Thread: Carbon Pollution? A Summary

It's sounding remarkably like the Y2K bug, that caused such disruption 9 or 10 years ago ......

Imagine a 2ton landrover, you could remove a 1gram fuse, and it won't run.
Puts on flame suit.

All very amusing, but it doesn't prove anything. Argument by analogy is seldom valid.

I could present an analogy which may not be quite as amusing, but is probably just as valid.

Imagine that same bridge. It has been carefully checked by engineers prior to the planned opening ceremony and found to be structurally sound except for one tiny problem.

There is a small crack about 0.18mm, about the thickness of a human hair running right through one of the main supporting structures.

The engineers want to postpone the opening until it can be repaired. However Xtreme insists that the opening should go ahead because most of the bridge is safe.

You might or might not be right about the extent of the CO2 problem, but your analogy is no more convincing or valid than mine. I will concede that it is more amusing though.

Originally Posted by 3 Sisters

Imagine a 2ton landrover, you could remove 1gram off electrical wire, and it won't run.
Puts on flame suit.

Good point! 100Kg Body + 1g of cyanide = unhappy human.

Same sort of analogy I guess.

with Australia's population of 20 million and the Worlds Population of almost 7 billion, if all human life in Australia was extinct, we would only reduce the World's total carbon by around 2% and that would be taken up in about 1 year by the birthrate in Asia.

I would rather pay a little more to buy electricity guaranteed to come from solar-photovoltaic, solar-thermal, geo-thermal, wind, wave or tidal flow, than to give coal producers 1 cent in tax breaks (or carbon offsets).

The government should be giving research incentives and tax breaks to new energy technologies rather than invest in old carbon consuming technologies, or the mythical "clean coal technology".

The reason we don't have clean technology power already is because, BHP-Billiton and Exxon-Mobil or Shell Oil can not find a way to take over ownership of the sun, the waves and hot rocks so they can sell us the proceeds of that ownership at vastly exaggerated prices. It is their lobbying power and the government's want of a new tax (call it carbon tax if you want) that we are having this debate today.

Diana

Originally Posted by spudboy

It's sounding remarkably like the Y2K bug, that caused such disruption 9 or 10 years ago ......

...and a few more hyped up scare campaigns like SARS, Swine flu and others.

There seems to be a current trend of sexing up every possible problem that just so happens to be led by the politicans. Is it their role in life to hype perceived problems, throw billions of taxpayers money at it, more so inefficiently at that, and then tell us how great they are at fixing problems?

For example as Australia came out of winter with the Swine Flu with only a few hundred recorded deaths, British and European politicans were talking it up that the Swine Flu will record deaths at 1 in 200. It was rightly pointed out that even though Australia has much milder winters than Europe or Britain it would take a quantum leap of the virus to reach that death rate. And what have we heard lately of the Swine Flu....

Don't get me wrong, I do believe there is Climate Change caused by us but the ETS was definitely the wrong direction to take. It was only a tax.

The 7 Billion Dollars offered to Electricity producers in the Latrobe Valley to halt production by 2015 is a farce.
All it does is pay the financial institutions what is owed on the principal and leaves the power generators no return or equity.
All they will do is reinvest in power stations in China and India.
Imagine a compulsory acquisition of your house to build a freeway that only pays your mortgage out and leaves you with nowhere to live.
The Unions reckon that it will encourage investment in new technologies.
Like what?
90% of Victoria's base load power comes from Brown coal, can that be realistically be replaced in 5 years? 50 Years more likely.
10 Years ago Brown Coal was considered "clean" as it had lower sulphur emissions than Black coal, now, because of its moisture content and the resultant production of water vapor it's considered "Dirty".
The Latrobe Valley will become a ghetto in 5 years if it all happens.

The question for me is, what laws do they pass on other topics while everyone gets revved up with induced fear on topics like climate change, sars etc.
We're having our liberties/freedom/rights pulled out from under us while a picture of a scary monster is shown to us.
You can now be arrested and held for as long as desired for no reason.
and then theirs all the fair trade agreement crap.
I know I've not put much effort into learning facts about this sort of stuff(as it seems to serve no point as I'm powerless), but from what I hear, scares the **** outta me.
Everything is controlled with fear, fear of debt, fear of this fear of that, drives me frickin nuts.
Sorry for my off topic rant