Mainstream Climate Science” is a stagnant swamp beside the real river of science.

Cartoon: By Foden.

By Viv Forbes
, Chairman,

The Carbon Sense Coalition.

Mr Kloppers of BHP says that “the mainstream science is correct, and we need to stabilise (and eventually reduce) the carbon concentration in the atmosphere”.

This is an amazingly sloppy comment from the head of a company whose shareholders would expect it to rely on good science and accurate language to run its businesses.

Firstly, no power station these days puts “carbon” into the atmosphere. Carbon is a black sooty substance produced as a result of incomplete combustion of coal in open fires and dirty old fashioned boilers. In modern boilers, all carbon is completely burnt to produce invisible, non-polluting, life supporting carbon dioxide.

Secondly, to describe the shallow agenda-driven model manipulation and data-fitting from the IPCC that supports the case for de-carbonising Australia as “mainstream science” means his minders have not kept up with the science nor the debate.

Real science on the causes of climate change has gone far past the fairy story that carbon dioxide controls climate by causing global warming. Even a high school science student could tell him that carbon dioxide has “ZERO HEATING ABILITY”. It will not burn, nor is it radioactive. The very best it could ever do is cause a slight reduction in the day-time heating and night-time cooling of the earth’s surface - nothing that could be measured on a normal thermometer. A kindergarten student, however, could observe that the sun has tremendous heating ability, causing global warming of twenty degrees or more in a single day. Fluctuations in that fiery furnace, and in the clouds and ocean currents generated by solar heating, are far more significant in causing short term and long term variations in surface temperature.

Those in the exciting forefront of climate science are doing real experiments in cloud chambers and studying cosmic rays, solar cycles, ocean currents, and the enormous heat released from the “Rings of Fire” under the oceans during volcanic episodes. BHP’s own stratigraphers could give Mr Kloppers more real data about past climate change than will ever be learned at an Al Gore science fiction movie. What he believes is the “mainstream” of climate science is driven by political agendas, government money and private vested interests – it is a stagnant swamp beside the real river of science. All over the world, common sense physics, correlation studies and now the unfolding science relating to solar and ocean cycles, cosmic rays, clouds and volcanoes have gone well past the scare stories of Al Gore’s “settled science”.

At least some coal companies have not lost their wits or their courage. See the following submissions to the US EPA by Peabody Energy, the biggest coal company in the world.

A Carbon Tax for Everyone Else?

The Carbon Sense Coalition today accused BHP of poor science and poor fiscal policy in advocating a carbon tax for everyone else.

The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that a carbon tax would have no beneficial effect on the climate but very negative effects on every Australian except the Big Australian.

Forbes explained:

“Is it sad to see the Big Australian joining Big Government, Big Unions and Big Business in supporting a Big New Carbon Tax.

“The whole purpose of a carbon tax is to force us to use less of every product or activity that produces that harmless gas-of-life, carbon dioxide. The big producers are electricity, steel and other metals, petrol, diesel, cement, timber, beef, lamb, dairy, wool, travel and tourism.

“A carbon tax is thus a tax on the cycle of life and the essentials of life. It aims to force cost increases effectively creating an artificial scarcity and economic decline.

“Which products does Mr Kloppers plan to do without?

“He says we can make this tax “revenue neutral”. The Soviets ran a revenue neutral fiscal policy for decades – “they take 100% of your income and spend it all”. If it were truly revenue neutral it should go back, exactly, to those who bear the cost, with no bureaucratic handling charges and no diversions to your favourite green charity. This would be a zero sum game (and impossible) so why talk about fiscal myths?

“Of course BHP’s massive Australian mining exports will be exempt, and its big operations in Africa and South America will never face a carbon tax. And nuclear power will get a gigantic boost from a heavy handicap on coal power. Guess who owns the biggest uranium mine in the world?

“This is just a destructive proposal by the Big Australian to levy a Big Tax on all other Australians.”

Disclosure: Viv Forbes, a geologist, was once employed by Utah Development Company in the team which proved and developed the coking coal deposits at Goonyella/Peak Downs in Australia’s Bowen Basin and which was later taken over by BHP. However, in those days CEO’s were better informed on the science of carbon. They would never have swallowed the urban myth that we could alter the climate by taxing the gas of life, carbon dioxide.