By Jo Nova
We’ve 1,000 years of coal left underground, but we’re returning to burning trees again to scare off the Climate-Yeti.
Environmentalists are aghast, of course, even though this is exactly what they wanted — a lower carbon form of concrete, and an end to coal.
But the 100 year old coal kiln needs $100m worth of transformation to be able to burn wood and tyres properly. So this is an expensive shift, and it won’t be easy to undo, and now the Greens and ABC (but I repeat myself) are concerned…
Concerns native forests could be part of Cement Australia’s ‘sustainable’ fuel option as it moves away from coal
By Kelsey Reid, ABC
One of the largest cement manufacturing sites in Australia has temporarily shut operations as it upgrades its coal-fired kiln to accept alternative fuel sources such as used tyres and “sustainable” wood waste.
Cement Australia’s Railton plant, in north-west Tasmania, will stop production for an estimated 45 days to allow for the $108 million works as the company moves to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.
The whole point of the ABC story is to gnash teeth over where will the woodchips come from? The concrete company says it will only use’ certified sustainable’ wood which should make the EcoWorriers crack the champers. But the greener types can see the temptation will be there to increase the harvest of native forest, to generate more ‘sustainable’ offcuts.
The Concrete company didn’t want to explain where the wood is coming from, possibly because they didn’t want anyone to chain themselves to any trees.
“To this day, they’ve not told people exactly where that wood was coming from, but we’re pretty sure it’s going to be native forests and Tasmanian timbers,” he said.
“If they need a very large amount of wood, and they will, isn’t that going to then drive logging and potentially increase the rate of logging in order to be able to sustain the flow of wood that they require?”
The, ABC, notably, did not interview any foresters, probably because they might be afraid the foresters would say the native forests could use some thinning so they don’t vaporize in a pyroclastic koala-killing blaze with one bolt of lightening.
Instead we get the bread and circuses statistics:
By switching to alternative fuels, Cement Australia expects to reduce coal use by 111,000 tonnes a year, and reduce carbon dioxide by 105,000 tonnes over the same period.
But not the statistic that matters — How many degrees with that cool the world? The ABC have no idea.
Even Bob Brown, former leader of The Greens, is against this: Burning forests for cement is not climate action.
Turns out, coal has been protecting our trees for a century.
Thanks to BenBeattie for the tip @EnergyWrapAU.
This utter waste is driven by the need to survive. Under the Safeguard Mechanism 2022, virtually unknown to the public, the CO2 tax will reach 35% in 2029. No one can survive.
The idea that CO2 from trees is different from CO2 from coal is based on the idea that the planet can tell the difference. That is witchcraft, not science.
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This Chicken Little/Henny Penny story announced to the US Congress on June 30th 1988 world where the sky has been falling is the biggest fake science scam in history, 38 years ago.
Al Gore/James Hansen/the UN/WMO(World Meteorological Society) formed the IPCC (InterGovernment Panel for Climate Change). Politicians demanding rivers of cash to stop CO2 changing.
You know the cost. Here’s the graph of CO2 for the period. (CO2 in the Atmosphere, facts, not the silly commentary)
Whatever you think of the story of paying to reduce CO2 growth, the effectiveness of spending perhaps $20Trillion has had absolutely zero effect in 38 years.
But no one ever measured the effect. And the number of hidden punitive cash theft Acts in Australis is off the page. There are tens of thousands of people working on preventing the rise of CO2.
The more likely result is that Australia stops refining, smelting, making glass, concrete, chemicals, fertilizer, shipping, farming, flying, trucking. And we end up with the economy of Nauru as an open cut mine for the world, despite importing millions of unqualified ‘workers’ for jobs which do not exist.
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The way the government avoids measuring the effectiveness of all these imposts is to measure not total CO2 in the atmosphere but Australia’s CO2 ’emissions’. This presumes our ’emissions’ directly impact atmospheric CO2. And whatever you think of the convoluted story about why a tiny country with 2% of world CO2 emissions will have an impact, the reality is that the effect on CO2 in the air off New Zealand is precisely zero.
But when have govenments ever considered the cost/benefit? It’s all about the vibe and the cash, all of which is laundered through Carbon Credits which you are given for your cash and you can ‘surrender’ these worthless but expensive electronic tokens as if they never existed. That will kill cement production.
Generating about 8% of all man-made CO2 ’emissions’ globally. Manufacturing a ton of cement releases roughly a ton of CO2
1. Chemical Process (Calcination): 60% of emissions, CO2 is released when limestone CaCO3 is heated in a kiln and breaks down into calcium oxide (lime) and CO2
2. Thermal Energy: about 40% of emissions, extreme temperatures 1,500C are required to fuse the raw materials together into an intermediate product called clinker.
So the desperate owners can nearly halve their massive payments for worthless Australian Carbon Credits which are ‘surrendered’ to the Australian Government. On the fairy tale science that wood CO2 is chemically different to old wood CO2 (Coal)
Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) are currently A$37.60 per tonne. This is a trade in electronic fantasies for real cash. you have to surrender these credits to the Government or be heavily fined. But it is not a tax because the money does not go to the Government of Australia. This is the forced enrichment of third parties and illegal since Magna Carta. It is extortion.
This also applies to say your airfares. Transport. Shipping. Farming. Smelting. Fertilizer. Chemicals. But only if made in Australia. You can always import from overseas, like everything else.
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Here is the Government link to the Safeguard Mechanism.
https://www.dcceew.gov.au/climate-change/emissions-reporting/national-greenhouse-energy-reporting-scheme/safeguard-mechanism
It’s disgusting that we have politicians and senior public serpents who are evil enough to dream these schemes up, people who have never had a proper job or done anything productive in their lives and don’t cherish freedom, liberty, common sense or small Government.
And which Government introduced it?
Why, it was the fake conservative Libetals of course, under Tony Abbott, who legislated it in 2014 but it became effective under the Turnbull regime in 2016 under Greg Hunt serving as Environment Minister, the same clown that banned IVM and HCQ during covid when serving as “Health” Minister.
These evil plans have no purpose but to reduce the standard of living of non-Elites and destroy the country. They are succeeding.
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Hanlon’s Razor : “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
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This isn’t malice. And it’s not stupid. The original RET is very clever, so clever it was copied in the UK. A massive carbon tax with no mention of carbon and no mention of tax and the money is paid to third parties by order of the governemnt. Legislated robbery under arms. But that’s electricity.
Like the RET, the Safeguard Mechanism is just more robbery by government, organzied, created, written up by armies of public servants. (The target now is all the fuel used by industry, transport, manufacturing, shipping, mining.) And the MP’s just sign off on these idea and endless amendments. Most of the politicians are lawyers, innumerate and non scientists anyway. To them carbon is black and dirty and we could do without it. Like burnt chops. No chemistry either. Diamonds are carbon.
No, malice is our view of daylight robbery. The public service and political view is that they are just doing their job. And no one who wrote all this has any reason to believe this is going to save the planet. That’s for public consumption only. There’s always someone who will believe it. And a pile of doctors and their wives who believe everything they are told. That’s what they do for a living. ( Some doctors are brilliant and lateral, but few. Too many are sold on the voice of authority as absolute truth. Climate Change believers abound in the medical profession)
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(i) the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011 or legislative instruments under that Act;
(j) the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 or legislative instruments under that Act;
(k) the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 or legislative instruments under that Act;
(l) the Renewable Energy (Electricity) (Large-scale Generation Shortfall Charge) Act 2000;
(m) the Renewable Energy (Electricity) (Small-scale Technology Shortfall Charge) Act 2010;
(n) the Australian National Registry of Emissions Units Act 2011 2 or legislative instruments under that Act.
And amazing if you search Howard’s Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 is that while it is a massive carbon tax, the words carbon and tax are completely missing. That’s not stupidity. It’s intent. So they could say there is no Carbon Tax.
Gillard also said “there will be no Carbon Tax in a Government I lead”. But she lied.
They all did. That’s not stupidity. It’s intent, clear intent. I suppose that is malice. Over 30 years. The people who wrote the first Y2000 Act are likely retired.
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How do you earn a degree ?, listen to and believe all you’re told by the socalled ‘experts’.
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You can thank Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull (and the Liberals) for the Safeguard mechanism. They legislated it but were never game to use it.
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The Act was legislated just before the November 2007 election when Rudd Labor defeated the Howard Coalition Government;
The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 was introduced to establish a comprehensive framework for the reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, energy production, and energy consumption in Australia. This legislation plays a crucial role in the country’s efforts to combat climate change.
Key Historical Milestones
2007: The Act was enacted, creating a national reporting framework for corporations regarding their greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage.
2012: The Clean Energy Regulator was established, taking over the responsibilities of the Greenhouse and Energy Officer, which streamlined the reporting process.
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Overview of the Safeguard Mechanism
The Safeguard Mechanism was established in Australia in 2016 as part of the country’s climate policy. Its primary goal is to limit greenhouse gas emissions from large industrial facilities, specifically those emitting more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) per year.
Key Historical Changes
Timeline of Major Developments
Year Event Description
2016 The Safeguard Mechanism was introduced to cap emissions from large industrial facilities.
2017 A review of Australia’s climate change policies was conducted, leading to commitments for simplification of the mechanism.
2019 Amendments were made to simplify baseline requirements and allow for annual adjustments based on actual production.
2023 Significant reforms were enacted, including stricter emissions baselines and a requirement for facilities to reduce emissions intensity by 4.9% per year
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The Safeguard Mechanism was the Liberals’ replacement of Labor’s Carbon Pricing Mechanism (CPM) which Liberals repealed.
It’s still a carbon tax. It’s just a rebranding to fool the voters.
Will the present Liberals repeal the Safeguard Mechanism, Dennis?
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As I am not a member of any political party I cannot answer your question David.
I did note that Albanese Labor have added to the Act recently.
My guess is that the Coalition, considering the policies announced and explanations given by Leaders Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan that they would repeal if the Coalition parties are elected to government. They have plans to keep coal fired power stations operating and to lift restrictions on fossil fuels generally.
As you would know the emissions levy (carbon tax) is so far only applied to coal burning power stations.
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The Safeguard mechanism was buried in the long legislation put forward in the last two weeks under Tony Abbotts leadership just before the coup. I’m not sure he would even have been aware of the detail. It was then snuck in through Parliament, sometime like the night before Christmas 2015 thanks to Malcolm Turnbull, and it sat there doing almost nothing, set at a very low percentage, until the Labor Party ramped up the dials that were already legislated within it.
Therefore, technically, the the left could say it was “Abbotts” and the dreaded ETS started under Turnbull, but it was all quietly nested there so that the Labor government had the power to bring in the ETS that the voters vehemently didn’t want and they didn’t even have to vote on it.
This tactic of getting the conservative party to legislate it successfully neutralized opposition protests about it since it was technically “theirs”.
All in all, it’s almost like there was a great political brain (or a whole Blob) working for years to get this secretly written into law so the voters would not get the chance to deny it.
Legislation that is 5000 pages long (or whatever it was) should never the passed, because no one except the staffers that put a line in there on page 3,543 know what it means.
That may have changed now with AI to read legislation, but there should be some rule in the constitution that limits legislation to something a human could read in a couple of days.
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says a lot that you think this is possible.
that’s some sort of conspiracy.
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“Some sort of conspiracy”, meaning what Gee Aye? That it’s inanely obvious, or that it’s crazy talk and two people never conspire to do something that’s not in the spirit of an open democracy?
Or you haven’t thought about the literal meaning. It’s just the standard put-down you’ve been trained to use?
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you imply that legislation drafted and passed by a Coalition government deliberately inserted something for a future Labor govt to exploit. It’s absurd.
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The effect of a carbon tax is simply to make all things more expensive because all things use hydrocarbons.
Get rid of it, and every other climate related impost…
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“It’s still a carbon tax. It’s just a rebranding to fool the voters.”
All previous carbon taxes were about the electricity supply, appliances, factories. And shutting ‘non approved’ energy sources out of electricity.
This new approach is about the other 2/3 of our energy requirments, largely liquid as obvious now with the war with Iran. That covers the use of coal, diesel, gas to power all our industries. Mining, transport (air, sea, land), manufacturing, smelting, chemicals(fertilizer, cement,plastics..), glass and both mining and agriculture. Nothing to do with electricity really.
If you cripple all the energy supplies, we are left sitting naked on the ground and asking aborigines for advice. The ABC/SBS/CSIRO/BOM have already done so. And China just moves in, terra nullus.
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They know full well the other clowns will do the dirty work for them.
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How does NIWA differentiate between human emissions and ocean outgassing due to slight natural warming? These people are not scientists, they are activists. Like Albanese, these folk lie because they must know that the oceans are the biggest CO2 sinks. We need politicians who do know the difference and who will take these charlatans to task. A few sackings would drag the others into line. Malcolm Roberts, where are you?
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“Witchcraft”?
Mpre like “Political Science”.
See also Tax-Rebate(Tax-payers hard-earned) harvesting.
“Thermal energy” per mass from “wood” is a LOT lower then that from good anthracite.
This is why REAL steam engineers went to COAL several centuries ago. Good-old Gaia had spent the last couple of Aeons “Processing” soggy cellulose into useful fuel.
Wood-fired locomotives had a brief resurgence in 19th century USA because the rail system expanded faster than the coal mines and there were a LOT of trees in the way of the advancing tracks.In the late 19th century, in the west of the continent, OIL replaced wood for fueling locomotives, BECAUSE IT WAS THERE.
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‘“Thermal energy” per mass from “wood” is a LOT lower then that from good anthracite.’
That is simply because wood is 50% water. Victorian brown coal is 66%. Peat is 80%. Humans are 95%.
But dry them all out and their heat content (Mj/kg) is near identical. They all are made from CO2 and little else. That’s called chemistry. All are hydrocarbon.
Dried, humans burn like wood.
All living things are made from CO2. All living things burn hyrdocarbons (carbo hydrates, hydrated carbon dioxide). All living things breathe out CO2. All living things burn when dried. All living things are pollution.
The Green of plants is chlorophyll, a long chain hydrocarbons. So I will call the “Greens” the “Hydrocarbons”.
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The original gold mines of Kalgoorlie were wood-fired, to the extent that they rapidly denuded Kalgoorlie’s surrounds of all timber, turning the countryside into a dusty desert. A law had to be enacted to prevent timber cutting within a 30-mile radius of the town.
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The same thing happened around Silverton, near Broken Hill.
Barnaby Joyce has a Facebook reel where he exposes the ridiculous rules and horrendous costs of Net Zero. Merton Village, a retirement village near Denman, NSW wants to develop more units on a 10 acre paddock near town. 200 years ago this paddock, like most of the land around the town, was covered in trees. The council/state environmental approvals crowd want the non-profit Merton Village to pay $3.5 million to buy carbon offsets to make up for the trees that used to exist 200 years ago. I used to live there and that paddock has been cleared for many decades. As Barnaby asks “where does the money go? Who are the greasers and shysters who profit from this rip off. How does it help to build much needed accommodation for the elderly, how does it help solve the housing problem?
Ignorant politicians, unethical scientists and dumb bureaucrats are responsible for the parlous state we are in.
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Graeme, that’s not true. The Goldfield Woodlands still exist and, in fact, are in such a wonderful state, despite the heavy reduction in timber for firewood, that the greens want it all locked up and call it old growth. You couldn’t make it up. Here is a story about it – https://www.robertonfray.com/2022/08/05/a-tale-of-the-goldfields-woodlands-where-ideology-triumphs-professionalism-experience-and-history/
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Oil was not fractioned unti 1865. Coal drove the industrial revolution, not only plentiful and able to be shoveled, but burned at much higher temperatures with no water content. The immediate result of which was the creation of steel , not iron. The Roman empire did not have steel except on a small scale for swords and tools. Bulk steel manufacture was largely a British/US invention with the Sir Henry Besssemer furnace. Steel had real flexibility, where old cast iron was immensely strong but brittle. This was highlighted by the 1847 Dee Bridge disaster.
And in 1912 as First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill converted the British Navy from coal to oil. That in one stroke made the Middle East and Caucasus (Grozny and Baku) far more important to all of Europe for both WW1 and WW2 as Europe had no oil. The other technological change was welding not riveting. The Germans started electric arc welding but most UK boilers and hulls were riveted. Which is likely why the Titanic sank.
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This is the kind of historical science that should be taught to boys in particular at high school level. Surely they would be interested if it was presented as part of maths/science/history and any kind of trade shop course.
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The coal consumption to burn the clinker is about 200 Kg/ton of cement. Those 200 Kg of coal will create ~500 Kg of Co2. (There will also be CO2 emissions from CaCO3 coversion to CaO.) If wood is burned in the cement kiln, it would take 350-400 Kg of wood to create a ton of cement and that would produce about 650-700 Kg of CO2 emissions. So the fuel combustion process along creates nearly 40% more emissions.
The same math would produce similar emissions increases if wood was substituted for coal in power generation. How long will the accounting gimmick of calling biomass combustion a zero emission fuel when it’s well known that biomass emissions are higher than fossil fuels.
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The post makes me recall the poem by Joyce Kilmer: TREES
Although his “The House with Nobody In It” is a better metaphor for a nation that is falling apart.
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Here’s an idea.
Why not clear fell all of Tasmania’s forests, burn the wood and plant windmills and solar panels on the cleared land and make Tasmania into a “renewables” “superpower”.
All trees must go.
They could then lay some more cables across Bass Strait and export all that “free” energy to the mainland.
/sarc
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I think you will find that there is more to the Tasmanian deal. There must be an agreement to grow new trees as fast as you cut down mature trees. That makes it a solar farm and so carbon neutral using fantasy arithmetic.
In this simple science fantasy the number/volume of trees is a constant, equilibrium. Which is why burning coal increases atmospheric CO2.
Too bad that’s not true. World tree coverage is growing. Tree coverage exactly matching the rate of growth of CO2 when if you believe the equilibrium story, CO2 should be going down.
But even NASA does not let reality stand in the way of their income, so no one draws the obvious conclusion that the Green equilibrium story is wrong.
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I remember when the Abbott Coalition Government with the Tasmania Coalition Government together attempted to overturn Labor Green conversion of State Forests set aside for sustainable logging a long time ago to UN registered National Parks, they did not succeed.
Around that time Abbott and QLD LNP Premier Newman did overturn Labor’s UN registered Wild Rivers legislation to enable the Northern Australia irrigation farming scheme proposed by Abbott led Coalition at the 2013 election to be actioned.
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Figures released some time ago stated that by covering Scotland with Chinese windmills entails the cutting down of over 13 million trees.
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This problem too, can be easily solved. Burn Greens!
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Aa if building costs weren’t already high enough in Australia, “green” cement is, not surprisingly, more expensive than traditional cement.
Note that the following refers to formulations for various “green” cement, not using wood instead of coal, although not doubt wood is far more expensive than coal.
Gulag AI says:
Australians might as well stop building things and revert to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle with traditional dwellings like caves, bark shelters or just sleep in the dirt.
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How much will Green Credits cost us?
By my rough calculation, Green Credits are currently about $40 per ton of CO2. They have been as high as $80.
As a business principle, unless a supplier eats the tax and does not pass it on, it gets marked up like every other cost.
Concrete outputs 2 tons of CO2 per ton of concrete made. 1 ton from the heating. 1 ton from the reaction. The carbon tax at 35% is 35%*2*$40 or $30 a ton. Concrete in volume is $400 a ton, so in normal business, the cost is $200. Which means the CO2 tax on concrete is a massive 15%. And the way business works, concrete prices go up 15%. What they are doing is lowering the tax to 7% by using and presumably growing trees.
Now consider airline fares. Fuel is 40% of the cost of operating an airline and airlines are listed as our ‘biggest polluters’. Airline fuel is $650 to $1400 a ton. And a ton of kerosense means 3 tons of CO2 @$40 a ton for carbon credits. So $120 a ton for CO2 tax on kerosense a 12% tax on the raw cost of running an airline. This will mean a 12% CO2 tax on all airline tickets.
etc.
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Of course these costs could double easily. And they apply to ALL shipping. All manufacture (which is using energy to make things). ALL mining. It puts Australia out of business, which seems to be the idea.
It’s a bit like the increase in charges for people coming by cruise ship to Melbourne. It was only $5 but was tripled to $15. Now most cruise lines avoid Melbourne and the once overflowing docks are empty.
We even spent $1Billion NOT hosting the Commonwealth Games even though we hosted them in 2007 and everything is still in place, so it should have cost nothing. Most of the $500 million was spent on ‘consultants’ and the other $500 million was a gift to Scotland for them to host our games.
You would think that Labor and the Greens were trying to bankrupt the place.
Similarly with the doubling of excise on cigarettes and tax revenue halved. $10Billion now flows to China for illegal cigarettes and tobacco outlets in Melbourne are regularly ram raided and burned down. Apparently that’s the work of criminals. A sensible person would halve the excise to the old level and so double the tax revenue, but that would be too simple. But when a government is bankrupt, who needs taxes? And who cares about the safety of the Chinese cigarettes? People who smoke are the problem with their CO2 and health costs, so it’s a win win.
The CO2 tax will shut down every company, because the public knows nothing about it. And the politicians have reached their limit on petrol and electricity, so they are going for manufacture, agriculture, mining and transport. And making very sure never to talk about it. The massive increase in the cost of living will be Donald Trump’s fault, not crazy Green taxes and unaffordable mass migration as Australia becomes the new Beirut.
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Does the airline tax apply to the fuel or only to emissions generated within Australia. If the latter, a US route would generate virtually no tax.
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It raises a good point because foreign airlines will not have to pay. Only Qantas, Virgin, Rex etc. domiciled here. If Qantas or Virgin relocates operations to NZ or Singapore. Then they would be exempt. Many companies will wholly or partly flee Australia legally if they can. NZ would be particularly attractive for these. After all, Apple is an Irish domiciled company today. It’s what happens when governments get too greedy.
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“Biomass”…..
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Doesn’t burning wood produce more CO2 than burning coal?
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No. Dry they are the same stuff chemically. Coal is old wood.
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No, same chemistry – C + O2 = CO2 + heat.
BUT, as noted in one of the comments above, the water content of wood is very much higher than that of black coal. In fact, in decreasing moisture content, the list is wood, peat, lignite (brown coal), black coal – each category there has a range of moisture content by deposit affecting its’ in-situ specific energy.
Since water doesn’t burn, a lot more wood by volume is needed to achieve the same heat output. So the wood needs to be dried first, of course. A small home fireplace using wood can store cut wood outside to let it dry over a season. The volume of wood required for a cement plant overwhelms that simple method.
To see this in actual real life, look at the fuel cycle for the Drax power generator in the UK. A coal-fired generator as built, it was “transitioned” into using wood as fuel. To obtain the volume of wood then needed, entire forests in the USA are being systematically stripped and the woodchips shipped across the Atlantic.
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ianl,
I have an elegant solution for this problem. Instead of using wood in the furnace, use coal, then take the CO2 curse off it by clear-felling a sufficiently large section of forest.
Suddenly the coal becomes green. Amazing!
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If we fell all the trees and burn them, that would prevent dastardly Mother Nature spending millions of years turning all that ‘biomass’ into horrible, dirty, nasty, polluting coal. I get it now.
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The Railton plant is designed to burn a mixed fuel of wood waste and tyres.
These fuels have entirely different combustion characteristics. Tyre waste contains over twice the energy content of typical wood waste and delivers a higher kiln temperature – but is far less reactive. A smart operator will ensure a steady diet of tyre meal to keep the furnace conditions stable and hot enough to sinter the cement clinker.
So, special pleading is required for the magical, non-heating properties of Satan’s Gas released by this kind, Green process. It’s almost as if wood waste is included for show.
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I am picking up on the Safeguard mechanism story at #1.
Most of the ACCUs are accrued by early burning of savanna. Most of the money goes offshore.
If current industries survive this massive transfer payment, they will be forking out $40bn annually by 2035. That will flow into price inflation for everything. The value of the ACCUs has to rise because the amount of savanna available to burn annually is limited.
As TdeF points out it is utter nonsense. It is circular bullshit. It is worse than the Climate Change™ hoax. Only simpletons could sign up for this absolute rubbish. Australian industry deserves to die if they do not push back hard on this rubbish.
Again this is administered by the Clean Energy Regulator. The case is mounting for this body to face judgement. The public are not being informed on this theft.
The low life who chairs the CER, David Parker, takes $460,000 of our dollars annually to do this great work. How could any reasonable person stoop so low to take on this role. He has placed a price on his morality.
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So this latest expensive lunacy comes as the latest global cooling event may have arrived to try and wake us up?
Why can’t they hold our present method of making cement until we see what our Sun has in store for us?
Australia and the entire SH is already a net zero sink, so we can’t change anything. See CSIRO data from Cape Grim.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/05/30/a-grand-solar-minimum-has-arrivedglobal-cooling-of-at-least-1c-is-expected-by-the-2030s-2040s/
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After 38 years of this, where exactly is there a problem? I thought this was rapid global warming. Perhaps we should count the Polar bears again. No one mentions them today.
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Well ,they could always ship in the wood chips from Victoria from all our Blue gum plantations. What’s the saying? Coals to Newcastle.
Ooh, I know, we could build battery powered freight ships, because they’re all the go these days to transport those blue gum chips. Maybe stick some solar panels on top to provide extra power. What about using wind power in combination? That’s never been tried before. Hang on…….
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I like the sound of this novel idea for wind powered ships. Surely they would be made of wood? Send them across Bass Strait with loads of blue gum and then the ships could be burned along with their cargo to make cement.
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all our Blue gum plantations
Have any of the urban dwellers seen the amount of “hydrocarbon waste” (aka bark and small branches) left after the harvesting of a blue gum plantation?
By the way this is usually BURNED on site. A very large local uncontained fire resulted when one site started “clearing”
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The solution is simple. Make nothing. No cement, no fertilizer, no steel, no chemicals, no cars, no electronics, no machines, no shoes, no clothes, no refining.. China are totally exempt. So we buy our cement from China. Brought here on Chinese ships. And they take away our coal and iron ore and make more cement and electric cars and phones and shoes and chemicals and fertilizer. And we sit on the river banks and beaches waiting for the next ship. It’s not just Taiwan that China wants. And the Labor party is already trying to kill AUKUS so we don’t have nuclear submarines. That would be inconvenient.
No one debates rapid CO2 driven Global Warming any more. It is enshrined in a hundred Australian laws. Victoria even has it in the Consitution. The game is over. The concrete manufacturers are just trying to survive with the absurdity of CO2 taxes which no one outside the EU pays.
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And the UK wants to stop their gas from the North Sea. They will buy it from Norway who get it from the North Sea. And now the UK will get its oil from Russia, dropping the sanctions. So they are fighting them in Ukraine and buying their oil. Germany is also in Ukraine and dependent on Russian Gas. We in Australia are taxing all production out of existence, including cement, but we can buy from China who pay no taxes on making our cement. We cannot even ship our own gas from the NW shelf but have to import it from Singapore because of the punitive cost of using Australian ships.
I thought government was for the common good. I was wrong. It is for the politicians.
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Why cant the cement manufacturers burn the discarded wind turbine blades that have been left lying around the countryside?After all they are from alter of green earth saving energy and so will contain absolutely no co2 whatso ever. Apparently this has been done in Europe quite successfully.
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Cement manufactures in Europe are burning shredded blades in cement kilns. Only the resin has heat value. The glass fibre is already fully oxidised.
The shredded particles do not provide a net energy benefit but if the green offsets are high enough then the process can make money because it avoids the expense of land fill.
It is just another step on the path to falling productivity and de-industrialisation.
UK is so far down the path of energy scarcity that they are now planning to ration mobile phone use by slowing it down to save energy.
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When people go mad , they do mad things .
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The people are not to blame, they have been brainwashed by their betters. The madness is top down.
https://notrickszone.com/2026/05/31/germanys-ecological-holocaust-once-fairy-tale-forests-getting-cleared-for-wind-turbines/
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If all the trees being cut down to build wind generators along ridge lines, and to make way for new transmission lines were collected together, they might help the concrete plant.
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If only Australia had diesel needed to transport the trees.
As it is, the diesel and fertiliser shortage is predicted to halve Australia’s crop production for 2026. No diesel to transport wood.
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No diesel to transport wood.
No diesel to transport grain?
And the third tier rail lines are in disrepair and abandoned
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Welcome to Australia where you get what you deserve. The rewards of political laziness and complacency. Have a great day.
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Also, Coal fly ash is a great additional ingredient to cement manufacture, reducing waste from coal fired generation and reducing mineral extraction along with other beneficial outcomes.
https://scienceinsights.org/fly-ash-in-concrete-what-it-is-and-how-it-works/
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Still, it’s better than England where they also perform the same climate dance…but transport their “sustainable timber” from the USA…in diesel burning ships.
Makes you wonder, eh?
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Can anyone imagine a successful process for deprogramming the Woke? There’s a lot of them.
20
I prefer H.G.Wells name in his novel The Time Machine. Eloi. People who live a life of luxury with no idea of the real world or their own fate.
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Just burn them, then they can be useful for once in their useless existence.
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Why doesn’t the cement company just ask for Albo to subsidise transport of 10,000km x 200m worth of trees, old growth or otherwise of the planet saving transmission line corridors?
No environmentalist chaining themselves to bulldozers is there?
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Here’s Willis Eschenbach’s latest talk at the recent Heartland conference and shows about 1 c for a doubling of co2.
“Willis Eschenbach, speaking to the Heartland Institute’s 16th International Conference on Climate Change, presents a surprisingly simple climate model based on thermodynamics and the Constructal Law, the idea that natural systems evolve to maximize the flow of energy”.
“The model closely matches observed temperatures, heat transport, and climate behavior while producing a much lower climate sensitivity than many mainstream projections. Along the way, he explores thunderstorms, cloud feedbacks, heat flow from the tropics to the poles, and why he believes today’s climate models are missing one of the most fundamental principles in nature”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zZp4ueZuzI
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Climate change saves the world !!
And Australia burns native forests to save coal.
A bit stupid really . .
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Yup, where I live the environmentalists told the government to mandate the burning of trees to generate power and save the planet. The government agreed and florestry companies are clear cutting forests everywhere. Now environmentalists want the clear cutting to stop to save the planet.
Eco-Leftism is a mental disorder.
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Eco-Leftism is a mental disorder.
How can miles ‘n miles of farmland-destroying or bushland-destroying windmills,
producing inefficient and intermittent power, be promoted as saving the planet and
living things on earth.
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They should have a word with our resident imbecile Ed Millibrain
Maybe he could let them have some of the millions of trees we import from America to fire our big generating plant in Yorkshire. Brax – the one that was built on top of a 500 year coal seam.
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“Brax” No – – –
Drax Group plc, trading as Drax, is a renewable energy generation, pellet production and carbon dioxide removal business. The principal enterprises include the biomass fuelled Drax Power Station, near Selby in North Yorkshire, Cruachan Power Station, near Oban in Scotland and pellet production plants across North America.
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Thanks John.
We passed by it last week.
Apart from correcting my spelling do I suspect you are praising this tax payer financed boon doggle?
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I believe oil saved the whale.
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It will probably work like the Drax wood pellet fired power station in the UK: Chop down 25 million trees a year in British Columbia and the US old growth forests and have them shipped across thousands of miles of ocean, only to be the largest CO2 emitter in the country! Climate Action™ looks different!
00