Sunday 30 March 2014

READ AND PASS ON TO AS MANY AS POSSIBLE.

I have copied this from Larry Pickering's Facebook page so that HIS ARTICLE  can be distributed everywhere to your friends etc.
Everyone must start taking stock of what is happening with these blokes being let loose in Australia - this could just be the beginning of what we do not want for our country.
There are already 60,000 visa overstays in Australia NOW.  Do you know where they are?  I do know some are being put up in motels across the country - EVERYWHERE.  I would like to know what they are doing whilst getting free board and lodgings at our expense.  They are housed from Cairns in the north to Melbourne in the south that we know of.  Some bloke in Victoria has government contracts for his motel for such a thing.  The government apparently wanted to take over his whole motel but he said that he did not want to lose his regular clientele so has leased a certain amount to them.  This was under the Gillard reign.
30,000 unprocessed illegals were let loose by Rudd and Gillard.  Where are they??
The aim is for Larry's article to get to as many people as possible so feel free to pass it on to all and sundry.
Cheers,    Bev
 
 
Picture:   Ali Jaffari
Larry Pickering
Today ·
ALI JAFFARI STORY EXHIBITS REAL PUBLIC CONCERN

There’s a message for PM Abbott in the public’s response to the Ali Jaffari story. Over the weekend Facebook registered more than 400,000 hits, recorded a ‘reach’ of almost 500,000 and over 6,...500 shares and climbing. The Pickering Post website crashed, despite having just moved to bigger server.

The avalanche of white-hot hostility toward the decision of Geelong Magistrate, Ron Saines, was unmatched in its genuine rage.

This issue is not about race (sick perverted paedophiles like Jaffari infect every race) it’s about a judiciary which tolerates an alien culture over ours.

Yet the judiciary is required to reflect the values of our culture... and it clearly does not!

The judiciary is a self-regulating body and, as with all systems that are permitted self-regulation, it will eventually become corrupt, undemocratic and fastidiously self-protective.

The appallingly low quality of Australia’s magistracy is a consequence of how they are appointed. They are failed lawyers, otherwise they would still be in lucrative practices.

Law firms don’t sack unwanted lawyers, they simply nominate them for the magistracy and the Attorney General signs off on them.

Even Julia Gillard, who is guilty of the worst of “lawyer” crimes, wasn’t sacked, she was politely asked to quietly leave.

Paedophilia is over-represented in the judiciary, religion and the entertainment industry. Actually it’s more than over-represented, it’s rampant, systemic and cleverly disguised.

Western nations practise the same paedophile sickness as do Islamic nations.

The difference is that Western nations secrete it while Islamic nations wear it as an emblem of their “culture”.

Australia has welcomed and befriended people of varied cultures world-wide. We have always been multicultural, and we are much the richer for it.

There weren’t enough of us in the first fleet to populate or develop a nation. We were reliant on immigration to become one of the world’s major economies within a short 200 years.

The diverse cultures of China, Japan, Greece, Italy and many other European, African and Asian nations have joined our own unique culture to enrich the Aussie lifestyle.

But there is one culture that is alien to Australians who have, until now, welcomed all-comers... and that’s the culture of Islam.

I can already hear the loony Left screeching “racism” and “xenophobia”, but no fellas, it has nothing to do with race, it has everything to do with “culture”, a culture that will not, and has no intention to, assimilate and join in our celebration of multiculturalism.

Islam is an archaic culture embracing paedophilia, beheadings, severing of limbs, rape, incredible cruelty to animals, subjugation of women, sexual abuse of children and an innate, violent hatred of Christianity and democracy.

Everything we stand for, they stand against.

Anyone daring to challenge their beliefs is met with a death sentence in the name of their Allah.

Islam uses Western tolerance to further encroach on and destroy our social structures. That’s its aim, and it’s working, because we are allowing it to work in the name of racial tolerance when there is no connection to “race”... it’s a cultural coup.

Illegal boat arrivals were/are the worst of all adherents of Islam, they stood little chance of being accepted using normal immigration channels (witness the latest ABC doco).

Yet the Rudd/Gillard/Green Government let 30,000 loose in our communities, unprocessed.

Is it any wonder Middle East Crime Units have been deployed?

How many reports of gang rapes, shootings and killings are now appended with the description, “men of Middle Eastern appearance”?

They should also append the non-descriptive term, “men of Islamic conviction”.

They have developed their own bikie gangs and have already established a Sharia banking system right here in Australia that severely financially disadvantages Australians.

We are their resolved enemy and there is an intention to break down our social structure to enable a "caliphate".

They make no secret of this intention, it is preached and foretold from the mushrooming mosques Green councils are encouraging. (Greens too would love to see our capitalist society destroyed.)

Stopping the boats may have turned off the tap but the flood of unwanted Islamic culture Labor/Greens left us with still remains.

For Australia to survive the coming Muslim onslaught that Europe is now suffering, we need changes that defy the false tag of “racism”.

If the evil destructive chain of Islam is not broken now it will in future be impossible to deport indoctrinated generations of Islamic youth. They will be Australian born and bred!

Mosques must be monitored and radical clerics charged under the threat of deportation when they promote violence, hatred or defiance of Australian law.

Muslim immigrants must be made to swear an oath of allegiance to Australia and its laws and culture. The oath must supersede all Islamic and Sharia law. Violation of that oath must carry penal provisions.

The subjugation of women, child sexual abuse (including under-age betrothal) and sexual mutilation under the guise of “culture”, must be made accountable for under current Australian law.

“Culture” must not be allowed as a defence or an excuse for any illegality.

The Burkah must be banned. (That’s a no brainer.)

Islam must be shown we will no longer tolerate its vile excesses. Islam interprets our weakness as the first sign of total acquiescence.

We cannot do a damned thing about the 30,000 unprocessed illegal immigrants of Gillard and Rudd. We’re stuck with them.

If we ever call them in for processing, the ones who fail to respond are the only ones we’ll need to worry about.

There are 60,000 visa overstays here already who we have no way of locating.

Illegal maritime arrivals don’t simply chuck their papers overboard so we won’t know who they are, the lack of papers or ID makes it nigh impossible to deport them.

With 80 per cent of illegal arrivals on welfare weighing heavily on our already burgeoning culture of entitlement, we are slowly becoming insolvent.

Unless the Government takes a stand now, as governments in other battered countries have, the Islamic vote will, in a very few decades, dictate a new repulsive Australian “culture”.

In the meantime, if Abbott has control of the Senate by July, (and he is likely to have) he should look closely at reforming the judiciary to make it accountable to, rather than alien to, genuine public sentiment.

Flood Plains are for Floods

by Viv Forbes
Between 1997 and 2010, there were 171,700 new homes constructed on flood-risk areas, with a peak of 14,500 in 2006
Photo sourced from the UK: Mail Online
River quango has allowed 190,000 new homes on flood plains since 1996 despite concerns they could be uninsurable


Every month or so TV screens are filled with images of desperate people somewhere battling a flood.

Floods have been reshaping the Earth for billions of years. And some past floods were far larger than modern floods, evidenced by the width of many flood plains - seldom are they completely flooded today.

The majority of cities and many country homes were built on flood plains, and for good reasons - closer to water, with fertile soil, better groundwater, flat country that is easier to build on, near good fishing holes and shady trees, and periodically re-fertilised with silty topsoil. Sensibly, many early settlers built their homes on stilts.

 
We hear alarmist stories about the soaring costs of floods. That is not usually because the floods are bigger – it is just that more people are building more costly homes and infrastructure on flood plains near the mouth of scenic rivers.

Those who choose to build/live on flood plains must accept the costs that go with it – occasional flooding and expensive flood insurance. But a nice home on flood-prone land will usually cost less than a similar home on the hill with views.

Long term flood problems are increased when government steps in and “helps” those who buy/build on flood-prone land with repair subsidies, public works or insurance caps. This allows risk-takers to escape the real cost of their decisions. Then more people build on flood plains.

Flood diversions and levees may not help – too often they just shift flood water from one piece of land to another. Commonly, they also increase water speed, thus increasing the erosive power of the flood.

But governments must ensure that essential infrastructure is relatively flood-proof – roads, railways, airports and electricity should remain operational during most floods. And strategically placed dams will moderate the extremes of both floods and droughts.

Global warming can’t be blamed for more floods because, for 17 years, there has been no global warming.

Flood plains are for floods. Those who choose to live there must expect to get flooded.


Viv Forbes,
Rosewood    Qld   Australia
forbes@carbon-sense.com

Photo sourced: Can you move an Entire town up hill YES YOU CAN in QLD
This blog documents the flood damage to Grantham in the Lockyer Valley Qld and how the houses were rebuild on higher ground off of the flood plain. 
Previous related post:

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Saturday 29 March 2014

Rural debt crisis: What crisis say the banks

Rural policy failure has lead to a recognised rural debt crisis especially amongst northern cattle producers and the wheat belt of Western Australia. .
But how do you fix a problem if you don't know how big it is?

There was no QRAA rural debt survey in 2013 because the banks just refused to participate.

This youtube is a speech by Queensland Senator Barry O'Sullivan in the Senate chamber on the 27th March 2014.




With the banks refusing to participate and thereby no 2013 rural debt survey represents a significant information gap for policy development – therefore it is hard to accurately gauge the extent of the issue of debt, particularly across Northern Australia, where drought and the 2011 live export suspension have crippled communities.

The Australian Bankers Association believe there is not a rural debt issue in Queensland.

However, the latest available survey (from the Queensland Rural Adjustment Authority rural debt survey in 2011) found the beef industry total debt of $9.17 billion in 2011 was up 17.2 per cent from 2009. The beef sector represented more than half of the total rural debt in Queensland (where 66pc of the national herd can be found). The number of borrowers only increased to about 6,500, up from 5,660 in 2009.

Beef industry borrowers considered non-viable increased from less than 1 per cent to 6.9 per cent of the total pool (loan classes below A and B+) in the period.

 Given the impacts of the live export suspension decision, the ongoing drought and an extended recovery period likely, this debt position is expected to have deteriorated and the potential for significant industry debt reduction in the short-term is likely to be limited.

The banks need change their minds and participate or at least explain their decision.

Wednesday 26 March 2014

PRA: Farmers exposed to CSG contamination risks


Property Rights Australia Media Release:

MLA negligence exposes beef producers to unnecessary risks


Image created with Wordle
Property Rights Australia is calling for the immediate release of a report funded by Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) to determine beef producer liability if cattle are found to contain residues due to coal seam gas activity.
The report completed 12 months ago was never released with the consulting law firm advising that it should not be “due to the fact that it advises liability.”
Joanne Rea, chair of PRA said, “The question of liability lies heavily on the minds of cattle producers in coal seam gas areas and the reason why the research project was initiated. The non-release of this report raises so many questions starting with, “Did MLA and Cattle Council Australia (CCA) not question the validity of the law firm’s advice?  Surely they have a greater responsibility to the levy paying cattle producers.”
 
Instead of releasing the report CCA issued a communique which suggests that having signed a National Vendor Declaration producers are liable for any contamination. Beyond the essential advice that landowners should seek professional advice the information in the communique is not fully informed or helpful especially given the naivety of advising, “Find out about the CSG operator. It is important to be sure that you are dealing with a reputable company”
“It is unconscionable that MLA and CCA has left unchallenged the transfer of all the risks to the cattle producers and have not been diligent and proactive to find the means that producers may enjoy full indemnity from an often uninvited guest who shares the same business space,” said Mrs Rea; “Levy payers are not just PIC numbers; they are often farming families who would be devastated financially and emotionally if left exposed and subjected to quarantine because of contamination.” 
Landowners who have had specialist legal advice and where precise provision has been allowed for in a Conduct and Compensation Agreement may or may not have some protection in an event of coal seam gas contamination but not so neighbouring properties.
PRA believes that landowners need to be guaranteed complete indemnity for all adverse impacts, both immediate and consequential, upon their business, land, water and assets. Landowners need the assurance that redress is not just available for the life of the resource project.
The funding and structure of MLA and CCA are subjected to the current Senate inquiry into Grass fed beef levies. At the March 10 Canberra hearing evidence was given that the majority of MLA project reports are not released. Senator Heffernan said. “Even if (those figures) are just 10pc right, if you get a research grant surely you have to account for it.”
Joanne Rea reflecting on this remark said that, “Even if it was the case that only this one report was not released with no action taken the potential ramifications for producers is so great, an indication that MLA and CCA have been highly negligent.”
Chair of the Senate Inquiry, WA Labor Senator Glenn Sterle, remarked at the Canberra hearing, "It seems everybody is making money except the poor bugger on the land."
 

Guess who is still spreading dumbly opinionated rubbish over on JG?

No prizes, but here are a few clues: 

  • He once hid behind the sobriquet of JT.
  • While possessing the most fragile of glass jaws, he prefers the perennial 'tough guy' approach to anyone who has had the temerity to disagree with his boringly Googled 'expertise'. While smarting and crying over any return comment that might be a little 'robust' and at least in the past, not unknown to making oblique references to 'taking action', he happily sets out to abuse and ridicule others who aren't Courtiers to the Great Man. 
  • One of his loudest complaints was to feign outrage over any comment relating to his grammatical problems.

Well, guess what? I  think he is worse!  :-) Today, while stuck in a Tassie resort looking after a grand child who developed severe tonsillitis soon after my wife and I, a daughter plus sick grandchild and a totally livewire younger brother arrived, I made my first 'out of interest' visit to JG for some months. And this is what I quickly came to:

"........ Now about Vivienne. - Vivienne disliked the arguments around the Gladstone/Great Barrier Reef questions promoted by John C Fairfax, John Mikkelsen and occasionally by Alan Mikkelsen.
There was involvement with the Greens angle and associated Great Barrier Reef blog. It did get quite nasty, but I felt that there were other agendas there, with J.M. promoting his journalistic ability to gain access to another newspaper, and too much interest shown by certain Green members, with an election coming up. Why none of them ended up in court for their derogatory comments about the Port Authority, the management of the Port and politicians has me amazed.

Vivienne posted asking me to let it go, and I didn't."

What planet is this opinionated, hypocritical ratbag living on?

It's perhaps not surprising that that particularly inaccurate bit of venom was preceded by a lengthy outlining of his own busy, research - filled and much - to be - applauded recent use of time, together with a 'chuckle, chuckle' (to quote the Great Man again), uppity spelling correction directed at one of his current 'opponents' who is subject to continuing ridicule. You can't guess it? Well it concerns the wrong use of 'your' for 'you're', as the abbreviation for 'you are'. That, along with the use of 'its' as a possessive, whereas it is actually the abbreviation for 'it is', were just two of his own problems! I detected that early in the piece and took great delight in politely pointing it out to him, knowing (with a develish grin) that it would send him right off his hypocritical planet.  :-)

So JT / GH whomever you may be, should anyone who may be a continuing member of JT bring this to your attention, rest assured you brought it entirely on your miserable self, with the grossly inaccurate words which you posted above.

Regards to all
al





Saturday 22 March 2014

The battle over Abbot Point

 by Alison Jones and Dr Brett Kettle

Reef park approves dumping plan
Abbot Point near Bowen in Queensland. Source: The Australian

“Save the reef” has become a popular catch-cry among many environment groups, with Greenpeace’s Great Barrier Reef website shared more than 125,000 times on social media to date. It and many similar campaigns have focused heavily on “massive dredging, dumping and shipping” for coal and gas ports, particularly the recent Abbot Point dredging decision.
There is no doubt that there are reasons to be gravely concerned about the Great Barrier Reef, with less coral in some parts of the 2300 km ecosystem than three decades ago (the finer points of the issue are detailed here, here, here and here).
Yet groups such such as Greenpeace, the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS), WWF, as well as The Greens, some scientists and, increasingly, the media and community, are wrong to portray dredging and dredge spoil disposal as a major threat to the reef’s survival.
This deliberate misrepresentation of the facts is evidenced in a recent comment by Felicity Wishart from the AMCS that: “If we are scaremongering it’s because the evidence is clear that there are real concerns to be worried about.”
Rather than saving the reef from decline, “scaremongering” over the Abbot Point dredging plan and the subsequent diversion of management, research and conservation efforts, are now threatening to undermine efforts at tackling the more serious issues facing the reef.
We risk seeing hundreds of millions of dollars poured into studies, offsets, monitoring, campaigning, legal costs and holding costs unrelated to the major factors that really affect the reef – just at a time when every available dollar is needed to focus on measures aimed at improving the reef’s resilience.

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Wanted: reef science free from politics

Image sourced: Reef hysteria
According to the Australian Institute of Marine Science, nearly half of the reef’s decline to date (mostly in the southern part of the reef) can be attributed to impacts from cyclones, 42% to the crown-of-thorns starfish, and 10% to coral bleaching.
It is clear that the Abbot Point disposal site has no coral or seagrass and that risks from dredge spoil are low. Even ardent opponents of dredging have acknowledged that it is possible to manage port developments properly, pointing to the 1993 dredging at Townsville as an example.
Of the many dredging programs in Australia, there are few cases in which trigger levels have even been breached, and none where impacts have exceeded those that were predicted.
If coral really has declined by half since 1985, as reported by the Australian Institute of Marine Science study, Australia appears to have as little as a decade to identify solutions, and then another decade to trial, implement, and scale them up.
If that time frame is correct, then it is even more urgent that we avoid devaluing the role of science in helping us “manage, mitigate, adapt or even discover solutions”, as Australia’s Chief Scientist Ian Chubb recently wrote on The Conversation.


A more urgent set of priorities

Granted, scientists need to get better at predicting and measuring the low-level, long-term, far-field and cumulative effects of dredging.
However, most of the technical ambiguity around dredging impacts is about fine-tuning tactical operational issues of dredge operation, or the optimum location of material placement to achieve a balance of community priorities.
The more important science challenges for the future health of the Great Barrier Reef are aimed at sustaining its various uses. These include improving our knowledge of how the reef changes and adapts to disturbance, and learning how to manage the reef to minimise harm and to boost its ability to recover. These will involve refocussing a bewildering array of scientific resources into a unified strategy.
So what should we be putting more effort into if we’re to look after the health of the Great Barrier Reef in a future that includes accelerating change?
Significant funds that might otherwise go to research are currently spent on trying to remove Crown-of-Thorns Starfish, even though scientists acknowledge that “manual killing can only work on the scale of a few hundred square metres”. This is despite the fact that the causes of outbreaks are still inferred, rather than known with any confidence.
Nutrients in municipal sewage are discharged all year round, but the relative risk this poses to the reef compared to that in agricultural runoff and flood waters, is still unclear.
Maintenance dredging, which involves the removal of fine sediments from near the coast, has the potential to reduce catchment-generated fine sediments that impact coastal reefs. The extent of this possible benefit has not been studied.
The ultimate problem is that the body of science available is often incomplete and there is no overarching, risk-based synthesis.

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Intervention

If the Reef indeed faces accelerating change at a time when human uses also continue to accelerate, then it is inevitable that intervention programs for high value reefs – currently confined mainly to small-scale starfish control and coral reseeding – may become more urgent.
Mangroves, corals, seagrasses, fisheries and even the seabed itself are all capable of deliberate manipulation if it were deemed necessary to do so to protect, preserve or enhance a use or value of the reef. Options like building artificial coastal wetlands or even “barrier islands” to protect the coast might seem outlandish, but are technically feasible.
Yet little of the underlying science for this has been done, leaving a significant policy gap to guide potential future works. We should start studying these problems now.

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Barriers to decision-making

As scientists, we like to imagine that regulators devour our work and convert it into useful policy. The unfortunate reality is that our work is unintelligible to all but a handful of people, and in the real world, reef users struggle to adapt their everyday practices to such complex advice.
For instance, reef managers now insist that industries that use the reef should incorporate the concept of resilience into their impact assessments. But many are understandably frustrated at being asked to adopt something so poorly defined.
Scientists need to rise to the challenge of translating their work into practical guidelines that can be implemented today. In the words of another contributor to The Conversation, “scientists should be provoked into thinking about the way science advice is given and how they communicate".
This also means shying away from “scaremongering” that masks the real issues, creates widespread confusion and destroys the public’s confidence in their ability to rely on scientists. Its time for scientists to reject scaremongering or distortion of their results; to produce more cogent and practical guidance for policy makers; and to restore the faith of the community in science as a tool to help solve environmental problems. For the Great Barrier Reef, the clock is ticking.

Originally published as: The battle over Abbot Point risks losing the Great Barrier Reef war

Cross post under The Conversation republishing guidelines.

Conversation logo

Wednesday 19 March 2014

Disappointing; water drillers smeared with CSG asbestos drilling mud

 
by Ian Hansen
 
With regard to the asbestos being found in drilling mud, I find it very disappointing and irresponsible that Mayor Ray Brown finds a need to place the water drilling industry under the same umbrella as the CSG drilling industry with his statement "the same mud is used in many water bore drills".

The drilling mud additive in question is ‘nutplug’ consisting of mainly ground walnut shells used in the drilling process to stop lost circulation.  This is where the mud is lost to porous formations.  Whereas this product and others similar are freely available to all in the drilling industry it is not favoured by most water drillers as they tend to block the aquifers and make it difficult to develop a bore to its full potential. 

Mayor Ray Brown Western Downs Regional Council outside a gas fired power station in his electorate. Photo sourced AFR


I have been drilling water bores within the artesian basin of Queensland for more than 36 years and have never had the need to use these products in any of the formations within the GAB.

Also with current restrictions on town water supplies after major flooding in the recent past, and a moratorium stopping towns people drilling bores to supply their own water, people are becoming increasing frustrated watching millions of litres of precious ground water from CSG production being wasted in evaporation ponds. 

This is after the original big sales pitch by the CSG industry that there would be abundant water for industry, urban and some agriculture needs.

With Origin applying for 100m/l of allocation per year from the Huttons to supply their power station and Miles being granted 800m/l per year from the Precipice sandstone, would it not be more beneficial to first utilize the CSG water rather than placing only more pressure on our ground water supplies?

Could Mr Brown as Mayor of the Western Downs and also a Gas Fields Commissioner, please explain why CSG water isn’t being used. Is it because of CSG companies demanding cheaper options; is it because the quality of the water can’t be guaranteed or is it because consistent volumes can’t be supplied?

Why is it necessary for the CSG drilling industry to use lost circulation products, such as "nutplug", when water drillers have been able to construct water bores in these same formations without it.
 I find it very disappointing that Mayor Ray Brown sees the need to try to involve the water drilling industry into this issue

Previous article by Ian Hansen
 

Monday 17 March 2014

Peter Spencer: NFF withdraws funds



by Ian Hampton

NSW farmer Peter Spencer outside the High Court, Canberra
Peter Spencer, photo sourced ABC
On Thursday 6 March, on the NSW ABC Country Hour, Michael Condon interviewed Hugh Nivison, Chairman of the Trust administering the Australian Farmers Fighting Fund (AFFF). 
 

The interview was in response to Spencer supporters informing the Country Hour that the fighting fund assistance used to back the legal fight against the Commonwealth had been stopped, and that this untimely withdrawal has left Spencer 'high and dry' at a critical time as the case is getting closer to going to trial.

 

However, when challenged by Michael Condon, Mr Nivison said that was not accurate.  Mr Nivison “blew a bit of smoke”, saying the fund had only committed to funding the process of legal discovery and is now looking at the documents to see if any more assistance is warranted, according to the merits of the evidence.  He also said "It is a complicated issue and we want to have a look at the evidence before we make a decision on where we go to from here," he said.

There is a report on the issue, and an audio of the interview on http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-06/nrn-spencer-case-funding-in-limbo-6-3-14/5303300

Nivison’s statement lacks credibility.  Peter Spencer’s solicitor, Mr Peter McKell was advised by letter in January that the funding was to cease and the letter is clear and makes no such qualification.  It includes the following words “the Trust has now carefully reviewed the above matter post discovery.  As a result of this review the Trustees have formed a view to no longer support the case, and the Trust therefore will provide no further funding for this matter (Spencer v The Commonwealth of Australia)”.

The AFFF website home page includes the following two statements:  

Established in 1985 - by farmers for farmers - the Australian Farmers' Fighting Fund (AFFF) provides financial, legal and professional assistance to farmers facing major issues that have the potential to set legal precedents.”
 

“The AFFF supports farmers in their fight against unfair and unwarranted barriers to the development of sustainable farming practises and vibrant regional communities.” 

Surely the Spencer case meets both of these tests.  One has to wonder why the AFFF Trustees firstly, and without qualification withdrew the AFFF funding, and when challenged resorted to making politician like statements about their support – when the Fund’s continued support is most needed.
 

The Spencer camp are not inclined to let the issue rest; it is hoped that a supporter will be interviewed on NSW Country Hour in the near future to clearly put forward the facts of the issue.
 
Previous related posts
 
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Sunday 16 March 2014

Clean Coal and Gassy Money and Wasted Energy

by Anthony Cox

NECESSARY: University of Newcastle Professor Behdad Moghtaderi says a
$30-million research grant paves the way towards cutting methane emissions.
Clean coal or CO2 capture is a failed idea. Retired metallurgist John Harborne described why in a 2009 article at Online Opinion.

Basically the energy required to extract the CO2 from the coal is about the same as produced by the burning of the coal and the waste takes much more room to bury than was created by the coal which was mined.


This hasn’t stopped huge grants been given to university researchers to explore the technology afresh. The latest grant is $30 million, the biggest grant ever received at Newcastle university and one of the largest single research grants in Australian grant history. This grant is not for capture of CO2 but to capture methane, CH4, and then to change CH4 into CO2 and then to release the CO2 into the atmosphere.

The lucky researcher, and why wouldn’t he be smiling , Professor Behdad Moghtaderi, said “greenhouse gases still needed to be reduced.”  Professor Moghtaderi further said “methane and carbon dioxide were greenhouse gases but the latter was the lesser of two evils as methane was 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.”

This frail justification initially depends on the existence of global warming and ignores the fact that the rate of increase of global levels of CH4 is both falling and below IPCC predictions. Even the IPCC is of the view that a catastrophic release of CH4 is unlikely.

In addition the opportunity cost of this huge grant has created discontent amongst other researchers at Newcastle university. One such researcher noted:
I had lunch with some Uni people the other day, including some senior academics.  One of them, a senior professor involved in the approval process, was explaining to us how difficult it is for research applications to gain grant money these days.  Even good applications are routinely turned down.  They have to be very, very good or even superb or exciting (in their view) to get approved for grant money.  There are just too many applications for the funds available. $30m is an absolute huge amount.  That same money could easily fund 60 - 100 small to medium research studies that could look at 'useful' things for humanity.  When I was involved in some Uni research, years ago, we would be happy to get any money, sometimes only $5000, to do a small study.  You can't do research on your own funds, the Uni won’t allow you to use their equipment or facilities or staff.  That's because of insurance and Admin. wouldn't get their cut of the money (which can be substantial, like 10-25%).  So Prof. McMillan, the executive and Admin. would love this grant.  Doesn't matter that the research is crap - the money is good.  Prof. Moghtaderi should know that gassy mines already pump out methane for safety reasons.  They could mix that pumped out air/methane with natural gas and burn it in a small electricity-power station, if they are so concerned.  They don't need taxpayer and mining industry money to fund this !@#$%^!”
This final point is not quite true. Some underground mines, which all have varying degrees of “gassiness”, obtain permission to build small onsite power stations using the CH4 extracted from the coal seam.

None however have permission to sell in commercial quantities the huge amounts of CH4 they extract. Nor do they want to. Gas is an energy competitor and how the coal mines dispose of their excess gas enables them to reduce their CO2 tax burden.

What the mines do is place a pipe into the gas deposit which is usually above the coal seam and then the lower specific gravity of the gas carries it up the pipe. No fracking required!

What happens next is a national scandal. That gas coming up the venting pipe is burnt. The pipes are called flares or “candles”. At one mine in the Hunter valley there are 3 of these candles each 20 meters wide. They have an ignition switch above ground and they burn 60000 litres of CH4 per second!

Another less gassy mine is gearing up to burn 10,000 litres per second.

I haven’t done an energy conversion for that but it is sickening.

A brilliant energy source going up in smoke due to Green taxes, opposition to fracking and industry pig-headedness.


In the meantime Professor Behdad Moghtaderi is going to spend his $30 million in developing other ways to waste this energy source.

Reblogged from Australian Climate Sceptics - LINK

Monday 10 March 2014

Engineering the Emissions Target Depression.

By Viv Forbes


The Climate Change Authority wants Australians to cut their production of carbon dioxide to 19% below 2000 levels by the year 2020.

The climate boffins should employ a demographer before they set such unrealistic goals.

The population of Australia in 2000 was about 19 million and it is now 23 million. By 2020 it will probably be over 25 million.

If Australia’s production of carbon dioxide was merely frozen at the 2000 level, that would require a 24% reduction per head of population by 2020.

If we add to that a real reduction in total emissions of 19% by 2020, emissions per capita would need to fall by 39% in just 6 years.


Cartoonist Steve Hunter
Even more unbelievable, China (supported by the UN/IPCC) thinks that developed countries “need to cut emissions by 40% from their 1990 levels by 2020”. This would require Australia’s per capita emissions to fall by 60% to just 40% of their 1990 levels. All achieved within the next six years.

Nothing real gets produced or done without generating carbon dioxide. Every working car, truck, tractor, dozer, quad bike, boat, helicopter, bulk carrier and aeroplane generates carbon dioxide. None of these will be powered by wind-mills, sunbeams or nuclear power in the next six years. How will they force us to use 39% less of them – carbon ration cards?

Making steel, bricks, cement, bitumen, minerals, metals, food, fertilisers and roads produces carbon dioxide - shall we each use just 61% of what we did in 2000?

Humans, cattle, sheep, pigs, barbeques, champagne and beer also emit carbon dioxide – shall we ration these too?

And Australian trains, lifts, supermarkets, operating theatres, refineries and power stations will not keep working 24/7 without base-load electricity from coal and gas, both generating carbon dioxide. Who is volunteering for living with brown-outs, blackouts or irregular “Earth Hours” for about four months of the year?

There is one way to achieve these goals – “The Tasmanian Solution”. Send 40% of our remaining industry to Asia, and convert Australia into a quiet green utopia of genteel poverty. This should create sufficient unemployment and reduced consumption to achieve the required emissions austerity.

Is the Climate Change Authority engineering an emissions target depression to achieve its savage cuts, or is this just another mindless model-driven target? We should demand to see their detailed plans for achieving these targets.

Carbon dioxide is hugely beneficial for all plant life, and its effect on global temperature is tiny and probably beneficial for most people. There is no evidence that carbon dioxide causes extreme weather. Man-made Climate Policy is a far greater and more certain danger than Man-made Climate Change.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the tide has turned in the war on carbon. Global warming stopped seventeen years ago; the carbon price collapsed a year ago; the EU is backpedalling on its disastrous green energy gamble; Russia, China, India, Japan, Canada, USA, Brazil and South Africa will not sign any binding Kyoto agreement; China has plans to build 160 new coal fired power stations in the next four years; and Tim Flannery has been sacked.




Calculations for those who wish to check:

Climate Change Authority Targets:

Year
Population (Million)
Emissions Total
Emissions per head
Index emissions per head
2000
19
100 (say)
5.26
100
2020
25
100
4.00
76 (24% reduction)
2020
25
81 (19% reduction)
3.24
61 (39% reduction)


China/UN IPCC Targets:

Year
Population (Million)
Emissions Total
Emissions per head
Index emissions per head
1990
17
100 (say)
5.88
100
2020
25
60 (40% reduction)
2.4
41 (59% reduction)

 

Viv Forbes,
Rosewood    Qld   Australia
forbes@carbon-sense.com
Viv Forbes is a science graduate, mineral economist, financial analyst, farmer, Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition and has spent a lifetime studying the primary industries and the weather of Australia.

If you would like to read more see:

Climate Change Authority to propose 19% cut to emissions:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/climate-bodys-19pc-emissions-cut-to-heat-up-climate-debate/story-e6frg6xf-1226838724414#

No Global Warming for over 17 Years:
http://sppiblog.org/news/11163
http://sppiblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Monckton-graph1.png

European Carbon Price falls to Junk Status:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/04/carbon-trading

Global Temperatures continue to fall:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/fifteen-years-into-global-cooling-the-team-continues-to-maintain-their-scam/

China calls on developed nations to pay $400 billion and cut Carbon Dioxide emissions by 40% by 2020:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-06/china-calls-on-rich-nations-to-give-490-billion-for-climate.html

China and India building four Coal Fired Power Stations per week:
http://www.thegwpf.org/china-india-building-4-coal-power-plants-week/

The Green Energy Bust in Germany:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/green-energy-bust-in-Germany

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