Agmates

Climate modeling had predicted that climate change would hit the South of Western Australia the hardest with continual drought and heat waves. Why is it that the computer modeling is always disproved by the physical facts, yet we want to keep faith with the modeling.

It is really the biggest a case of the Emperors New Clothes since the fairtale was penned.

Farmers and fruit growers in the State’s south (Western Australia) are praying for warm weather to ripen crops after one of the coldest and wettest Novembers on record.

Farmers, already facing lower grain prices, are watching barley and canola crops lose value as wet weather hinders harvesting and allows pests to flourish.

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Viv Forbes [pictured] Farmer and Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition writes:

In Response to a Queensland government paper entitled ‘Towards Oil Resilience’.

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on Australian governments to focus more on energy security, particularly domestic oil exploration, production and refining capacity.

Far too much exploration land was locked up in No-Go areas such as marine parks, national parks, world heritage areas, aboriginal reserves and other restricted areas.

Oil tankers pose far more threat to the coastline and the Great Barrier Reef than would a few oil production platforms and far less eyesore and hazard than hundreds of wind towers.

A few inconspicuous oil wells would also disfigure the outback environment far less than thousands of solar panels. And they do less environmental damage than clearing or cultivating vast tracts of land for ethanol crops.

Australia is a huge island in a remote corner of the world. Everything we eat, export or import relies on ships, planes, tractors, trucks and trains. These all run on hydro-carbon fuels.

Yet every Ministerial statement on energy prattles on endlessly about wind, solar and geothermal energy. For the foreseeable future, our mobile machinery will run on oil, gas, or electricity from coal.

When the next war closes the Middle East oilfields or the sea lanes, Australians will be found trying to run their farm trucks on charcoal burners or waste cooking oil.

They will then remember the fools who locked up our own oil on our own land and closed every oil refinery with a totally unnecessary Emissions Trading Scheme.

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Whilst conservation, Green groups and Rupert Murdocks News media is pressuring the Rudd Government to announce deep cuts to Australia’s Greenhouse gas emissions, it’s own Climate Change adviser Professor Ross Garnaut is telling them not to go it alone.

In an article in today’s Australian Newspaper Professor Ross Garnaut writes:

“No country acting alone - not even the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, the US and China - can cause the risks of dangerous climate change to fall substantially by its actions alone. A co-operative effort involving all substantial economies is required.

Each country acting alone in its narrow national interest will calculate that it will be better off if it does as little as possible to reduce emissions, whatever other countries are doing, so long as it does not believe that its inaction will influence materially the actions of others.

In this, climate change is more difficult than other international policy issues.”

So what are the chances of an international agreement being reached?

It is more difficult than trade liberalisation, in which, despite the charades of trade negotiators, each country would be better off liberalising its trade whether or not other countries were doing so.

It is more difficult than arms control negotiations, in which there is at least a fiscal gain from doing more, whatever others are doing.

OK so the chances of reaching an international agreement on climate change appear to be worse than slim. What are the consequences of Australia going it alone. Garnaut is clear on this:

With climate change mitigation, one country acting alone accepts costs without substantial benefits.

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I spoke with Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce [pictured] by phone Saturday morning. Barnaby asked me to pass onto the Agmates community his thanks for our support over the past week.

At the end of a tumultuous week that could be the beginning of the end of the Federal Coalition Senator Joyce had just met with Liberal Party Leader Malcolm Turnbull over coffee at an Eastern suburbs upmarket coffee shop.

The two were meeting to discuss Senator Joyce and his fellow National party members crossing the Senate floor twice this week in defiance of Turnbulls instructions.

RATHER than being reprimanded for leading his party across the Senate floor in defiance of the Coalition last week, Nationals upper house leader Barnaby Joyce has been offered a promotion.

The Coalition is in trouble after four Nationals senators and two Liberal senators crossed the floor in the Senate early on Friday morning.

Barnaby Joyce knocked back a similar offer when he became Nationals leader in the Senate back in September. At the time he said he could not accept the position as he could not guarantee that he would ‘tow the party line.’ Nothing has changed.

This week saw some heroic stands made by these Politicians:

From the Agmates community’s perspective the National Party in the Senate lead by Senator Joyce were just outstanding this week. Personally I don’t recall ever having said this before about a Politician, but I am enormously proud of the four National Party Senators for their performance on our behalf in the Senate this week.

National Party Senators Barnaby Joyce, Ron Boswell, Fiona Nash & John Williams actions in crossing the floor twice this week in support of rural & regional Australiain’s showed  tremendous integrity, courage and loyalty to the people who elected them. Four Hero politicians.

A situation where Politicians put their constituents well being before Party Politics is about as rare as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd knocking back an overseas trip to a United Nations Conference.

I must also make mention of two more Hero politicians:

Family First Senator Steve Fielding & Independent Senator Nick Xenophon who both spent the week ‘in the trenches‘ alongside the Nationals fighting to save rural & regional Australia from the ‘carbon sink’ legislation and the removal of the $2 billion rural telecommunications fund by the Rudd government with the treacherous support of Liberal Party Leader Malcom Turnbull.

Almost Hero’s:

We should also offer our congratulations to Liberal party Senators Alan Eggleston & Alan Ferguson who made a stand and crossed with the Nationals. They are only half hero’s as they voted with the Liberals and Labor on the ‘Carbon Sink’ Bill earlier in the week.

The Five Senators from the Australian Greens, Bob Brown Christine Milne, Rachel Siewart, Sarah Hanson-Young & Scott Ludlam also score a Half a Hero award as they fought for rural & regional communities on the ‘carbon sink’ legislation but voted with Labor to steal the bush’s $2 billion telecommunications fund.

Political Villain of the Week: Malcolm Turnbull.

If a coalition is to survive and if Malcolm Turnbull [pictured] is to remain the Leader of the coalition he and his fellow Liberal front benchers will have to learn to listen to and heed the concerns and policies of the National Party before making policy decisions.

If Malcolm Turnbull & his Liberal Front Bench are not capable of doing that as this weeks events have shown, then either the coalition is finished our they need to find another leader who understands that there is more to life in Australia than the Latte drinking, metrosexual Eastern Suburbs of Sydney.

After having the numbers to block the ‘carbon sink’ legislation and the appropiation of the $2 billion dollar bush telecommunicatiosn fund and chosing not to, the conservative voters of rural and regional Australia can never again trust Malcolm Turnbull as a coalition leader.

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Over the next 40 years Australia will convert a staggering 84 million acres of productive food producing agricultural land into tree plantations to fight climate change. That’s over 6,000 acres a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, every year for the next 40 years.

That’s the result of the ‘carbon sink’ legislation that the Labor government with the backing of the Liberal party passed into legislation in the Federal Parliament this week.

In the face of Global Food shortages this policy is at best stupidity, at worse it’s a crime against humanity.

If Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal party had not supported Labor this legislation would not have passed as it was opposed by the Nationals, The Australian Greens, Family First Senator Steve Fielding and Independent Senator Nick Xenophon.

Rural & Regional Australia holds Malcolm Turnbull personally responsible for this appalling outcome. He had the numbers to stop it, but chose not to. We won’t forget that come the next election. Liberal or Labor have consistently demonstrated that they care nothing for the people who live outside of the Australian capital cities.

TURNING tens of millions of hectares of prime agricultural land into carbon sink forests to fight climate change would dramatically increase food costs, destroy rural communities and take substantial amounts of water out of Australian river systems.

The ‘carbon sink’ legislation just demonstrates that both the major political party’s, Labor and Liberal only govern Australia for those that live in the Capital cities.It is only the minor parties, The Nationals, The Greens, Family First and the independent Nick Xenophon who stand up for rural and regional Australians.

Head of the Australian Farm Institute Mick Keogh [pictured] said:

By altering land use patterns and locking up millions of hectares in carbon sinks, rural Australia is being made the “sacrificial lamb” for Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading system.

“The resulting reduction in farm output would have a significant impact on food prices, as well as major socio-economic impacts. This is the dark underside of the glossy and optimistic conclusions about the potential costs of an ETS.”

The National Party Senate leader Barnaby Joyce [pictured below] who defied Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull to lead his Senate team across the floor to vote against the legislation said:

The law was “completely mad - akin to an art movie. You don’t know whether to be shocked or to laugh. It is outrageous when the major threat to rural communities is not the international economy but domestic tax policy”.

The Australian Greens also voted against the Bill. Tasmanian Senator Christine Milne [pictured] said:

the Prime Minister must explain to the people of regional Australia “why he is determined to drive them off the land and further undermine the viability of their communities with another tax rort for plantations dressed up as climate change policy”.

Gippsland Farmer Robert Belcher, chairman of Sustainable Agricultural Communities Australia [pictured below] said :

“As soon as you take a farm, you take a family, you take kids out of school, money out of the local community,” he said.

“We have had to work really hard to get the average punter to realise he’s been dudded.”

Size of Agricultural land to be turned into carbon sink forests (source: ABARE)

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Agmates takes you directly to The UN Climate Change Conference in Poland. This official UN Climate Change Conference video will bring you a daily update. Be sure to check back here each day if you’d like to keep up with whats happening there.

At todays press briefing (the Fourth day) in Pozna? , Yvo de Boer gave an update on a number of areas under discussion, including Adaptation.

All Poznan Videos

NSW Nationals Senator Fiona Nash [pictured] may have been sacked by opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull for crossing the Senate floor but she has shown the people of NSW and Australia that there are politicians who care more about their constituents than their personal ambitions.

Of the four Nationals Senators who crossed the floor, Fiona Nash, Barnaby Joyce, Ron Boswell, John Williams , Nash had more at stake than the rest. Her job as a parliamentary secretary in the opposition cabinet.

Here Fiona Nash (FN) speaks with Business Spectator journalist Isabelle Oderberg (IO) :

IO: Now, as I understand it, Malcolm called you and asked for your resignation. Is that how it happened and were you surprised?

FN: Oh, look, I wasn’t surprised. I’m certainly aware in the past that there has been a requirement either in government or in opposition that shadow front benchers would give up their shadow position if they were to cross the floor against Coalition positions. I was well aware of that, so I wasn’t at all surprised. I was still disappointed of course, but absolutely believe that I did the right thing.

IO: The thing I’m a bit confused about is that Mr Turnbull has been quoted as saying “We’re not like the Labor Party. We’re a broad church and people are entitled to take a particular position on a matter of conscience”. So how does that fit in with what he then did? I’m a little bit confused. Are you able to shed any light?

FN: Isabelle, yeah, so was I! [Laughs] Well, obviously we’re not quite as big a broad a church as I thought. No, but I think what he was referring to was the general principle of those within the Coalition to be able to cross the floor without being perhaps tossed out of the party like they may well be in Labor. That does not apply to that next level, though, of holders of shadow positions.

IO: Did anyone try and talk you out of taking the position that you took?

FN: Yes they certainly did! But my family was saying “Go, girl. You’re doing absolutely the right thing”.

IO: So who tried to talk you out of it then?

FN: There were a number of people. Actually, there were a number of Liberals that thought that I should be perhaps paying a bit more attention to my ministerial future and their view was, as I understood, they said ‘Look, the vote’s not going to make any difference, you’re going to lose while you’re doing it’.

But to me, it was a matter of principle. I believed that the legislation was wrong and my role as a National senator is to make sure I try and make the right decisions by regional communities. I thought the legislation was fundamentally flawed, that shouldn’t be going ahead and that’s why I made my decision.

I saw elsewhere in the media (can’t find the link) that Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan used exactly that excuse for not crossing the floor even though he had campaigned strongly against the legislation.

From memory he said, I’m not doing it as it does not make any difference anyway.

Well guess what Senator Heffernan, it makes a lot of difference to us, your constituents.

Country Liberal Party Nigel Scullion abstained from voting to save his Human Services portfolio.

Both Heffernan and Scullion could both learn a lot from Fiona Nash about principle and integrity.

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Those that support including Agriculture in an Emissions trading Scheme might just care to explain:

Where will our milk come from?
Click on video to watch.

The EPA has floated the idea of taxing farmers for each of their cows.

Hanehan estimates it would cost about $175 per cow, per year.

He milks 1,300 cows.

“It would probably be around $230,000 per year for our dairies,” Hanehan said.

“You can figure that that’s pretty much going to wipe us out.”

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Agmates takes you directly to The UN Climate Change Conference in Poland. This official UN Climate Change Conference video will bring you a daily update. Be sure to check back here each day if you’d like to keep up with whats happening there.

Yesterday’s (day 3) Yvo de Boer on the progress of the Pozan, Polan Climate Change Conference currently being attended by over 10,000 people from 119 countries in Poland.

All Poznan Conference Videos

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Nationals Senator Ron Boswell [pictured] writes.

Queenslanders can expect even more draconian electricity price increases under the Federal Government’s proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

Queenslanders have had three increases in the maximum charge price for electricity since the industry was deregulated, but these increases, large as they are, will be insignificant compared to the electricity cost increases expected under the Rudd Government’s proposed ETS.

Treasury modelling predicts that, under a CPRS -5 scenario, the average wholesale electricity price will increase by 66% in Queensland between the years 2010 and 2015*.

This increase in the wholesale costs will translate to an average household electricity price increase of 21% in 2010 under the lowest target ETS (CPRS -5) and a 44% price increase in 2013 under the Garnaut -25 scenario**.

The modelling shows that the Rudd Government’s Emissions Trading Scheme will be a huge cost burden on Queensland Families.

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