politicians pass laws and raise prices, until the rising pain of their electorate forces them to back down, or they get booted from office and replaced by politicians with a more realistic perspective.
Occasionally, like the UK, you get a horrible political consensus, which denies people choice about climate policy – but as the UK shows, even that doesn’t last forever – the rise of UKIP (climate spokesman Lord Monckton) is in no small part driven by frustration at the lack of choice offered by the big 3 mainstream parties.
Unfortunately we have not yet found a way to achieve a total victory for economic rationalism – climate fiddlers still keep frittering at the edges, causing damage, hoping to find a way to inflict their beliefs on us without getting booted out of office.
Eric, you talk as if you haven’t one single clue about the reasons for any environmental regulation! For you it is first and only a burden,bafflingly imposed by some misdirected or malicious bureaucrat,unwittingly advantaging a foreign economy/labour camp…
Painting you and your foolish class as victims is not a very good idea. Even the shiny and indispensable entrepreneur needs clean air and water,and waste carbon and nitrogen to be sequestered in a timely fashion.. And he/she should not be put at a disadvantage by a competitors usurping of his environmental rights.
It is a nonsense that environmental regulation raises prices…clearly,unregulated environmental messes are unlivable [unlivability is a cost],and for centuries regulation has been adopted at various scales in order to keep economies lurching forward by alleviating pollution,or confining it. If you see global scale concerns about the climate as fiddling, I can only laugh at you in your bubble.
Global economies have global scale environmental costs. They have to be acknowledged,understood and acted upon,difficult as the task may be. The task is made more amusing by ideologues doing the unpaid work of those who do not give a f**k,who reject knowledge despite its accumulation and advance when it does not suit their pathologies.
We have a very different idea of the costs and benefits of global economic activity.
I was simply pointing out why our view will prevail. As long as the measures you push cause short term economic damage, regardless of our disagreement about the long term economic implications, we can always find ways to frustrate them.
‘Economic rationalism’ is not rational at all if it cannot realistically account for all its inputs and outputs. Currently economy is running blind,partly by choice, disregarding information in its own interest,in a mode that burns and expects to burn too much fuel,use too much non-replaceable fuel,and output goods designed too often to fail,rather than have their durability maximised. Turnover is set on high,despite the ecological insanity of such settings. What may have been untroubling sixty years ago is no longer so,but economists and capitalists behave as though we have a Goldilocks planet managed by a genie…
We can run economies partly on carbon-base energy sources if the biosphere’s ability to draw down and resink carbon waste is understood and not exceeded. This goes for the economics that is a subset of the nitrogen cycle as well. The scientific academies of the world understand this,but business and government,protected by ranks of spinmeisters,dodge deflect misdirect and lie with their stubbornly medieval behavioral fixations.
We can define–in fact,re-establish– economy to be a sustainable concept,without utterly discarding the benefits of the current one [which is set to destroy itself under current terms]…but there is little leadership from governments,and bloody-minded behavior by business,who publicly demand leadership from government but in the next breath will not let them do so.
You climate catastrophists should look in the mirror. You will witness Harold Camping staring back.
Camping is a fool. If you are going to predict the end of the world, you’ve got to do as the CAGWists have learned to do – predict it’ll happen far enough into the future that you’ll be long since gone or at the very least retired. They learnt this lesson from Paul Ehrlich who made the mistake, in late 1960’s, of predicting disaster a mere decade hence and was then forced to watch it not happen. He was of course given a pass by the catastrophists who pretended not to notice his failed predictions, much as they pretend to not notice the failed predictions from Hansen, Gore, Flannery.
So predict that its all going to happen in 2050. Apparently, if temperatures have gone up by 2deg (from some time earlier) by 1/1/2050, its all over. By then Flannery will be long forgotten, Hansen will be remembered as ‘that boy band’, and Gore’s grandkids will be living high on the hog from his AGW ‘earnings’. So if they’re wrong, what the hell!
I’m trying to get in on the scam as well. I’ve predicted a massive earthquake will wipe out Sydney in 2080 but it can be avoided if everyone pays me a mere 10 cents each. Given the precautionary principle its seems like a no brainer that they make the payment. And if it turns out I’m wrong, unlikely as that might be, my grandkids will return all monies, after normal administrative deductions :).
Now all you have to do is find the courage to tell the poor Warmie`s why, Worrell.
You only got partially there, Worrell. Do better.
April 2013 economic growth is close to trend but CO2 emissions hit ten year low
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/aust-co2-emissions-hit-10-year-low/story-fn3dxiwe-1226618378940
In july we will have a full year of data to evaluate the effect of the carbon price on emissions. we will then be able to compare this with the first twelve months under Abbott’s direct action farce.
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