Climate Change, page-856

I'll summarise my argument and then you can read details belowCO2 is increasing, it is probably largely manmade, the planet is warming but not drastically, whatever we do to reduce co2 will make no difference because there is a tide of extra co2 emissions coming out of India and China next decade that will dwarf what the west reduces. We are better off spending money to grow our economy, R@D new technologies and adapt. Going down the transition path will cripple our industries, make China richer and achieve nothing in the big scheme other then virtue signaling.

To answer your questions/replies
Bhutan - my points are 1) without reliable, cheap and abundant power, you can't grow non-service industries and you can't solve unemployment (net zero in itself won't make jobs whereas cheap power does) 2) the ABC held out Bhutan as a net zero success story, but it is a poor economy to compare to Australia as our living standards and power requirements are substantially higher. Bhutan is subsistence economy so it doesn't use much power.

You - Sorry, let me clarify - it was not all in the atmosphere at once. It was all in the atmosphere at once, the plants and animals sequestered it over 100's of millions of years.

You - But you also ignored the point where I said when CO2 was much higher, it was also much warmer. Equally there have been times in much more recent history where co2 hadn't started increasing and temperatures were much higher then the surrounding years. For example the mid 1880's had a co2 of 290 compared to 1990 that ranged from 355-365 but average temperature was colder in the 1990's then in the 1880's. Hangon but co2 was higher but the temperatures were lower. This is drawn from the peer reviewed pages2k consortium. https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201788. Graph is below, so clearly something in addition or other then co2 is playing a role.

Co2 is increasing – agree

It’s man made – I’ll agree but it’s debatable that all isman made

It’s causing warming – I agree it’s warming, but I disagree that it is all caused by co2 and the amount of change is debatable I also point out that water vapor has the largest greenhouse effect (over 50%) and that scientists models are extremely poor at accounting for water vapor and cloud cover, but they are good at curve fitting.

The reason why I disagree the amount it is warming is
a) the degree of warming is dependent on when you set your base.
b) most records have been homogenized aka adjusted from the original measurements)
c) people confuse weather with climate. In fact, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization defines climate as a thirty-year average, although climate researchers will sometimes discuss averages over a period as short as ten years. So changes in the weather from one year to another do not constitute changes in climate.
d) Water vapor is the most important of the greenhouse gases. Of course, the amount in the atmosphere at any given place and time varies greatly (the humidity changes a lot with the weather). But on average, water vapor amounts to only about 0.4 percent of the molecules in the atmosphere. Even so, it accounts for more than 50 percent of the atmosphere’s ability to intercept heat. A water vapor molecule on average spends less 14 days in the atmosphere so it is difficult to model.
e) predicting future effects of co2 on the climate is not science, in the words of the IPCC "The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible". —Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – May 2018. s
f) It was an early-on (1990s), oft-repeated slogan used to hype computer models that said the Earth was warming at an uncontrolled, runaway, even catastrophic rate, as a result of humans’ unbridled use of fossil fuels. But then the “pause” arrived. Measured global temperatures—the physical evidence—didn’t significantly rise or fall for twelve years. Instead, they flat-lined, in spite of a continuing rise in atmospheric CO2 levels. So, those touting global warming switched to “climate change” about 15 years ago. Climate change supposedly allows for temperatures to warm, cool, or stay the same. It is better in that sense. "Using the data that were available at the time (through 2012), the last climate report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that there had been no statistically significant increase in global surface temperature from 1998-2012."

It is going to cause a disaster – disagree, the earth has been significantly hotter, human deaths from natural disasters are have seen a 99% decrease in the past 100 years, and mankind is adaptable (According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.)

We can do something to decrease the worlds co2 – disagree, it's a fools errand. The population has increased 3 fold in 84 years! Let that sink in, we had 1/3 of todays population 84 years ago! These extra people breathe out 255kg of co2 a year, or an extra 1.5 b tonnes a year without doing anything else. 84% of people (that's over 6 billion) live in third world countries that are exempt from reducing carbon. These are also the countries who are industrializing and are poor, so they will always use fossil fuels as these are the most energy dense, reliable and cheapest forms of energy. Fossil fuels will increase in total tonnes used over the coming decade despite net zero policies in the west.

Will the world get to net zero - never, there isn't enough minerals for the first round of buildouts. Check out Simon Micheaux (who is on your side of this argument) a world leader in this research. He and his team have created bottom up models that work out exactly how much of each mineral we need. See the table below, we are orders of magnitudes deficient. For example for a 48 hour buffer we need 1200 times the total lithium mined in 2019 !

So what should we do in my opinion – 1) use fossil fuels to create cheap power and develop industry in Australia instead of outsourcing to China – this creates jobs, self reliance and wealth. 2) spend some of the money that is used in subsidies for greenwashing to fund innovation into co2 abatement 3) put the rest into a fund for adaption (if needed).

"Should the Australian government subsidies any fossil fuel company at all? "

Once again this is a misleading statement promoted by organizations with an agenda. The bulk of these subsidies are not paid to fossil fuel companies at all, the bulk is paid to business's to refund most of the fuel exercise tax to companies that use diesel Here is a better explanation

• There are two main parts to the fuel tax system. First, fuel tax is collected from the producers or importers of fuel when fuel leaves their depot or terminal (the terminal gate); currently charged at a rate of 46 cents per litre (CPL); and second, a system of fuel tax credits (FTCs), which refund fuel tax to eligible businesses so they are not taxed on fuel used as a business input.
  • FTCs are worth around 39% of the total tax collected
  • Three quarters of FTCs are paid to businesses in the mining industry; the transport, postal and warehousing industry; and the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry.
  • The fuel tax and FTC systems are used together as a means of charging heavy vehicle operators for their share of the cost of road infrastructure. This is done by reducing the FTCs they receive so that they ultimately pay a net amount of fuel tax that represents a Road User Charge (RUC).
• The FTC system means that fuel tax is mostly paid by household users of fuel.
• Adjustments to the fuel tax arrangements have been used to address cost of living pressures associated with rising fuel prices. The most recent instance was the 2022‑23 Budget measure Addressing Cost of Living Pressures – temporary reduction in fuel excise, which halved excise rates for the six-month period from 30 March 2022 to 28 September 2022.
  • this measure provided temporary relief from high fuel prices for households, but the operation of the FTC system means that it provided limited relief to businesses.

So the difference between the fossil fuel rebates/subsidies is that they are paid to end user businesses, which helps reduce the cost of goods i.e. if they didn't then significant inflation would be seen at supermarkets, and in cogs.

The green subsidies are exactly that, they are paying to subsidise an inefficient resource to make it compete. For example most states have a 10% environmental tax on your energy bill, which is used to pay for solar wind etc. As a side a little known fact is that when power leaves the power station is its about 9 c per kw, then the state governments put a tax on it of approximately 140 - 150%, depending on the state to transmit it to your door. So to summarise the fuel rebate is a tax rebate, green subsidies are not a rebate of a tax already paid they are simply a handout.

Mining companies (although not just fossil fuel companies) paid $64b in income tax and royalties last year, in addition to gst, payroll tax, land tax etc and employing 264,000 people earning on average $144k each. The Australia Institute, greens etc always portray the negative but always ignore the positives of industry.

Regarding climate change not being more important than poverty, education, clean water etc . Lets say you have $20 billion to spend on all of them, what do you spend on each of these problems and why. This question is one of the most important and never discussed, economics is all about funding priorities. Have a look at leading economist Bjon Lomberg who looks at how best to spend money to solve the worlds greatest problems. https://lomborg.com/

Personal efforts leading the way - Regarding your personal efforts to reduce co2, putting solar on your roof does little to reduce co2 output as the base load still needs to be generated (you can't spin up and down coal for when the sun is out or not). In addition you have probably unknowingly (as I have ) been complicit in promoting slave labour. 50% of the worlds poly silicon is made under slave labour by Uyghurs (https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/images/storyboards/solar/Solar.pdf). I find it deplorable no Australian government has ever discussed this or stop market leading Chinese firms from selling these into Australia

You are clearly of the opinion that we should lead the way as you've mentioned it a number of times. All change should start at home. I ask this not to be a smart alek but to find out why. Seriously why don't you have a lithium battery bank, 240v inverter and unplug from the grid. You could do that within a month and then report back here on how much you've saved and how well it's working. I built two cabins in 2018 on a remote property we were rehabilitating. The cabins were 100% off grid (only because it cost $120k to run power in) , we caught our own water, treated our own sewerage and harvested our own power when the sun was shining. Trouble was there were regular periods when the sun didn't shine and the batteries would run out and our power was supplied via a diesel generator.

I think I've covered off all your replies and questions but if I've left something out let me know.

Below is the coal plant tracker that shows coal plants being built. Nothing is going to stop India and China from industrialising and this will mean no policy in the west will stop co2 growth. We are on a fools errand, reducing our emissions and coal while China increases its emissions and coal and sells us the EV, batteries and wind turbines. We are growing weaker while cashing up a communist dictatorship that has undergone the largest military buildup in the worlds history. I had a manufacturing business in China for 5 years squeese casting, hammer forging, and die casting. We setup in China because energy was too expensive in Australia, so I have some experience with the consequences of bad energy policy and the mindset of the CCP.

Thanks for engaging in a respectful manner, although we have different viewpoints.