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Philip
Experienced Roboteer
Joined: 18 Jun 2004
Posts: 3842
Location: Queensland near Brisbane
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Sorry, I missed this post.
No. I am not a climate change sceptic. Climate change has been happening for thousands of years. We have been getting warmer and cooler.
However, I am sceptical of the view that humans are having such an impact. I still remember, when I was in primary school, humans were going to cause another ice age. It was a scientific fact and you could not question it.
The climate has not risen by a few degrees in a century. It has risen by between 0.5 and 1 degree. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
Hypothetically, an atmosphere full of CO2 would be poisonous, but CO2 is a fraction of a single percent of the atmosphere.
Why do you say that an increase of 2 degrees will destroy the Great Barrier Reef? There are coral reefs in waters closer to the equator than the Great Barrier Reef. They are healthy.
I agree, Australia is rich and should actively reduce pollution. We would probably have the same outcome in mind. My concern with our CO2 tax is that polluters will simply move to countries without CO2 tax.
Australia was never going to directly suffer the GFC. The Keating and Howard economic reforms left the economy in a strong condition. Keating did a lot of good in the early years. Such as floating the dollar, removing import taxes, superannuation.
This isn't a question of political lines. Gillard has made a good call in supplying uranium to India, IMO. The people of India need access to cheap power. They need clean drinking water and refrigeration etcetera. Gillard will help these people by helping them develop nuclear power generation. They don't even have the CO2 emissions of a coal power station.
The GST was generally revenue neutral. It replaced sales tax. Keating was going to do something similar to the GST. The CO2 tax does not replace another tax. In that regard, the two are incomparable.
From memory, the CO2 tax will lose 4.6 billion dollars over four years. You rightly say that it will change into an ETS in the future. Australian businesses will be able to buy pollution permits from other countries. The federal government will have pay the compensation while it loses the income. How will they make up the shortfall? Will Gillard raise taxes or cut spending? I might start an offset company in Nigeria and sell permits to Australia.
Have you noticed that we can quantify the dollar loss, but they do not quantify any temperature improvement?
Climate change is a reality. It has happened for thousands of years and it will continue to happen. _________________ So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems
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Fri Nov 18, 2011 5:30 am |
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