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Hard on the heels of hearing about Alcoa slashing its production of alumina in Victoria, came the news of Sorbent moving its manufacturing of toilet rolls to foreign parts – we can only hope that standards are maintained – and then, just the other day, we learnt BHP is probably going to mothball its West Australian zinc mining. Three examples of a long-running continuation of deindustrialisation being given a big kick-along by the self-flagellation of replacing cheap coal power with intermittent, unreliable, expensive renewable power.
If you think that the loss of industry and jobs will give Chris Bowen, or Lily D’Ambrosio, Victoria’s minister for climate action, or any of the other climate cultists who dominate federal and state parliaments, any doubt about the wisdom of their cause, you have another think coming. You’ve mistaken these people. They are not for turning. Ouch! I feel like a traitor for using Lady Thatcher’s expression for the likes of these deluded nincompoops. Still, to be fair, to them net zero is sacrosanct, a deity. Imagine primitive people of yore making human sacrifices (modern form: manufacturing and mining jobs) to the Sun God and you will have it about right.
Madelaine King, federal resources minister, is reported as wanting the world to open up a new premium-price market for Australia’s cleaner zinc. Hmm? Good luck with that strategy. Have we got a deal for you, Chinese battery manufacturers! Why pay $1.10(US) per pound for zinc from Indonesia when you can pay $2.10(US), help out Australia and infinitesimally lower global CO2 emissions. I have a feeling it’s not going to float. What do you think?
But hold on, I read in the Weekend Australian (paywalled) that Kevin Rudd is exploring markets which might pay an “ESG premium” for Australia’s zinc. Who knows what can happen with Kevin 07 on the job. We can only hope that those “Chinese rat-f*****s” don’t again put a spoke in his wheel.
In case you have any doubts about the madness abroad among Australia’s politicians, recall that the Safeguard Mechanism in its new format comes into play in this current financial year. Among other industries, it hits any mining and manufacturing concern that emits more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2-eq) per year. The Clean Energy Regulator establishes a baseline of emissions which will have be reduced by a flat 4.9 per cent on the baseline until 2030. Thus the burden becomes proportionately harder each year. Companies failing this burdensome requirement will need to purchase carbon credits in the marketplace. It’s a carbon tax by another name and imposed on industries which are already struggling with increasing energy prices and international competition. You couldn’t make it up.
Australia is heading down the tubes. It takes a while to run down rich estates. It’s hard to detect at first. Eventually, as in Argentina, the economic gloom descends. Either studious incompetence or national self-loathing can wreak economic havoc. In Australia’s case we have both. Which is which? A clue: the sign to the latter points to the green far left.
And lest we forget. All of this self-imposed pain is because of a tenuous hypothesis that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 will bring about Armageddon. There is not a scintilla of compelling evidence in support of this hypothesis, which is based on tendentious modelling. It is speculation pure and simple. Many (very) prominent scientists reject it. To name just a few off the top of my head: Richard Lindzen, John Christie, Roy Spencer, John Clauser, William Happer and I don’t want to miss the late Bob Carter. There are many. See the CO2 Coalition for more examples. And, without doubt, many more would likely dissent from the manufactured received wisdom but for fear of cancellation.
One claim that is often made to support global warming is that sea levels are rising. The CSIRO puts it this way:
…data has shown a more-or-less steady increase in Global Mean Sea Level … of around 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/year [during the first two decades of this century] … more than 50% larger than the average value over the 20th century. Whether or not this represents a further increase in the rate of sea level rise is not yet certain.
A rising sea level certainly validates global warming, if not at this modest rate the sinking of Pacific islands. But it says nothing about the cause of sea ice melting. Let me end with a bit of speculation of my own about the very beginnings of sea levels rising. I think you’ll find it has a satisfactory resonance with the prevailing wisdom at the IPCC.
Sea levels began rising when the last Ice Age ended about 25,000 years ago. Scientifically speaking, I hypothesise that this was brought about by the increasing popularity of CO2-emitting paleolithic campfires to ward off the cold. This formed part of a vicious cycle because the warming led to a loss of habitats for woolly mammoths and a decline in their numbers which, in turn, led to a scarcity in their hides and, accordingly, increased the need for warm fires. The rest is history sans woolly mammoths.
You know it makes sense. I am sure if surveyed that 97 per cent of respondents in my suburb would agree.
I agree. Everything you’ve written is spot on Peter, and your phrasing and syntax makes for an interesting read in my eyes. Good on you and keep it up.
Aluminium, zinc, iron and now dunny roll are being sacrificed on the sacred altar of the climate gods by deranged energy high priest, Minister Chris Bowen. He is like a fanatical Inca priest hacking open the chest of Australian energy in order to gleefully pluck out the beating heart of life-giving, sustainable baseload energy.
Peter Marriott speaks for me in support of this Peter Smith sinking analysis with the listing of Alcoa, Sorbent, BHP for zinc [and nickel]. Another firm could be added as recorded in the Newcastle Herald of 10/02/24, this is Molycop of the Waratah suburb that adjoins Mayfield.
The firm formerly known as Comsteel [and Commonwealth Steel Co] laid off 250 steel mill workers on Friday 9th as half the industrial site was closed down and all steel melts finished. This means the the end of an era for the Hunter and Newcastle as the last steelmaker, which commenced operation in 1918, ceases steel-making in the region. The Molycop plant used electric arc furnaces to turn scrap metal into steel and its viability has been limited by:
* the escalating price of electricity
* cost and scarcity of scrap metal much of which is exported
* cost of labour
* import competition with little tariff protection
* loss of Australian markets with the closure of Ford and Holden
The residual Waratah plant continues to make grinding balls and railway-wheel-and-axle sets, but for the latter steel ingots are now imported.
During WW2 Comsteel manufactured armaments, and machined armour piercing shells in a defence annexe.
Brandee, your spot on comment is eye opening, alarming and tragic,but unfortunately not to the right people.
It is sad to see the ruin of good companies for no good reason by people we (not me) voted in to look after our interests. Instead of doing that, they seem to be intent on making Australia a Third World Country with absurd ideologies and decisions. They are well on course to achieving this end.
Roll on the next general election before it’s too bloody late.
If only we could be sure of the result, and also that it would be better.
The climate cult has very deep claws into everything in Australia, including voters’ minds. We have one of the world’s worst cases of this disease, and reject the cures being applied now in Europe.
In my sadder moments I think we will have to suffer the Argentinian fate first.
I’m going to be travelling in Argentina in March.
Be interested to see how the new broom is faring..
What is wrong with removal of a clear and present danger? Those challenged by mathematics might not realise that Australia produces toilet paper at about 1,500 km per hour, about twice the speed of sound for a speeding military jet.
The easily-scared might be thankful to see this enterprise kept out of sight and sound in another country. Like nuclear power generation. Geoff S
Now that’s a metric I’d really like to recount, 1.5km per hour, twice the speed of sound, for the average dunny roll. At the next dinner party, maybe?
1,500kph, that is. This is not a slow roll. 🙂
Australias main problem is not climate change policy, though it is a problem, but rather, that that policy, is a manifestation of a much more serious problem- government interference in the market. The biggest example is industrial laws. The moment you interfere with the interaction of labor and capital you start creating problems, but Australian governments go much further, they attempt to actively manage those relationships. No amount of coal, uranium, gold or oil will solve Australia’s ongoing decline.
All so true but the question is one of how to stop these madcap schemes and a possible solution is to stop all subsidies. The trick is of course to get both State and Federal Governments to do that.
average value over the 20th century. Whether or not this represents a further increase in the rate of sea level rise is not yet certain.
Well according to NOAA there is nothing alarming about it.
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/socd/lsa/SeaLevelRise/LSA_SLR_timeseries_global.php
If anything the graph indicates that over climate time frames there is no acceleration in sea level rise.
This is what all the Australian geologists have said, its rebound from the Little Ice Age.
Now if you have some variable, such as atmospheric CO2 bounding away, then one would expect this metric to accelerate and have been accelerating since that rise, so say 1950, if the two are coupled.
But it has not.
So they are not coupled.
To dig deeper there is an analysis here.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/31/sentinel-6-new-international-sea-level-satellite/
First Peter Dutton must formulate his nuclear power policy and have every Coalition member on board. Too many “moderates” go their own way and ruin any chance of a Coalition victory and implementation of a real plan for Australia’s future. Second. Labor has to be voted out and quickly. The Coalition have to tell voters just how badly Labor’s power and workplace relation policies effect their ability to live life. The ALP/Green coalition are basically Anti-Australian; they certainly have done nothing that is pro-Australian.
I don’t want a ‘nuclear’ policy. I want government to get out of the market, and only make laws to outlaw things we don’t want: like generators that can’t supply constant clean power to the grid (I mean no spikes or over the cliff drop offs). Also environmental protection legislation that is simple, clear and gets out of the way of reasonable developments in reasonable locations, that is also not open to lawfare from the unaffected.
There, that should do it.
Has Matt Kean been expelled from the Liberal Party Lawrie? I missed that…
I don’t think any of my friends or relatives really understand the basics of import/export economics. Whenever we export money to buy passenger jets, submarines, dual cab utes or (soon) toilet paper, that money has to be replaced by importing an equal amount of money in exchange for something we have manufactured or dug up, I can forgive my friends and relatives for not understanding this…. but not the idiots who ‘govern’ us.
The idea that sea level rise will cause coral islands to sink is false.
‘A rising sea level certainly validates global warming, if not at this modest rate the sinking of Pacific islands.’
Coral is a living symbiotic animal that reaches towards the sun and oxygen and grows upward as the seas rise.
Hence the south sea islands or Maldives where we hear of sinking is, well , not true.
Satellite data has been showing this for over 8 years.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/04/15/tropical-paradise-islands-are-not-sinking-and-shrinkingmost-are-in-fact-growing/
It was this fact that made me begin to question the catastrophic climate narrative.
Stupidly I had been told a plan to save coral islands by precipitating out calcium carbonate from solar ponds.
, to build up the island against the monotonic sea rise and thought it a good idea.
Having been gaslighted the next step to heresy was working out that CO2 is uncoupled from sea level rise so there must be a feedback which prevents runaway warming.
In the meanwhile we dismantle our industry and financial life support from exports for this dream of being able to stop ‘climate change’, rather than adaptation to its inevitability.
Adelago,
Quite so.Some of the 270,00 people who bought $100 tickets for a recent entertainment at the MCG will now speak out that money needs to be found to fix potoles in our roads or employ more nurses. It goes on and on. Victorian politicians have staff calculating how many more cups of coffee are sold when the motor GP hits town, but they do not realise that useful money is being consumed, not generated. Geoff S
Exactly. It appears we are on the cusp of a barista led recovery.
$1000 not $100….
“In case you have any doubts about the madness abroad among Australia’s politicians”
No. I have no doubt.
But I also have no doubt the fault is all ours. We are organised as a democracy but we don’t act that way. No place in the world does. No place in the world ever could. Because simply not possible in practice to manifest the lovely theory: everyone with a voice in what happens.
So we settled for ‘representative democracy’ where one person supposedly represents you and thousands of others. ( One American congressman ‘represents’, apparently, about 800,000 people).
We even tacitly gave up on that: for with two Party govt we accepted that the representative would represent his Party only.
The only manifestation of ourselves left to us was the periodic choice of personnel every few years and we rapidly lost all real interest in that ‘power’.
We lost interest and hope and for 99.9% or higher of the population the name, location, email, phone etc. of their ‘representatives’ are unknown. And they have never in their lives interacted with these ‘representatives’ in any way at all. Not a visit, not a phone call, not a letter, not an email, not a post on a social media page.
There is a ‘govt’ without a people.
And a people without a govt.
The fault is ours. The remedy lies with us. It is digital interactive real time democracy. Hurdle over that vast time span of nil interaction via cellphone apps to a time of constant fulltime fullscale interaction.
Where with a push of a button at any time night or day we register our votes for leader, our feelings about govt. , our opinions on issues of the day, send our instructions to our reps, demand of our reps an account of what they’ve been doing, see graphical representations of what we as a mass are doing, where, how we are trending.
If you have the ability think about the awesome power delivered immediately to us via these apps. Apps that can guarantee real living people behind each vote: which America’s system, for instance, cannot/does not, can guarantee one person one vote, which, again, their system does not.. and so on.
Open Source programming from the people. Open Source and free of course. Open Source so that the code is known to all and is constantly scrutinised by those incredibly clever programmers amongst the people and kept clean and robust.
If you have not the ability to understand the significance of this then at least take the time and trouble to begin to bug your reps as frequently as possible in any way you can. Tell them what you want. Don’t be meek, don’t be ashamed: just tell them. And ask of them an accounting of what they’ve done. Make your presence felt.
You realise: we all would realise – they represent only their Party. Not us. But this ‘power of the Party’ can and will be broken when enough people start continually bugging them. For they will tell the Party they must do the will of the people because it is getting to where the people will put them out of office if they don’t… for the people are beginning to vote for persons, not Parties, for representatives not mockeries.
People beginning to wake up. Belatedly. When they’re finished with Hollywood and MSM and computer games and the banal trivia of social media. People coming on deck and flexing their muscles and saying what is going to be, what things will be done and how they will be done.
So we arrived at where we are now. The people unrepresen
The interesting thing is that buried within the constitution, is the means for achieving real time interactivity in politics- the senate. You will recall some years ago, a party (I think they were called “the internet party”), nominated at one of the federal elections. They got a couple of thousand votes. Their platform was essentially to vote in accordance with the wishes of app voting by electors. That type of party could seriously revolutionise Australian politics. If they held only a few senate seats, the government of the day would have had to talk to the electorate about all their agenda, constantly. A few senate seats could block all sorts of nonsense.
.
As is often the case many on the right side of politics were opposed to it, not realising that it would inherently favour conservatism in a country like Australia. If they had have won their few seats, there probably would have been no climate policy getting through parliament, and definitely no referendum on the voice. Some policies of Labor would have got through – Australians love to rob the wealthy, our ancestors were doing it and so do we, but much of the leftist agenda would have been stopped dead in its tracks.
We already have that; the voluntary private exchange of physical and mental labour in return for money with which we can exchange for various goods and services.
This happy arrangement has raised more people from abject poverty than any other.
The rot sets in when people discover they can vote themselves more of other people’s money.
On the bit regarding sea level rise I assumed Peter was using a bit of tongue in cheek irony, particularly in the light of official CSIRO’s objectivity these days ( probably due to reliance on models ).
Rises and falls can be cherry picked all around the world and the averaging has to include complete stops in some areas.
With the experience of a real tide gauge measure scientist like Nils Axel Morner now gone, critique of all this seems to have subsided somewhat but I would say the best educated guess would still be more in the region of 1mm per year, and definitely no fear of anyone’s established island disappearing.
Peter, this article may be of interest to you.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/sea-level-climate-science-reality/
Thanks. A good read.
The lament of the German people in the dying days of the Reich was “if only the Fuehrer knew’. Well the Fuehrer knew very well. By way of comparison, why are we singling out Chris Bowen when the whole bunch from the PM knows what’s going on. The Lefties have deliberately selected the Village Idiot to run energy and left him to his own devices. We should be attaching the whole bunch and not just the simple fall guy.
Right on the money bomber49, fortunately Bowen is an established ”fall guy” as he is as dumb as, however, can remember “the sell”, and splurge it on queue.
RE: CSIRO quote on sea levels
If the sea levels have risen 3 mm pa for the last twenty years, which is 60 mm, why doesn’t the higher water slosh around to Fremantle to make the water higher here? This morning ABC 720 6WF reported that the Swan River estuary is at the lowest levels in living memory (because of climate change). I grew up in, on and under Fremantle waters. The sea level has not risen here. See the records from the Victoria Quay tide meter:
https://psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.monthly.plots/111_high.png
https://psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.annual.plots/111_high.png
If the hyperlinks aren’t permitted in these comments, google “psmsl.org/data” run by “Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level” and see the graph 1895-2024.
Good observation.
That’s because the actual sea level is not reflected by the ‘eustatic sea level’
3. Satellite reported Sea Level Rise is not a measure of changes in the actual level of the sea surface – or sea surface height — or its rise or fall, at all. Quoting the Sea Level Research Group at the University of Colorado, which is headed by Steven Nerem:
“The term “global mean sea level” in the context of our research is defined as the area-weighted mean of all of the sea surface height anomalies measured by the altimeter in a single, 10-day satellite track repeat cycle. It can also be thought of as the “eustatic sea level.” The eustatic sea level is not a physical sea level (since the sea levels relative to local land surfaces vary depending on land motion and other factors), but it represents the level if all of the water in the oceans were contained in a single basin. Changes to this eustatic level are caused by changes in total ocean water mass (e.g., ice sheet runoff), changes in the size of the ocean basin (e.g., GIA), or density changes of the water (e.g., thermal expansion). The time series of the GMSL estimates over the TOPEX and Jason missions beginning in 1992 to the present indicates a mostly linear trend after correction for inter-mission biases between instruments.” [ source – see last paragraph ]
Or as in the summary above in my comment.
‘That’s true only if satellite measured Eustatic Sea Level rise actually arrives at our shores, our harbors, our bays and inlets. To date, it hasn’t.’
Thanks very much for correcting my false understanding. I can’t help laughing. I had previously wrongly believed that “global mean sea level” was the actual average level of the water surface. Now I understand why it hasn’t sloshed around into Fremantle waters: it was never really high enough.
Peter, I agree with your listing of honest Scientists and of course there are thousands more, but one important Australian you missed is Ian Plimer, an inveterate speaker on the subject and the author of numerous books.
Yes ‘case’, annoying, should have mentioned Ian Plimer. So I’ve done it now, Better late…
Please rewrite this article, Peter. BHP is looking to close ONLY its nickel production facilities. It’s zinc production is small and is a byproduct of its copper mining so, unless it’s going to close its copper mines and smelters, it will continue to produce zinc well into the future.
Yes Bernie, well spotted. Just testing people. Replace my zinc with nickel and its good to go. Same story. Same point. Would ask the editor to change it but “that nickeling feeling” doesn’t seem to work.
And Portland makes aluminium not alumina
Quite so, Thanks Tony.
The end of the last ice age (extended glaciation period) was in fact only 12 000 years ago, before which the land bridges over both Bass Strait and the Torres Strait still existed – they had come and gone throughout the Pleistocene, i.e. sea levels had risen and fallen variously throughout that geological epoch. Bass strait is now on average about 60 metres deep and Torres Strait only 15 metres on average – giving an indication of the extent of sea level rise over this 12 000 year period until present.
12 000 years ago marked the commencement of the Geological period known as the Holocene (in which we currently live). During this warming period we have seen the global rise of modern civilisation around the globe from ancient Eygpt and Mesoptamia through Ancient India, China and the emergence of city state civilisations in Meso-America. Prior to this warming, hunter gatherer and subsistence culture was all that existed. We have a warming planet to thank for the emergence of Human Civilisation as we know it.
For those interested in the wild climate fluctuations that marked the Pleistocene and put the current state of affairs into a large geological perspective, this paper may be of interest:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982209013062
Peter correctly notes that “All of this self-imposed pain is because of a tenuous hypothesis that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 will bring about Armageddon. There is not a scintilla of compelling evidence in support of this hypothesis,”
Lucius Cassius, whom the Roman people used to regard as a most honest and most wise judge, was in the habit of asking time and again in lawsuits: “to whom might it be for a benefit?”. In this climate change scam it is clear that China gains massively from the West’s adherence to this fraud along with home-grown carpet-baggers who make a motza out of all of us.
Agreed Davidovich: no evidence in support of this hypothesis. One day it will be exposed in a new volume of Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Not that it will stop CC cultists like the Minister for Climate Change or the investment bankers now getting rich trading “carbon credits”.
The climate science “community”, such as it is, frets about how devastating a 1.5C rise in global temperature will be, assuming of course it could measure such a variable accurately to two decimal places. Yesterday in Perth, the daily variation was 20C, from 23C to 43C. Local weather in high summer. Not CC.
Incidentally, BHP has mothballed its WA Nickel West operations. Written down its balance sheet value by A$4.5 billion, due to a 40% nickel price decline. A consequence of an Indonesian strategy to duplicate the facility in that country, with help from China.
Yes, according to the Oz, Kevin Rudd is “working on trying to explore” (what does that even mean?) markets that would pay an ESG premium for Australian nickel. Who would pay double the price for “clean’ nickel? You couldn’t make it up.
Thank you Peter and others for their added thoughts.
In the final analysis, it is the voter who MUST change their voting habits. The ‘democratic system’ can work if not distorted by mendacious politicians and media hell-bent on pushing Australia down the socialist road to the world slave state. No matter how good you think your argument is, there is a different agenda in charge; change will not come from the top–politicians or bureaucrats–it must come from the grass-roots.
However, if you will not change the way you vote, then it is your God given right to suffer more of the same!
Thank you Peter for shining a light on what ails this great country and thank you Quadrant giving him space for this great article. It is now over to the rest of us to contact our Representatives and wake them up!
It will take money, assisted by efforts from the likes of us, to get out there handing out the how-to-votes, and doing everything else possible to get the message out. The Voice Redux, a big NO to cultists please.