An Open Letter to All Members of Parliament

An Open Letter to All Members of Parliament
From the Carbon Sense Coalition

Soon our elected representatives will be asked to vote on Senator Wong’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

This scheme is not about carbon or pollution. It main effect is to provide for a cap on the human production of carbon dioxide, a colourless harmless natural gas. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than oxygen or water, the other two atmospheric gases on which all life on earth relies.

The bill will also levy a tax on whatever carbon dioxide is produced, and levy an excess production tax on anyone whose production exceeds the legal cap. It is a carbon dioxide Cap-n-Tax Bill.

There is no human activity whatsoever that does not generate carbon dioxide. Therefore any attempt to measure, cap and tax human production of carbon dioxide must eventually extend to every human activity (the UK government already floated the idea that every person be issued with a personal carbon ration card).

This is a very serious proposal, with wide-ranging implications for all aspects of economic life and personal freedoms. It could only be justified if there was a clear and urgent danger that additional human production of carbon dioxide is highly likely to cause dangerous global warming. There is no evidence that this is the case.

Neither the scientific questions, nor the cost benefit analysis has been subject to any critical independent analysis.

The diagram below illustrates the sequence of decisions that should be made before this bill gets assent. If the answer to ANY ONE of the boxed questions is “NO”, there is no justification for Australia rushing ahead with its Cap-n-Tax Bill.

This diagram, although light-hearted, has a factual basis and conveys some very serious messages.

It is highly unlikely that anyone could honestly answer “Yes” to every question, which is what is required to justify passage of the bill. This shows that there is a high likelihood that the bill will have NO CLIMATE EFFECT WHATSOEVER and thus a costly exercise in self delusion.

Our strong recommendation is that the Parliament rejects this bill entirely.

Thomas L Friedman lost the Ball

In the New York Times op-ed piece by TL Friedman (which I know is only an opinion piece) he seems to have lost the plot. He correctly mentions the failures of cap-and-trade - but poo-poos it anyway. He then goes on to say:

STRATEGY Since the opponents of cap-and-trade are going to pillory it as a tax anyway, why not go for the real thing — a simple, transparent, economy-wide carbon tax?

His next main point:

MESSAGE Climate change is a real threat to a healthy planet Earth — the only home we have.

Well, I would strongly dispute that! In fact he is wrong there. The climate of the healthy planet Earth has been changing since the beginning of time. The continuously changing climate has not harmed the healthy planet Earth in the past and I'm sure it won't in the future.

Does he mean the scurrillous use by globalwarming alarmist of the term "climate change" when they realised that the Earth had stopped warming? They did this because the Earth had stopped warming!