AFL, your posts get weirder and weirder.

Wombleoz -

Trying to make out as if the weekends protest against the carbon tax outside JuLIAR's office was some was in some sort of "competition" with the GETUP! factional support rally for Labor......

(There were anti Carbon tax protests in every single capital city on the weekend, not just in Melbourne...)

The big one is 23 March 2011 in Canberra.  You know it.  In your deluded world, GETUP! members are the salt of the earth, its a real sample of what people are saying in the community....

You talk about matching numbers depending on how many turn in Canberra, which shows YOU JUST DON'T GET IT.

Sad.  Really sad.

Scare tactics in silly shoes
David Potts theage.com.au
March 13, 2011

The political hubris towards the carbon tax is making a mockery of its opportunities.

WHO could imagine anything worse than a carbon tax? I think I just did – not having one. That the alternative is indeed worse is shown by electricity prices.

One reason they’re climbing is the government’s demand that 20 per cent of power come from renewable sources – solar or wind, for example – by 2020.

Sounds harmless enough, except this has postponed investment in cleaner gas-fired power stations for expensive, energy-inefficient windmills all over the countryside. With a carbon price we’d have cleaner emissions sooner because there’d be an incentive to invest.

And get this.

The federal opposition is happy to go along with such inefficiency while adding its own. Also, I’m blowed if I know where it gets the $300 a year rise in electricity bills on a $26 a tonne carbon price.

This supposedly comes from a report by the Australian Industry Group, only that’s not what it says. The closest is a footnote saying a typical Sydney household power bill would rise $307 over three years.

Somehow that’s morphed into it rising $300 a year. Scare campaign aside, in truth the carbon tax bogeyman is more your wimp.

Consider how it might work, struggle though that is seeing as the government doesn’t know itself yet.

But here goes. The government will initially set a price on carbon, which is the cost to buy permits to pollute. As it’s the only seller, that’s a tax. Polluters have to buy enough permits at, let’s say $26 a tonne, a price indexed each year, to cover their carbon dioxide emissions.

After three to five years, the emissions trading scheme kicks in so the price of carbon fluctuates according to how much pollution is emitted.

Strange as it seems, the fact that a carbon price will raise revenue for the government – I suspect a lot – is its saving grace.

Not only is there a price for carbon that will encourage investment in less-polluting technologies (and perhaps eventually put a stop to spiralling electricity prices) but it will have a kitty to spend as it pleases.

That’s where Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, instead of denying the inevitability of a carbon price, could make himself useful by demanding across-the-board income tax cuts and pension increases to compensate for the price increases.

Just think higher power and petrol prices in return for tax cuts. Bet you could live with that and you’d be helping the environment as well.

Instead, he’s offering Band-Aid schemes at great cost that will achieve little by not getting to the nub of the problem.

As the respected OECD says, no price on carbon ‘‘increases climate-change risks and prevents low-emission technology being developed’’. But wouldn’t we be shooting ourselves in the foot with a new tax that none of our competitors have?

Too right. That’s why a rebate for the carbon tax for exporters must be integral to the scheme.

And how’s this? The rebate could be paid from a tax on imports that aren’t up to carbon scratch.

Anyway, getting in early has its benefits, too. We’d have a far more efficient electricity-generating industry based on modern equipment for one.

And, even better, Australian developers of leading-edge renewable-energy technology would have a ready market right on their doorstep.

Meanwhile, AFL continues to post bolded articles like as if he's contributing to the discussion.....ffs

Carbon not the same thing as CO2 Terry McCrann From: Herald Sun March 08, 2011 12:00AM

ASTONISHINGLY, the PM, the Cabinet and members of the Canberra Press Gallery don't know the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide.
There are two great lies told about the need to "put a price on carbon". Lies which I can't recall a single member of the gallery ever confronting the liars with -- far less the prime liar herself.

And it'll be a cold day in hell before you see a critical commentary from any of the supposed leading lights of the gallery such as Fairfax's Michelle Grattan or Peter Hartcher applying a critical analysis to the claims.

Now these two lies are in addition to Julia Gillard's "there will be no carbon tax" lie. They precede it and will be told again and again after it.

The first is that "climate change policies" are aimed at "carbon pollution". No they are not; they are aimed at reducing emissions of carbon dioxide.

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There is neither the need to abbreviate carbon dioxide to carbon; and the exercise of abbreviation renders it inaccurate. A bald-faced, quite deliberate lie.

For if carbon dioxide can be called "carbon pollution", in this or any other universe, in this or any other reality, well then rain has to be called "hydrogen pollution".

The reason the term is used by Gillard is an exercise of quite deliberate despicable dishonesty. It is the modern political form of those subliminal advertisements that are banned.

To suggest that it is about stopping dirty bits of grit -- the very real carbon pollution of yesterday's coal-burning home fires which gave London its sooty smog and killed thousands every year.

The real carbon pollution which no longer exists in modern developed economies, mostly precisely because of clean coal-fired power stations. And which does exist -- and kills -- in developing and third-world countries, denied centralised power generation.

The great sick irony is that to the extent we do cut our emissions of CO2, it will merely relocate those emissions in developing countries where they will be accompanied by bits of grit. Most notably and significantly: China.

Indeed, those supposedly virtuous Europeans might have cut their CO2 emissions they produce in Europe. But their consumption of CO2 emissions has increased by 44 per cent since 1990. It's just they are now being emitted in China.

Every time Gillard or Climate Change Minister Greg Combet mouths the term "carbon pollution", a competent journalist would ask questions like:

Do you understand that you are referring to what you are breathing out? Please explain how this is pollution? How are you going to stop personally polluting? Why don't you use the accurate term carbon dioxide?

The second great lie is that so-called "de-carbonising our economy" as a consequence of "putting a price on carbon" is the 21st century equivalent of the tariff reforms of the 1980s.

In fact it is the exact opposite: it is the equivalent of imposing tariffs on the Australian economy. This is true whether or not the rest of the world follows. It's just that much worse if we do it solo.

This lie has been peddled not just by the government but also by Treasury. Be afraid, be really afraid that we have a Treasury which is that incompetent.

Cutting tariffs and other forms of protection removed artificial costs that were imposed on both producers and consumers. It enabled them to buy especially goods but also services at the lowest competitive price.

The carbon tax or an ETS (emissions trading scheme) does the exact opposite. It imposes a totally artificial additional cost, in its case, on everything consumers and business buy.

It forces us to pay -- totally artificially -- higher prices for energy than we could otherwise, like right now, pay for it.

You'd think this would be obvious to even the most junior reporter in Canberra. But even the most senior, such as Grattan, are apparently oblivious to the obvious.

Again, I've never seen a Canberra commentator respond to the PM or the treasurer or the treasury secretary spouting this nonsense with a simple comparison.

Tariff cuts reduced the price of things. The carbon tax/ETS will increase the prices.

All to utterly no point. We ain't going to get so-called alternative energy. Treasury can assume a million can-openers. It doesn't and won't exist in any meaningful form.

And our pain will make zero difference to any climate outcome. Welcome to Julia and Wayne's world. Their policy pollution is your pain.

*hard labor doesnt give a fk.....

*NOW THATS A COMPELLING ARGUMENT - bad typo day!

We all pay more, a LOT MORE for JuLIAR's tax.
Cost of living, economically, jobs...............

Meanwhile:

The climate continues to change.

The temperatures continue to change - hot up or cool down.

The environment continues to absorb pollution.

The big polluters continue to pollute as usual.

The US, China and India continue to pollute.

The CO2 emissions worldwide continue to rise.

and

The US states with a carbon tax continue to scrap it with urgency.

The desperate likes of wombleoz and AFL continue to miserably fail in explaining the benefits/outcomes/detail of this Carbon Dioxide Tax on everything.

Thats because on there counts the cupboard is bare.

Only one side of politics is committed to real action on a cleaner environment with punishing working Australian's and bringing middle Australia to it's knees.

The Coalition has a direct action plan with real results - not a hopeful result.  It's not a big new tax, its from exising revenue and budget savings.  It invests in tree-planting, CO2 soil absortion, real incentives for business to cut pollution and a genuine commitment to cleaner greener energy and renewables.

A real plan with real outcomes with real detail.

Little logic to heated debate
March 12, 2011
Lenore Taylor theage.com.au

Public discussion of global warming is becoming less grounded in fact - and Tony Abbott is making the most of it.
Professor Ross Garnaut pointed out an interesting inverse relationship this week. Over the past three years the science of global warming has become more clear and more alarming, but in that same period, fewer Australians believed it was true.

Most Australians accept the climate is warming but the public has become somewhat less confident about the proposition even as the evidence has become more certain.
It is a shaky foundation for a rational policy debate about the best policy solution. It might be one reason why we are not having one.

But why is it so? Part of the explanation undoubtedly lies with the enormous publicity given to the so-called ''climategate'' emails. Subsequent reviews cleared the scientists involved of deliberately manipulating results but the saga remains contentious and it forced a reanalysis of data and more transparency. According to Garnaut none of the findings is ''material to the reliability of the main propositions of the mainstream science''. That message has been lost on the public.

Another explanation may lie in the fact that Kevin Rudd told everyone global warming was the ''greatest moral challenge of our time'' but then he and Julia Gillard decided it was not great enough to stop them deferring the emissions trading scheme.

Garnaut reckons the disconnect is in part caused by the fact that newspapers and blogs give the same credence to mainstream peer-reviewed scientists as they do to anyone else who has a strong opinion, might have written a book or is willing to fill in some airtime on radio or television.
In fact sometimes they elevated non-mainstream and non-peer-reviewed scientists in order to provide ''balance'', which was a funny way to define the term, he said.

''Debate about scientific matters that occur in the public domain (such as in newspapers and on blog sites) can come to be divorced from scientific quality, rigour and authority. One blog and one book is as good as another. This is the antithesis of science,'' Garnaut argued in the latest instalment of his updated report.
''Open-minded scepticism and critical review is a vital part of a good scientific process. However, many of the vocal participants in the climate change debate have never been part of the rigorous scientific discourse, or have cut themselves off from it.''

It is a point not taken by Fairfax radio's breakfast announcer Jason Morrison, who interviewed Professor Ian Plimer the morning after Garnaut released his report, in the interest of ''balance''.
Morrison told listeners that Plimer's view was more credible than Garnaut's because he was a scientist and Professor Garnaut was an economist. He said Professor Plimer should surely be ''invited to the table'' with policymakers in Canberra.

Plimer told 2UE listeners that contrary to Garnaut's findings, ''the science is getting weaker, they have yet to demonstrate that emissions of carbon dioxide drive climate'', that Garnaut was ''plucking information out of thin air to frighten us to support the proposed carbon tax'', that Garnaut was ''doing the barking for the government'' and that ''there must be a comic festival going on in Canberra because this is a joke … this is a scam.''

Professor Will Steffen of the Australian National University, who is an adviser to the government's climate policy committee, is clear in his view about Plimer.
''Professor Plimer has absolutely no credentials in the mainstream, reputable scientific research community. At last count experts have found at least 500 errors in his book, that's about one per page … he's not an expert and he has no standing.''

Other media commentators voice their very strong opinions about global warming without citing any sources at all, scientific or otherwise.

In one of his editorials this week on 2UE's rival station 2GB, the broadcaster Alan Jones repeated his well-known views, accusing the government of ''pursuing the ideological superstition that the planet is at risk''.

''The junk we are hearing out of Julia Gillard's mouth is based on emotion not fact, but why aren't the public given the facts, that all this crazy carry-on is because we produce one hundred thousandth of the CO2 in the air. Julia Gillard is prepared to risk … our economic well-being on something that is nothing more than fantasy.''

Jones said that if the public understood this, ''there would be very little belief in a climate disaster, the media would not be able to go on selling their doomsday stories … CO2 is not a pollutant, it is a harmless trace gas, it is necessary for life, it is clear and odourless''.

When Tony Abbott fronted up on the same morning to do one of his scores of radio interviews on the subject this week, Jones returned to the theme that climate change was fiction and carbon dioxide a gas sadly maligned.

After explaining to his audience that Abbott's judgment was ''flawless'', Jones asked the Opposition Leader: ''How do we address this issue that the title of [the carbon] tax is wrong, it's a lie, it is not a carbon tax it is a carbon dioxide tax, and how do we prevent our children from being taught in schools that carbon dioxide is a poison and a pollutant when it is the most significant of all atmospheric gases and the source of all plant life?''

Abbott replied: ''Look, it's a good point, Alan.'' A good point? That carbon dioxide is not a problem, but rather sadly misunderstood? Why then would Abbott be proposing to spend $10 billion on a ''direct action'' plan in order to reduce emissions of it?

Abbott's formal position is that he accepts the science of global warming and that humans play a part in causing it.

He says he accepts exactly the same emission reduction targets under exactly the same conditions as the ALP, but that he has a different, cheaper plan to reach them. But on the airwaves, Abbott spends very little time explaining his own ''better, cheaper'' policy, very little time defending mainstream climate science and quite a lot of time talking the talk of those who do not accept the science, including advancing the ideas that global warming is more like a religion than a science and that its aim is to deindustrialise successful Western economies.

''This is where I fear there has been far too much theology in this debate. Yes, we should try to tread lightly on the planet because we only have one planet … but this idea that we can lay waste to a modern economy in a vain attempt to improve the environment is just crackers,'' Abbott replied to Jones.

In a speech in Adelaide last week, he said that when Labor and the Greens spoke ''blithely'' about a ''low carbon economy'' they actually meant an economy where life was transformed and where people found it too expensive to turn on airconditioners and drive cars.

''Big reductions in emissions are impossible without a big increase in people's cost of living or a significant change in their lifestyles,'' Abbott said, without explaining why this assessment did not apply to his own plan, which envisages reductions in carbon emissions by exactly the same amount.

When speaking to more climate sceptical audiences, Abbott always refers to the idea that his policy does things like plant trees and improve soils that would make sense whether or not climate science proves to be true, and it is this contention to which the many climate sceptics within his own party point, to justify their backing for the direct action plan until such time as they are able to ditch it altogether.

The man who helped Abbott into the Liberal leadership, Senator Nick Minchin, is less restrained.
He told Sky News yesterday that Garnaut ''knows nothing about the climate and he's not a climate scientist, and I don't think he has any authority whatsoever. We have stabilised in terms of world temperatures. There is a very powerful natural cycle at work and if anything, we are more likely to see a tendency down in global temperatures rather than up.''

The Coalition's ''people's revolt'' is neatly scooping up both climate sceptics and those who are angry about paying a new tax or about Gillard's broken election promise not to have one.

Jacques Laxale, the organiser of the No Carbon Tax rally in Canberra later this month, said he was attracting support from climate sceptics as well as people who were simply opposed to the tax.
The No Carbon Tax website now hosts climate sceptic blogs, links to climate sceptic websites and an online ''Climate Skeptic Shop'' where people can buy T-shirts, hats and mugs proclaiming they are a ''climate skeptic''.

Abbott has so far run rings around Labor in this debate. That is partly because of the government's own mismanagement but also because the Coalition has kept faith with the sceptics by avoiding any real debate about its position on the science, or on the costs and efficiency of its own plan.

If politicians are not sure they accept the problem that climate policy is designed to solve, if that is not the clear starting point for a debate about policy alternatives, the public may well be unconvinced of the need for any greenhouse reduction plan.

Then the inverse relationship may be between how much we talk about something and Parliament's total inability to do anything about it. Which is exactly what a climate sceptic would want.

Lenore Taylor is the national affairs correspondent.

...........1.01 AFL posts an "article" in response to my question.

IF ABBOTT BELIEVES THAT CARBON DIOXIDE IS NOT A PROBLEM, AND JUST MISUNDERSTOOD, WHY THE **** IS HE GOING TO SPEND $10 BILLION TO REDUCE EMISSIONS OF IT?????????????????????????????????????????

well a reduction in emissions is probably a better idea ... than just taxing the fk out of people ... and not reducing use ONE IOTA

but i am not politically aligned either way ... i'm only looking at FACTS as presented by scientific data ...
not the silly scientific maybe's and could be's and propsositions from flawed computer models

Your playing pathetic semantics AFL.

The Coalition's plan is on the table for all to see.  Tony Abbott has been clear - he believes climate change is influenced, somewhat, by human activity and he wants to help the environment through a real action plan - a plan that delivers RESULTS.

The plan will cost approximately $10 billion over 10 years from existing revenue and budget savings - its not a great big new tax on everything and not a threat to our economy or the cost of living.

Believe in climate change or not.  The Coalition's plan paves the way for a cleaner environment without the pain and inaction that comes from a great big new tax on everything from JuLIAR.

It's funny though, isn't it - your all for talking about Abbott and the Coalition, but not so keen on explaining this CARBON TAX or talking about JULIAR'S Government.

This government is in deep strife.  The comrades are desperate.

I can accept a plan with a determined result/outcome in the name of cleaning up our environment.  Fine, no problem.

Liberal or Labor had proposed it, I'm in agreeance.

What I can't accept is a big new tax on everything that has no defined outcomes and serves no purpose whatsoever for the environment.

None whatsoever.

On the back of JuLIAR's decision to scrap a number of Green Environmental government initiaives  --- let it be clear, Labor aren't passionate about the environment or saving us from the folly of "climate change" --- they are passionate about taxes and lots of them.

I think you've got it all wrong though thebas.

Wayne Swan, 6th March 2011

"What we're talking about here is an interim price which some people describe as a carbon tax and they can do that legitimately, it's just that it doesn't operate like a traditional tax; it is not deducted from your pay packet or anyone else's pay packet"

Wonder what they call the Goods and Services Tax in Wayne's World?

ffs

good to see Julia confront the calls of "lie" head on last night = they wanted an ETS and if they won we would've gone straight to it, they didn't so we are going via a carbon tax

i.e. an ets that BOTH parties campaigned for at the last election

Secong, i'd be very surprised if i receive any compensation for the carbon tax and don't expect to. i'll cop it sweet for the common good

Middle Australia needs a reality check not another cheque written by the government IMO

Middle Australia needs a reality check not another cheque written by the government IMO


farking disgraceful statement womble - do you actually engage brain before typing??

middle oz already struggling arent looking for handouts just a fair go

just for you womble

the poor - live predominantly on handouts and/or low wages

middle families with kids -usually both working to pay the mortgage pay taxes - get some childcare relief (obv this doesnt cut it with you although created a huge employment sector, ie no dole)bottom line just get by and subsidise the poor with taxes and no ability like the next level to reduce tax - there are literally millions in this position that just are happy to get by without being slugged top dollar all the time and more so with carbon tax - they dont aspire to be rich just be comfortable and happy to pay their way FAIRLY

higher end incomes - set up family trust and have business where expenses (cars etc etc) are covered - invest in property etc and get a tax break for increasing the personal wealth - net tax paid per dollar WAY Less than middle oz

fair dinkum womble i thought you actually had TWO eyes , please THINK about what comes out

wombleoz says:

good to see Julia confront the calls of "lie" head on last night = they wanted an ETS and if they won we would've gone straight to it, they didn't so we are going via a carbon tax

Pathetic.  You believe this gutter talk your dribbling wombleoz?

So Julia Gillard never said "there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead", is that right wombleoz?  She never said that days before polling day, is this right?  And Wayne Swan never called it a "scare campaign from the Coalition"?

Oh I get it, minority government is a mandate for LYING.

You must be awfully dizzing spinning such fkn nonsense wombloez.
i.e. an ets that BOTH parties campaigned for at the last election

The Coalition DID NOT campaign for an ETS at the last election.  Or what, we're going back to 2007 under Howard? 

You think the public's going to buy more lies from this circus?

Everybody remembers Kevin07's double dissolution trigger and they remember the Coalition's position after Turnbulls loss of leadership - it did not include an ETS.

How low can you go, wombleoz?  I'd hate to imagine.

do you play AFL Jez???  no, but you're still able to comment on Aussie Rules - same deal, just because i don't have kids doesn't mean i don't know the pressures families can face

i meant 2007 re the ets

i do agree with one thing you posted though - I mean I'm willing to acknowledge the bloating that occured in the Family Tax Benefit system under the Howard Government...

spot on - the whole system needs major reform

And Labor has reformed the system since the Howard government was disposed?  What hypocracy wombleoz.  Please get real.

And whats it got to do with a carbon tax???????????

One last thing, do you understand the difference between the 2007 election campaign and the 2010 election campaign?

The desperation reeks.....fair dinkum.