We know the Greens oppose any mining and particularly any uranium mining and nuclear industry. Since the formation of the GreenLabor Gillard Govt in Canberra there has been a significant stepping up of the Greens anti-uranium campaigns both in the Northern Territory and in Western Australia.

In the case of the Northern Territory – amazingly the Labor Govt there has caved to Green and NIMBY pressures to come out in opposition to the Angela Pamela project. I do not think it is coincidence that both campaigns target one of the leading global uranium producers – the Canadian company CAMECO.

These matters are posted here because if society wants reliable base load electricity that is pretty much carbon free – there is no current solution except nuclear powered electricity generation.

The Royal Commission into the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires has released its report. My main interest in this over 18 months has been to understand the timeline of what happened around Melbourne on the 7th of Feb 2009. A particularly telling fact for me was the statement by the noted fire expert Dr Tolhurst to the ABC TV show 4Corners on the 16th Feb 2009. Note that he was in fire HQ but had not heard of casualties by 8pm – when he went home. Now we hear from this news item quoting the Royal Commission report being critical of the then Police Commissioner – saying that fatalities were known by 6pm. I find it near impossible to believe that if the police knew of deaths at 6pm – that this information would not have filtered through to a savvy fire expert in HQ within 2 hours.
Continue reading Contradiction in Victorian bushfires reporting →

With its new Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard – Australia is due for an election soon and the pro-labor media is cranking up the effort.
A few recent articles on climate to set the tone.
“Study shows outback soaking up CO2”
Quoting the unbiased Pew Environment group – the article is a mish-mash of misleading statistics and pro IPCC views. I tried to get a comment in with a link to the CSIRO paper that showed our landmass absorbs all our emissions but that was censored out. Not fit to be seen. Read some comments and soak up the ignorance. Whats happening to our education system. I had a post on this subject in 2009.

“Carbon courage: there’s no need for a consensus”
Ben Eltham is a true believer as are most of the commenters.

Last Monday my local paper the Canberra Times published this breathless gush – “Climate change last hurdle before setting election date”. It reads as though Saint Julia just has to dot the “I’s” and cross the “T’s” on her latest iteration climate masterwork and presumably – problem solved. Facts are that GreenLabor could smash our economy back to the Stone Age – and there would not be an iota of detectable effect on climate – except – urban heat islands would decrease in magnitude.

There are a few cases – will add more as I note them.

Those of us downunder will know of the Rudd Labor Govts plans announced 3 May 2010 to introduce a Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT). I commented on this in my three part series “Harming the Australian economy 101”, part two and three.
The main masterminds behind the RSPT – Ken Henry Treasury Secretary – Kevin Rudd Prime Minister (sacked on 24th June) – Wayne Swan Treasurer – all failed to realize that we do not have an isolated “Australian Economy” now – we are all part of the global economy. So the “cunning plan” (apologies to Baldrick) to milk extra tax money from the wealthy miners and give to their Labor constituents superannuation funds crashed in a heap during May and June as global markets simply moved investments out of Australia. Our resource sector market capitalisations crashed by $Billions post 3 May – and of course this has adversely affected every super fund holding resource shares – so natural market forces pretty much negated everything these GreenLabor geniuses were trying to do.
On 24 June PM Kevin Rudd was sacked by a coup d’etat initiated by unelected union officials working through a handfull of ex union Labor Senators. Our new PM is Julia Gillard who says she is getting things “back on track” – but of course Julia Gillard was Kevin Rudd’s loyal deputy for years and never raised an audible whisper of disquiet that KR policies were ever “off track” – so work all that out if you can.
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Of course much of the damage done to the “thousands of battling explorers and miners” will not be undone on the ASX in the weeks and months ahead because once genies are out of bottles – it is usually impossible to fit them back in. The markets will will not assume that GreenLabor plans to tax the resource sector have completely gone away.

I have been watching our TV news from the US reporting on the BP oil spill – and have been surprised that so often the US seems to be whining about what BP has done without seeming to understand that oil exploration is a partnership.
When the US assigns lands for oil exploration to this or that company it puts conditions on drilling and exploration and generally there is an obligation to explore and drill. An oil company can not just sit on land indefintely. With hindsight – when BP purchased the rights to explore/drill the very deep (a mile of water) Macondo prospect – the US had the opportunity to put the case to BP that perhaps they were too near the edge of the safe capacity of their drilling technology. Once BP proceeds with work – it is surely in a partnership with the US Govt.
To hear President Obama linking outrage surrounding this industrial accident with the case to change US energy policy away from the current usage of fossil fuels – IMHO the whole thing gets into the paranormal there. As I think somebody said – “Houston .. we have an oil spill disaster” – “Oh, lets build more windmills.”
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Sorry – but I was looking for signs the US leader was taking a realistic attitude to the entire oil spill issue – after having two months to work something out.

On Monday 3 May our PM and Treasurer announced increased taxes on the mining industry – ostensibly to help pay for higher superannuation for all.
So far this week many $Billions have been knocked off share prices right through the materials sectors as the market digested the new conditions they must operate in. The already high risk mineral exploration industry was made even higher risk at the stroke of a pen as future profit projections must now be trimmed.
I wonder if our political masters allowed for the fact that thousands of super funds invest in the mining and exploration sector already – and their investments have taken a solid loss this week.
Anybody has the right to invest in shares so if you think the mining sector is making easy money – one answer is to invest in it. The Govt could have done that and the Govt could form a National Mining Co or buy some existing companies – if it thought it was all too easy a pathway to make money. I recall a few decades ago Labor dabbled in that area through a Cabinet Minister, Rex Connor.
Viv Forbes of the Carbon Sense Coalition has a good article on the new tax.
Apologies for my OT post.