Thread: Australian Politics.

Originally Posted by kiwigeo

You havent heard the latest?!?

The super mining tax is going to be replaced with a super woodstash tax.....indexed according to species and which way it's sawn.

Oh noes now I will have to hide it too ....mmmmm bottom of the fireplace accounts
I wonder if I burn it in species if I can re-constitute it when I need it??
Pete

Originally Posted by fxst

Oh noes now I will have to hide it too ....mmmmm bottom of the fireplace accounts
I wonder if I burn it in species if I can re-constitute it when I need it??
Pete

If you burn it then you'll have to make sure you've got enough carbon credits stashed......theyre going to rejuvenate the Emissions Trading Scheme.

This is how it works and how stupid we are
We have 600 hectares of forest. Last cut around 1973. Ready for cutting in the next 10-20 years.
I'm prepared to lock it up and sell the C credits for around (say) 50K a year. Not ever cut a tree for ever!
That is OUT under the way the system works.

To gain C credits I have to clear all the trees and plant a plantation of monocultured trees.
I can then sell the credits....... and we have lost 600 hectares of mixed NSW bush.
But we have C credits that the Govt can claim
So I guess my stash will be on the ground in the future.....

What a mess and the next Govt will also be a mess.....a Gillard one won by hiding her and Labor's true face from the nation by going to an early election.
What do we know about her? She never answers a question, just smiles and simpers about being a red head..
Great. Even NZs looking better....
Greg

Greg but not only monocultured trees don't they have to be of a specific kind; some kind not being acceptable others acceptable.

Originally Posted by wheelinround

Voting Greens will still get you a Labor government.

You can still choose your preferences. That goes for whatever party you vote for; Shooters, Christian Dems, Family First, etc. If you forgo putting in your own preferences you may as well donkey vote IMO.

The Carbon Trading scheme was cooked up by the same people who cooked up "Colateralised Debt Obligations" and "Sub Prime" mortgages. The money can only ever go one way, and that is to the entities that control derivatives trading. It is very bad policy. But both sides of Aussie politics are beholden to financial engineering ideas so I dont hold much hope really. Notice how there is no "Big Bank" party.... we dont need one.

Don't know about this in any depth, I won't really be cutting down 600 hectares to plant a plantation, but others will.
They are a nightmare. They planted a blackbutt forest near Wauchope in 1972 and are currently cutting it down.... totally, burning and replanting. All wildlife disappears. The old foresters selectively cut every 30 years or so, so wildlife could coexist and biodiversity continue. With the 'green' forestry C Credits schemes, you just get a mess but the city centric greenies feel good as global warming will benefit from such schemes....... Sure......
Greg

Originally Posted by Greg Ward

Even NZs looking better....
Greg

Actually I think NZ looks pretty darn good. My partner and I went over for 2 weeks with a view to possibly emmigrating. I concluded if you were comming to Australasia from another place NZ is a clear winner. The trouble is the advantages compared to the aggravation and cost of moving there from here are pretty much balanced. The biggest negative is their terrible wages, but if you don't have to work...

Regarding the carbon tax did anyone else notice they have put an ex Macquarie investment banker in charge of CSIRO. My poor ex employer has been unders seige by politicians and other sorts of criminals for 20 years. This is another big nail. His first announcment was a greater focus on global warming. Of course the profits the finance industry will make from carbon trading have nothing to do with any of this...

It would be the silliest thing in the world to put a scientist in charge of a scientific organisation.

Green politics certainly has a lot to answer for, as has the finance industry.

One of the problems I see with being green is the narrow view most people take of what that means. Planting trees and protecting forests is wonderful and an absolute must for more reasons than anything to do with global warming.

Our political masters still have not made a real connection between the need to be green by turning to smater USE of energy. The real problem with global warming is the vast imbalance betwen what is emitted into the atmosphere as carbon and what the photosynthesising biomass can soak up.

I mentioned in another debate that UQ had developed a process that extracts twice the energy currently extracted from a given mass of coal. Surely this should be funded and pushed into use as quiclt as possible.

Or are there too many vested financial interests that will be upset by this??

Originally Posted by artme

I mentioned in another debate that UQ had developed a process that extracts twice the energy currently extracted from a given mass of coal. Surely this should be funded and pushed into use as quiclt as possible.

Or are there too many vested financial interests that will be upset by this??

The problem here is the coal types used in power generation through Australia. There are quite a few and all have different levels of combustion problems. So what works with one type of coal may not work with another.

Also is the process commercially feasible. Money is sunk into coal fired power stations to extract the max amount of heat possible from the burning process. So any vested interests are definitely on the power station side, and that vested interest is in cutting down costs to make more heat. SO any power station owner would be interested but again commercial viability.

Originally Posted by artme

Green politics certainly has a lot to answer for, as has the finance industry.

I think there has been a lot of misrepresentation of Green politics. I am very sympathetic to the environment so you may call me green, just dont call me a Greens voter! But greenies come in all shades of green. There is a lot of pragmatism as well as idealism. I really dont think Greg's situation makes any sense at all and really doubt most environmentalists would think anything else. The problem is that sections of the media have characterised policies as "greenie driven" when in fact policies such as emissions trading came from the big banks in America. The very ones that gave us the GFC. There are hook ups between Green organisations and industry and greenies push hard on reduction of consumption as the main way to reduce carbon emissions. Ideas such as cogeneration and regenerative machinery have their genesis in the green movement. So as with Labour movements, Womens movements, Aboriginal movements, or any other kind of non "L" organisation it is wise to check the organisations own material rather than rely on what an "L" politican or shock jock tells you what the policy is as they will spin as hard as they can to retain the duopoly they are so comfortable with. As we are in a phase where people are losing faith in the machinations and blatant lying of both "L" parties the green movement will cop a lot more flack and a lot of it will be lies and fear mongering. As with all things one will need to do ones own research and draw ones own conclusions.

One major point of difference with Green movements is that their policies tend to be backed by academic research and so the movement has to a degree emerged from the universities of the world. This is also why they are not explained so well and easily misunderstood. Most people want to believe what is plausible not what hard facts and research indicate as truth. Another confounder is that science and research are processes of discovery and so ideas will change as the emerging facts change. This is of course anathema to religious organisations and well entrenched political parties. A terrific example is law and order policy where incarceration rates have little to do with overall crime levels but personal income is the prime driver.

Does this make Green politics elitist? I dont think so as most people I have met are capable of thinking for themselves. Generally we are not encouraged to do so but fed slogans, logos, spin etc. Where facts are replaced by rhetoric we have the beginnings of a problem.

Have to agree with most of what you say Sebastiaan. I should have qualified my original remark.

I call myself "green" also. I don't like waste, I believe in the conservation of the natural environment to the greatest possible practical extent.

What you say about fear mongering and demonising is very true. The evolution of the green movement in Tasmania is a clssic example of this. The tie-up between the politics of the state and the vested interests is in plain sight for all to see.

This brings into view another point about Oz. Politic. State rights. Over the years I have witnessed this dog in the manger attitude coupled with the parochial bleatings of both politicians and he media _ "keep your nose out of our business, this is ours."

It's time we all realised that the interests of all of us are at stake, not just those in one state.

I may not know a lot about some things but I can tell you for nothing I know about coal. I spent many years of my life researching the stuff.

It's really easy for some self-agranding academic to issue a press release telling us about some wonderful new discovery. The truth is mostly they are either outright wrong or the idea makes no economic sense. I remember years ago some twit from QUT doing a news paper story about a flying saucer they'd "invented" to fly around airports dispersing fog. The thing was about a meter across.

The fossil fuel industry is a simple thing. They are in the business of making money. Consumers want cheap energy and those two facts are what keeps us using oil and coal.

The fact is we have tremendous reserves of oil and coal, it is the really cheap and easy reserves that are drying up. Electricity is generated from the cheapest grades of coal because the good stuff is used to make steel. Most of the bowen basin in queensland goes overseas to the steel works in china and japan. Queensland's economy won't be fussed at all if they shut down coal fired generation tomorrow. Most of the coal in NSW and Vic goes into generation because it's low grade.

artme: Your assertion that there is a "vast imbalance betwen what is emitted into the atmosphere as carbon and what the photosynthesising biomass can soak up" is incorrect. If there were a vast imbalance we'd be in a LOT of trouble. The reality is there is a small, barely measureable, increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over time and even the most rabid greenies accept that human activity is a small percentage of the total created. I've already ranted and raved about the misinformation on global warming and I'm not going to revisit it at length here. If you want to discuss that we'll reawaken the GW thread. What I will suggest is that you clearly distinguish between facts backed up by solid data and the propoganda spouted by both sides of this religeous war.

Originally Posted by damian

The fact is we have tremendous reserves of oil and coal, it is the really cheap and easy reserves that are drying up.

Not quite correct. We have large reserves of coal and gas but not the case for oil. The untapped oil/gas reserves are largely offshore in deepwater and mostly in gas prone Basins (eg Browse).

Originally Posted by damian

Electricity is generated from the cheapest grades of coal because the good stuff is used to make steel. Most of the bowen basin in queensland goes overseas to the steel works in china and japan. Queensland's economy won't be fussed at all if they shut down coal fired generation tomorrow. Most of the coal in NSW and Vic goes into generation because it's low grade.

The coal used for power generation, steaming coal, and the coal for steel, coking coal, has little to do with cost as you suggest.
Steaming coal and steel or coking coal are two totally different coal types. Steaming coal does not produce the correct coke structure for steel making so it is not used. That is the resulting coke lump is not strong enough to maintain is shape, it breaks up too easily, ie powders.

You can use the term grade but it is in some ways incorrect as you are actually talking outside a coal type.
Lignite
- steaming coal Victoria
Sub-bituminous coal
- steaming coal South Australia
Bituminous coal
- coking coals
- steaming coals high end of the bituminous type
Anthracite
- steaming coals