By Michael Darby
Greens want to make burning coal a crime.
More than any other single factor, coal is directly responsible for the happiness, health and longevity of the residents of modern communities. Sadly, there are millions around the world who have been denied access to the benefits of coal. Our hearts go out to those folk who lack any or all of electricity, refrigeration, modern medicine, mechanized agriculture, mobility, illumination, education, communications, safe housing, secure employment and personal liberty.
A noble aim of modern civilisations is to extend to the world’s less fortunate all the benefits of coal, supplemented where appropriate by other reliable sources of energy. 240 million residents of India have no electricity (Bloomberg 25 Jan 2018). Death and property destruction are commonplace results of dangerous methods of cooking, heating and illumination, and around half of all food grown is spoiled or lost to decay or vermin because of lack of refrigeration. In common with millions of other victims of energy deprivation, these folk crave reliable energy.
The Australian Greens and their equally despicable allies including Greenpeace, WWF and GetUp! hold the racist view that energy deprived residents of the Sub-Continent do not deserve refrigeration or education. Hence the vicious and dishonest campaigns against Adani and GVK.
The Australian Greens have now crossed from viciousness to lunacy. In Hobart on Friday 16 November 2018, Adam Bandt MP announced a policy which purports to declare illegal the digging, burning or shipping thermal coal from 2030, after which date individuals and corporations would face up to seven years’ jail for using thermal coal. “After a transition period to allow us to switch to renewables, it will become a crime to use coal, because coal kills,” Mr Bandt said.
In coming weeks the ABC will do its best to promote this wicked attempt to de-industrialise Australia and crush the hopes of millions who hope for the benefits of coal from Australia.
Fortunately there are wise Australians committed to upholding coal-fired power generation. Senator Pauline Hanson brought a pro-coal motion to the Senate on 27 June 2018, and the six Pauline Hanson’s One Nation parliamentarians in Western Australia and Queensland will soon be joined by two or more pro-coal PHON parliamentarians from New South Wales. Every Australian who wants electricity to be reliable and affordable should help maximise the number of PHON parliamentarians throughout Australia.
A future key defender of civilization and human progress is the Saltbush Club, launched Australia-wide on Thursday 15 November 2018 by 200 pro-energy Australians from all walks of life.
Saltbush Club founder Viv Forbes writes:
“Our top priority is to have Australia withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement with all of its adverse consequences. Then fight the climate scare, remove all targets and subsidies promoting green energy, sell Snowy Hydro 2 and stop the wars on coal, cattle and cars.”
In 2017 Australia’s contribution to Atmospheric CO2 is estimated to be 2 parts per billion at a cost to Australian energy consumers of $3 billion or $1.5 billion for 1 part per billion of CO2.
This is based on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Mauna Loa, Hawaii. In 2017 they recorded an increase in atmospheric CO2 of 3.5 parts per million. 96% of which was from natural emissions (volcanoes, etc) 4% was man made. Of the 4%, 1.4% (ie 0.00056% of the man made contribution) were Australia’s emissions. 4% of 3.5ppm = 0.14ppm. 1.4% of 0.14ppm = 0.00196ppm or 1.96 parts per billion (rounded up to 2 parts per billion.). Go figure!!!
And don’t forget Bill that our supposed ‘contribution’ to global CO2 emissions is based partly on how much fossil fuel we produce, even though a large (and growing) part of this is exported as coal, oil and CNG and produces CO2 only when burnt elsewhere. Therefore even that 1.4% figure for Australia’s ‘share of global emissions’ is exaggerated. We need to calculate and advertise our fair share based on actual CO2 emissions, excluding the CO2 embodied in our fuel exports.
Bill, can you substantiate this irrefutably. Are these facts correct?
If so we are all being conned.
The resultant cost to Australia is enormous and totally misaligned with our industrialisation when compared to the major countries of the world.
However having visited real parts of China, India North America Europe and the UK when I look at the sky i can see the difference large populations have on the very air they breathe.
I was in Beijing 4 days before the Olympics and could not see the ground until we touched it when landing, the air quality was obviously dangerous.
Someone make it real plain and simple please because I am confused.
Hi Phillip
Be careful not to confuse air pollution from particulates and photochemical smog with emissions of carbon dioxide. The entire AGW hoax is based on the latter. CO2 is an invisible trace gas does not contribute to air pollution. It is a complete falsehood to describe CO2 as “pollution”.
Look at our own air quality. We get 80% of our electricity from coal and gas, but don’t have major air pollution problems because our power stations use technologies to minimise particulate emissions. Laws controlling them in China are not so well enforced.
In fact one cause of air pollution that is conveniently ignored is the burning of biomass (wood and dried animal dung) by people who have no access to electricity. They are forced to burn whatever they can get. This then pollutes the air and shortens their own life expectancy as they contract respiratory diseases from breathing in smoke from their cooking and heating fires. With cheap, reliable, coal-generated electricity, these problems would be reduced greatly.
CO2 and “pollution” should never be used in the same sentence other than to refute claims that are connected.
Once we can reset the narrative to acknowledge that more atmospheric CO2 is actually better for the planet, the sooner we can drop these foolish notions of “carbon pollution” and actually work effectively to reduce real air pollution in countries like China and India.
Hi,
I’m also a sceptic but unfortunately still learning the actual science. Alarmists claim more atmospheric CO2 is detrimental, can you please explain why is it good, as you argue?
Spot on!!!
Thanks for the excellent article, Michael.
You might add that the ‘hidden’ victims of a ban on coal are all those thousands of businesses in many industries that rely on stable base load power (coal / gas / nuclear – you wish) to operate – refining essential metals like steel, copper, nickel and aluminium, manufacturing fertilisers and plastics, and many other essential products. There is a list of over 200 such industries in the RET legislation that currently receive a part or full exemption from onerous electricity prices due to the pernicious RET. However, what is not widely appreciated (and ignored by the ALP and Greens) is the fact that as the proportion of ‘renewable’ power in our grid increases, the proportion of base load power needed by these industries must fall. As it does, RET exemption or not, more and more of these industries will be forced to close down due to power shortages, causing unemployment, rising prices, loss of investment opportunities, and inevitably moving Australia closer to third world status. Surely our non-left politicians understand this? If not, they need to be given a lesson in industrial economics!
The most dangerous deluded people who maintain public fear of, and guilt about, anthropogenetic global warning are media editors and owners. Their conflicting private and public interests, when it comes to admitting and correcting published errors, in the face of centuries of graphic undisputed evidence, has damaged or destroyed countless lives in and beyond Australia.
The good news is that a few media editors and owners were willing to publish and broadcast the evidence. Andrew Bolt is well know and has many followers, particularly in Sydney, where audience fear and guilt has prevailed so that fear-mongering “green” political organisations thrive.
In 2011 Andrew thanked me for this email:
The Bolt Report is doing a great public service by exposing wide media complicity in the carbon tax fraud, which is international, not just Australian . Most of us depend on our daily or weekly tv news readers and commentators to expose scams, not to suppress and misrepresent them.
I rarely watch tv broadcasts but spend time searching on line where there has been plenty of undisputed evidence that was and remains suppressed. What’s more, when ordinary people like me plead with responsible publishers and broadcasters to admit and correct their public errors, we get only silence.
As examples of the suppression, I’ve attached my [rejected] ‘Submission to inquiry into Native Vegetation Laws’ plus an email acknowledged more than a year ago by ‘The Economist’. The former was intended to alert responsible political ‘leaders’ [like Tony Abbott & Barnaby Joyce] to their impotence in the face of widely publicised deceptions such as those of Professor Phil Jones, of the Climatic Research Unit on the BBC. The latter was in response to the The Economist’s comments sub-headed ‘With great power comes great responsibility’.
I’ve also attached Craig Loehle’s report of undisputed statistically significant evidence of 2000 years of climate change. It would be excellent if its graphic evidence could be presented on The Bolt Report for discussion by scientists like Bob Carter and Will Steffen.”
Thank you for broadcasting The Bolt Report on free tv and I hope many others like me will support your good work against who-ever has kept Al Gore’s fraud going so long after Ted Koppel condemned him on his Nightline program of 24 Feb 1994.
Regards
Jim Stewart
Jim, it is worth watching Sky free-to-air TV on channel 83 in NSW in the evenings (known as ‘Sky after dark’ to the left-leaning ABC). The line-up of Andrew Bolt, Peter Credlin, Alan Jones Paul Murray and ‘The Outsiders’ try to promote the truth about the global warming scam. Now that Sky is available free-to-air via WIN TV it is being broadcast throughout Australia and so, hopefully, will be a counter to the green/left ignorance of subject.
An effective way to counter the CAGW propaganda is by poking fun at them. Do we have a cartoonist on board who can draw a cartoon showing the faithful praying for a saviour under a huge outdoor cross, then the same faithful praying for a saviour to a huge outdoor wind turbine (stationary of course). I leave it up to the cartoonist to add suitable words…
It should be stressed ( and included in future articles) that there is more than one political party in Australia that have energy policies in line with The Saltbush Club.
For example the Australian Conservatives have the following as their energy policy:-
“Australians deserve the most reliable and affordable energy in the world.
With electricity generation, we are technology-agnostic but subsidy-averse.
We support nuclear power and a nuclear fuel cycle industry.
We support all forms of electricity generation and will provide them with legislative certainty and legal protection.
We do not support any renewable energy targets.
We will remove all taxpayer and cross subsidies to electricity generation.
We will require all electricity supplied to the grid to be useable – that is, predictable and consistent in output (kWhrs) and synchronous (at the required 50 Hz range).
We will allow market forces to provide the most efficient power generation available.
We will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.”
While the Australian Conservative are running for the Senate only, if enough get into parliament, along with PHON representatives, there may be enough clout to block this climate control fiction and with draw from Paris!
At last we have people standing for our values and fighting
I want to join. Unable to find where I can do that. I heard a man on 2gb (radio) saying that the Salt Bush Club has 300 members. Maybe there would be a lot more if joining was easy and obvious. Regards, Larry
I have just read the above comments
What a lot of dribble.
God help us if these views were to become mainstream.
Ask the “brain washed ones” – China , India , USA, and a lot of the European countries incl Germany are not doing anything – so my question to you is “will our efforts make a difference” —– and — “how much of a difference ….. “what percentage” ( its about 1% )
They usually come back with it’s the right thing to do and anything is better than nothing – …
I say its all based on assumption – there is no facts – the climate change lobby changed from” global warming” because the planet is actually cooler now .. tell that to the Farmers who are going to have to kill off most of their animals – and stop using their Farming machines ….to the airlines who wont be able to fly most of their routes – to the car owners that will have to dump their larger vehicles and work utes and buy tiny little ones…. to all the people working in Mining … and those who are going to lose their jobs when the factories, manufacturers all close down, go out of business completely or move off-shore
“Its so sad – it is a joke … the believers are totally misguided sheep who do not question and show common sense ” … I guess that because common sense isn’t so common at all.
Oh and C02 is “plant food”
Our Australian Governement must not attend the Paris Agreement. It is the only right thing to do for the future of Australia. Before our economy, is completely destroyed. For a futile target that, will impose incredible harm to the nation.
Australia has the option of siting small submarine-type nuclear power stations down the deep holes from which the uranium was mined. This provides numerous advantages:
Much of the expensive concrete shielding is not required because the reactors would be underground.
Cooling water can be gravity-fed
Radioactive gases cannot escape
Difficult for terrorists/thieves to attack
Difficult for protestors to complain that radioactive material is being introduced to the minesites where the stuff actually originated.
No additional damage to environment as would occur if reactors are sited elsewhere.
Desalinate water from local lakes in South Australia
Refine local bauxite into aluminium
Build towns and heavy industry around the remote mines
Dump radioactive waste at the uranium mines that produced it
When reactor decommissioned, fill in the hole and continue to extract the heat.