Jack could I suggest you take a look up the Snowy Mountains some time to see the effect of hydro generated electricity on the river systems.

Then there is the vast geothermal resources, I think the best in the world.

That’s without considering wave power or tidal energy.

All this has come up previously and frankly I’m too tired to dig out more specific detail now.

Concerning what you wrote about immigration I didn’t want to get into that on this thread. Tomorrow some time I’ll read it to see whether it’s relevant and/or brings something new to the table. If it doesn’t appear you’ll know where it’s gone.

The ultimate purpose of emissions trading is to price CO2 producing operations out of business. When this happens (if it doesn’t we’re stuffed) then Australia should have a natural advantage by having virtually unlimited renewable energy. So the market might make us the most competitive place to do certain things that require lots of energy.

What is your source for the fabled claim that AUS has “virtually unlimited renewable energy”? Is this just because the sun shines alot in the desert? Or that the wind blows freely accross the plain. I rather think you are underestimating the amount of sun that shines and wind that blows in other jurisdictions.

In any case, hydro power is the most popular and cheapest form of renewable energy this country has ever had. Dogmaticly opposed by Greenies when and whereever possible. It dwarfs the other forms of renewable energy.

Of the nearly 8 per cent of Australian electricity generated by renewables, 6.5 per cent is hydroelectricity, 0.8 per cent is bioenergy (power from reusing waste), wind accounts for 0.6 per cent and less than 0.1 per cent is generated by solar power.

But of course hydro is off the agenda. As is nuclear power. And immigration. How convenient for someone whose ideology was forged in the seventies.

Jack I’d like to leave the immigration debate aside completely

I bet you would. How easy it is to say “No carbon extensivity from more immigrants to see here. Just keep movin’ folks.” But dont think I am going to let you off the hook that easily.

AUS now has to meet some Kyoto-stipulated carbon emissions cap by 2012, arbitrarily selected from a base year of 1990. There are two ways of achieving it. One is to constrain the quantity of carbon emissions per person going out. The other is to constrain the quantity of carbon-emitting persons coming in.

Using only the first method is economicly painful but politically correct. Using only the second method is ecnomicly painless but politically incorrect. Personally I think we should go both ways, starting with the second as it is easy and simple to just say no more.

To give an idea of the magnitude of immigration on the carbon economy one only has to look at AUS recent population growth. In 1997 our pop was 18m. In 2007 it had climbed to 21m. Thats a 16% popn increase in 10 yrs. Probably 2/3 of which (10&) was immigration-induced.

So if we had decided to go for no net immigrants over the past decade we would have a pop of about 19m. Our pop would have been 10% smaller.

Over that decade we overshot our (non-land clearance related) Kyoto carbon emissions target by 25%. Given the relatively high carbon-intensity of immigrants (who have to form complete households from scratch) it is likely that we could have wiped off half our carbon overshoot with a zero net-immigration goal. (Simply aiming to replace high-IQ emigrants with high-IQ immigrants.)

With a moderate ETS, conservation and other clean energy projects we probably could have knocked off the other half. Without nearly as much economic pain or political conflict.

To arbitrarily place a taboo on one set of terms in the carbon conservation equation is intellectually dishonest and ideologically pernicious. But Greenies are willing to do that because absolutely nothing must be put in the way of their cherished (de)form of liberalism.

Of course the notion of “the world” deciding rationally anything in the public interest is a bit of a stretch. But the market might allow it to happen anyway.

The ultimate purpose of emissions trading is to price CO2 producing operations out of business. When this happens (if it doesn’t we’re stuffed) then Australia should have a natural advantage by having virtually unlimited renewable energy. So the market might make us the most competitive place to do certain things that require lots of energy.

Whether we rise to the opportunity and where we get the labour and skills is another matter.

On the 300K migrants, in the long run Australia has probably the best prospects of renewable energy resources in the known world. Provided that we can fees them and give them something to drink we should be processing minerals here eg. aluminium and steel-making. We should even be developing a major manufacturing industry for the sake of the planet!

This kind of jaunty talk about blue skies and greener pastures is more suited to naive economic booseers on the Right. Reminds me of Steve Martin joke about how you too can earn a million dollars and pay no tax. “First…earn the million dollars…”

You are saying that bringing in 300,000+ (why not 3,000,0000+?) poses no real problem to organising a carbon-neutral economic boom.

All we have to do is convert all our cheap coal power generating facilities to expensive renewables. Then we just find a whole bunch of extra potable water and arable land so that “we can feed them and give them something to drink”. Then we radically transform our industrial base from mineral extraction to “processing minerals here”.

I guess by that time, given our unlimited supply of cheap labour and the unlimited access to renewable energy, it is really a no-brainer for us to become “a major manufacturing industry for the sake of the planet!”. Those Chinese better watch out, their mineral processing days are numbered.

This is just fantasy island stuff.

The application of the precautionary principle implies that first, one should do no harm. That means stop digging the hole we are in. Which pretty much describes our current crisis in local geographical logistics and global ecological economics. Significantly driven by massive immigration flows.

But dont expect Greenies to mention this aspect of the Climate Wars. That would mean giving up some of their cherished hopes about rainbow diversity coalitions and the like.

Have Greenies (or Brownie for that matter) stopped to wonder how the civil culture will cope with a massive influx of diverse immigrants suddenly facing an ecologically-driven end to the money-go-round? I know it is impolitic to mention such things.

But my street-level observation already registers alot of social tension along those lines. Hence the Vic Govts out of the blue “diversity” campaign. Their polls are probably revealing some politically incorrect feelings out there in McMansion land.

Oh well, never mind, liberals will continue to whistle past the ideological graveyard. And then spend the rest of history composing apologies on behalf of long-dead ancestors.

jack, as far as I can see you had a 1 in 2 chance of being right. So congratulations!

Actually, one in three. You are forgetting the fence-sitting option so beloved of the crafty politician.

Ive made a large number of pseph calls over the naughties. All of which have been “on the money”. (whats your score, Brian?) So it cant be just dumb luck.

I am trying to egg or goad pundits into “keeping score” so that we actually build intellectually progressive models. The Oz-pap v Oz-blog Commentary Wars were depressing. The pundits invariably sound like re-hashed versions of student campus paper editorials c1983. Post-facto ideological spin rather than pre-facto psephological science.

The pseph bloggers are an encouraging sign. IF anything they are too empirical. Not enough general theory or local knowledge to guide them. So their scoring record is not as good as it could be.

Brian says:

Which intellectual discipline do you base your theories on? Is it sociology, politics, psychology or a discipline only known in the Strocchiverse? Perhaps you can run seminars for the pundits to improve their intellectual perspicacity.

In general I use the basic method of empirical scientific model building - general theoretical, local empitical leading to confirmation/contradiction and correction.

In pseph blogging I use the standard post-war behavioural political science. This is based on marrying the economic model of political structure (Schumpeter, Downs) with the sociological model of civic culture (Bell, Lipset). The post war US model of party behaviour seems to be getting more and more relevant to AUS now that we are in a more or less post-ideological age of mass political apathy and party convergence.

AUS politics is becoming extremely boring, mostly due to the petering off of the post-seventies convulsion of right-wing and left-wing liberal reformism. Howard’s Work Choices was the last of that push to fall by the wayside.

The Greens are, as per One Nation, a minor party exception that proves the rule. The major parties will co-opt their sensible policies, thereby marginalising them. The melting polar ice caps seem to have been their Tampa.

Which intellectual discipline do you base your theories on? Is it sociology, politics, psychology or a discipline only known in the Strocchiverse? Perhaps you can run seminars for the pundits to improve their intellectual perspicacity.

On the 300K migrants, in the long run Australia has probably the best prospects of renewable energy resources in the known world. Provided that we can fees them and give them something to drink we should be processing minerals here eg. aluminium and steel-making. We should even be developing a major manufacturing industry for the sake of the planet!

One way or another the LN/P will sign up to an ETS scheme. The general populace is forcing both major parties to converge towards a kind of rational populism, as per my Great Convergence theory.

So I predict that the LN/P will largely follow Turnbull-Howard ecology policy in accepting an ETS. Although it may dabble in Nelson style petrol price political whingeing.

The Strocchiverse, aspect Brendan Nelson, conveniently accommodates:

Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson has fallen into line with the coalition frontbench on emissions trading after a week of uncertainty over its climate change policy.

I am going to count that as a successful confirmation of my party-psephological model. I make a point of deriving testable implications for any theory applied to real world real time events.

I suggest that the La Pros could improve their intellectual signal-to-ideological noise ratio by imbedding their specific ideas within a more general theory, and then subjecting various aspects of that model to constant predictive testing.

I make no special claims to know about the genuine policy-ideological preferences for LN/P politicians. No doubt they are insincere.

But then how sincere are Rudd, Garrett Wong etc about curbing AUS’s carbon emmissions when they are signing off on 300,000+ immigrant increase in new carbon emitters for 2008-09? And supporting Costa’s private brown coal power generation plays?

A price on carbon will help shift electricity production towards alternative energy, but it will do little to change the transport sector. That’s not so bad. The primary issues to address are (1) land clearing; and (2) “dirty” coal.

That’s why I don’t think you should be worried about applying the price rise to petrol. If you increased the price of carbon-electricity but decreased the price of petrol… that would be tackling the big problem. The size of the petrol tax is not a major issue.

But this issue is 90% politics now… with only a smattering of policy thrown in for good measure.

The general populace is in favour of doing something serious policy wise about climate change. So the LN/P will fall into linee ALP on an ETS, just as the ALP fell into line with LN/P on the GTS.

So I predict that the LN/P will largely follow Turnbull-Howard ecology policy in accepting an ETS. Although it may dabble in Nelson style petrol price political whingeing.

To reinforce the psephological message: ecological sustainability policy is no different politically from national security, cultural identity, financial prosperity and social equity policies. Both parties face massive centripetal forces pushing them to converge on the populist Centrist policies.

I also predict that the ETS (where T = tarriff for trading or taxing) will set a carbon tariff that is fairly low. That is where the general populace will want it kept once it becomes obvious that the world has passed the ecologic and economic tipping points.

It appears that over the “tennies” the major carbon emitters - USA, PRC & IND - will not be making serious efforts to retool their energy infrastructure. According to Hansen it follows that the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets probably start to melt sometime during the twenties.

The polity will produce an ETS because the populace wants one. But the populace does not want an effective ETS ie one that reduces carbon emmissions to mid 20thC levels because the populace does not want to suffer a reduction in living standards to mid 20thC levels.

Particularly when it becomes apparent that nothing we do can forestall the headlong plunge into ecological meltdown.

The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will probably melt over the next 50 years.

Nice work there, Stephen Lloyd.

Mmmm , maybe Nelson is moving closer to a greeny inspired, waterloo.
Over to you Brian….

Seriously, you can’t herd them at the size they are, re-breeding mega-fauna (entirely possible) may not be the best solution if you can’t also control their flighty nature. While some work has been done on sheep for behaviour, not nearly enough has been done to reliably breed for it. You’d be on a 50 year hiding to nothing before even making a dent in it.

At this stage we have not “encouraged” Kangaroo production so with this numbers could be increased further. Will per capita meat consumption decrease - possibly

All up Kangaroo consumption is increasing in Australia basically on its health benefits alone which are quite substantial ( shown to treat heart disease and type 2 diabetes )the impact of monitoring greenhouse output will further increase its consumption leading Kangaroo meat to be a common meat on our tables in the next 5 - 10 years.

One interesting point. The Kangaroo you buy in Coles and Woolworths is packed in CO2 ( ironic ) in Qld we have to go local butchers and independent supermarkets to buy Naturoo as this is vacuum packed not modified atmosphere packed in CO2

Speers said its likely he got scared of Turnbull making a run and back down. I think its an indication the skeptics don’t have the numbers in the Liberal party room after all. At least no the ones who are willing to risk an election on skepticism.

The cow burps and puts some of the carbon back in the air as methane. The rest goes into building a cow. Fred eats the cow, grows breaths and shits. Some carbon in the air, some down the sewer.

Net result about zero; a little plus because carbon dioxide isn’t quite as bad a greenhouse gas as methane.

The problem is releasing carbon locked up millions of years ago; not todays carbon cycle. Next we will have people suggest we go around shooting kangaroos for carbon credits.

If your going to discount the carbon locked up when the grass grew, then no use talking about fuels based on growing stuff as a solution for the future.

Because we’ve known for a long time that there are a lot more options for stationary energy … That’s not true for transport.

Which is another way of saying, oil is so damn hard to substitute. Stationary energy is easier to substitute, not easy by any means, but easier.

I still can’t see there being much demand response at $40/tonne. What does that translate to in terms of retail electricity bills? If its in the order of 10-20% nothing will change because most households couldn’t tell you what their last electricity bill was anyway.

The real fun and games will happen when the cap is reduced. Lets hope the government doesn’t give the generators and easy out, like planting trees in Indonesia or PNG.

Carbonsink: as has been discussed many a time, long-term and short-term responses to price signals are two different things, and transport - particularly personal transport - is probably going to be one of the last sectors to be decarbonized

Why would transporation be the last sector to decarbonise when that is the sector experiencing the massive price shock right now (and according to the CSIRO, likely to continue) while electricity generation may or may not get a very small price nudge circa 2012, depending on the results of various green papers, white papers, political deal-making, and international negotiations?

I agree with you of course, but the only answer I have is oil is so damn hard to substitute. What’s yours?