More spin than a launderette
Greg Combet coins another lie this morning to deceive the Australian public, naming the “carbon dioxide tax” a “pollution tax”. We’ll come on to that in a minute, as Combet spins yet another yarn in The Daily Telegraph today, full once again of misrepresentations and half-truths, in a desperate attempt to justify a pointless “tax on everything”.
Once again he refers to Tony Abbott’s questioning of the policy as a “full-blown scare campaign”, but cannot actually answer the simple questions people have about a carbon tax. He goes on to describe the potential effects of climate change (as told to him by his alarmist advisers), which I guess he doesn’t believe is a scare campaign…
Australia, as a very hot and dry continent, has a lot to lose from the effects of climate change. Our industries in the areas of agriculture, resources and tourism will all suffer from these impacts. Also as most of our population lives on the coast we can expect severe social and economic impacts if predicted sea level rises occur.
The most recent [alarmist – Ed] science indicates that the potential effects of climate change are only getting worse, and the chance of them happening is much more certain.
Economic studies show that the effects will also affect our economy which means less economic growth and fewer jobs.
As opposed to a carbon tax which will mean even less economic growth and even fewer jobs… And I am getting really bored of asking this, Greg, but what will a unilateral carbon tax in Australia do to mitigate any of these things? NOTHING AT ALL.
So let’s move on to the big one, the “pollution tax”:
The Government has now announced a pricing framework that allows us to engage with the community on the detailed design, and provides business with certainty so they can begin to plan.
That framework has a carbon price that will effectively operate as a pollution tax before moving to an emissions trading scheme.
The reality is that this tax has nothing to do with pollution at all. The harmless trace gas carbon dioxide, even at many multiples of the current level of about 390 parts per million, cannot possibly be regarded as “pollution”. It’s toxicity only becomes apparent at 10,000 ppm (or 1% of the atmosphere), which is more than 25 times the current levels. But by using the word “pollution”, Greg obfuscates and confuses the issue in people’s minds, so they are not sure what he is referring to, and the immediate reaction would be “Pollution = bad, we should do something about it.”
This lie is compounded further:
The environmental benefits of cleaning up our pollution will also become clearer as this debate unfolds, but facts not fear campaigns should be the basis for the community making decisions about the Government’s plans.
“Cleaning up our pollution”? This is just a brazen attempt to mislead the public into thinking that the carbon tax is about “cleaning up pollution”, when in reality it is about a pointless attempt to control the climate by reducing emissions of a harmless trace gas.
So who is the real merchant of misinformation, Greg?
Read it here.
Australian Climate Madness 
Watch what happens. After all this “debate”, Julia and Greg will announce a $4/tonne carbon tax in the hope that Australians will think it is okay…THEN, they will jack it up to $60/tonne or more a very short time later.
They will do ANYTHING to get this through and by whatever means necessary.
Don’t be fooled and don’t fall for any of this nonsense.
and
Thanks Greg, you are confirming – once again – that this has bugger all to do with “saving the planet”, and EVERYTHING to do with wealth redistribution.
The middle class (teachers, ambulance officers, police, nurses, fire and rescue officers, domestic engineers, IT workers, accountants, medical professionals etc etc etc) will get sweet f/a while “pensioners and low income households” will be compensated. (The rich wouldn’t give a toss if their electrical bills, groceries or fuel costs go up a few hundred bucks a year)
So it’s no change at all in the standard of living of “pensioners and low income households” – or the rich (thus no change in any of their planet wrecking behaviour) – but government sanctioned change in the living standard and by virtue of this the behaviour of the middle classes.
Yes, only the middle classes will be blessed with the privilege of “saving the planet” it seems.
If you’re middle class do you feel honored….or just RIPPED OFF?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/18/ipcc-official-%E2%80%9Cclimate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth%E2%80%9D/
Repeat after me: It’s not a carbon tax; it’s an energy and life tax.
Talk about spin!!!! How the hell is carbon dioxide a pollutant? These wombats will do and say anything to try and get this tax through.
What the Australian people should be reminded about, apart from the fact that this tax is unnecessary, is that these watermelons have failed on every other Government scheme they have tried to implement – from Grocery Watch, Home Insulation, Disaster payouts, Petrol Watch, B.E.R., … the list goes on. Everything they’ve touched has been rorted, mismanaged and failed to achieve any significant gains.
God help Australia if the Labor/Green coalition get their way!
I’m a pensioner and I won’t be paying the carbon tax according to the people down in the kremlin…,,BUT I DON’T THE MIDDLE CLASS OR ANY OTHER CLASS FOR THAT MATTER PAYING THE STINKING CARBON TAX EITHER!…..this government would have to be the most incompetent in Australia’s history………
You’ll be paying it alright Pd, even though the Comrades in Canberra say you’ll be compensated your cost of living WILL increase.
How can it not? And who would trust ANYTHING this government says anyway? They are PROVEN LIARS.
We all know the whole scam is a crock.
What irks me is the madness in their logic.
Here they are on the one hand telling us that the real reason we’re getting this tax is that that they want to save the planet by pricing carbon dioxide thus changing our consumption habits; yet on the other hand they’re saying they’ll compensate certain groups for the resulting increase in their cost of living.
How the hell is that supposed to work?
MADNESS..
What sort of a person can’t see this for what it is?
Kremlin, indeed.
BER, NBN, five-year plan plus tax to “rebuild Queensland” (sand-bagging marginal seats, actually), Carbon Tax (income redistribution, actually) … all basic planks in a command economy brought to you by the numb-nuts in Central Planning in the Kremlin.
Egocentric narcistic megalomaniac, Combet represents everything that Labor stands for; Lies, Deception and Cleptocracy of the worst kind.
If it looks like a Tax, walks like a Tax, quacks like a Tax…..it must be a TAX !
First they LIED now they disguise.
I hope local Councils don’t get any ideas. My next Rates notice may redefine my garbage as polution.
Talking about trash….I think this Govt. needs to be recycled.
To think that we will all be subject to a punitive legislative decision reached by Brown, Milne, Windsor & Oakeshott on the so called MPCCC, whose total representative share of the Nation’s vote in Parliament is infintesimal.
Brown & Milne do not even have a seat in the House of Reps & here they are dictating policy. Gillard can not deny she was Check-Mated.
Lets hope the Austalian electorate never forgets her treachery.
In that article, Combet says
Yes, new jobs all right – from hell.
Jonova has posted testimony from a Swedish friend, describing lurid examples of the bureaucratic Green behemoth now savaging Europe. He concludes with
Jonova provides the link to Lomborg’s timely commentary, No Windfall in the false promise of green jobs.
Carbon dioxide is a green house gas and too much of it in the atmosphere causes warming and damages the environment…That is a pollutant by defintion. Cretinous comments about how it only exists in miniscule amounts only highlights the ignorance of the critics. Medicines are measured in micrograms.( millionths of a gram)..if your so sure that trace elements cant have an effect at seemingly low dilutions, try dropping 400mg of acid to prove your point.
So tedious to have to respond to these comments. CO2 isn’t a pollutant until it reaches 10,000ppm, at which point it becomes mildly toxic. As for its effect on the climate, a doubling of CO2 will cause at most a 1 degree rise in temperature, and if you knew anything about the physics of CO2 absorption, you would know that the most effect occurs in the first 20ppm, and that the effect decreases logarithmically from there on. That’s why the planet has had several thousand ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere with no effect on the climate. So don’t lecture me on ignorance.
apparently not according to 97% of the tens of thousands of peer reviewed scientific papers written on the subject in the last twenty years
but as you clearly know better, why not write a paper, subject it toreview ,disprove 20 years of research across thirty scientific disciplines and win yourself a Nobel Prize!
Ah the predictable argument from authority. Here’s a link to Real Climate, you’ll like it there.