“Agenda 21” The Reason for the “War on Carbon Fuels”!

February 17, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Strange Allies in the War on Carbon Fuels

Guest Blogger / February 17, 2015

Guest opinion by Viv Forbes –

What great cause could unite Prince Charles, President Obama, the Pope, the Arab Oil sheiks, the United Nations, the European Union, the Russians, the Chinese, Pacific Island Nations, most undeveloped countries, the glitterati of Hollywood, left-wing politicians, unrepentant reds, government media, the climate research industry, Big Oil, Big Gas and the Green Blob. It must be something posing a clear and urgent danger to all humanity?

No, the crusade that unites them all is the War on Carbon Fuels, focussed mainly on that most vilified target, coal.

The biggest group, and the generals in this war on carbon, have no real interest in the facts or science of global climate change – they see climate alarmism as a great opportunity to achieve their goal of creating an unelected global government. They have even laid out their plans in a document called Agenda 21.

This group naturally includes the United Nations and all of its subsidiaries, the EU, and left wing politicians and media everywhere. At a news conference in Brussels recently, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity, but “to change the economic development model” ie destroy what is left of free enterprise and private property. See:
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021015-738779-climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism.htm
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/10/10/shell-oil-lego-greenpeace-and-the-environmental-movement-s-war-on-capitalism/
The next big group of carbon warriors is the anti-western failed states who see this as their big chance to enrich and entrench their ruling classes with “climate reparations”.
Then there are the enviro-entrepreneurs forever seeking new crusades to energise their supporters and get the donations rolling in – Greenpeace, WWF, Get Up etc…
In the dark corner are the anti-human Malthusians and the Deep Greens who want to get rid of most of us other people – personified by the rich and powerful such as Prince Charles and Maurice Strong. They know that carbon fuels support millions of people by cultivating, harvesting, transporting, processing and storing most of the food that supports the cities of the world. Killing the use of carbon fuels will certainly achieve their goal of reduced world population.

See:
http://explosivereports.com/2013/01/12/prince-charles-openly-endorses-draconian-conclusions-of-new-population-study/

Naturally, government media usually support a bigger role for government, and all media like a scare story. Truth or logic does not matter greatly for most of them – just so long as they can coax a looming disaster story from someone. The daily diet of natural calamities soon heightens climate anxiety, which then motivates politicians to be seen to be “doing something”.
And then there are those who see that fighting carbon fuels also suits their pockets. As someone said “When placing a bet, the best horse to back is the one called ‘Self-interest’ – at least you know he is trying”.

For example, Shell, with its massive gas interests, was caught campaigning against coal fired power, the main competitor of gas in electricity generation. See:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/innovationchallenge/shell-admits-campaigning-against-coal-fired-power-plants/story-fn9dkrp5-1226770855004

Arab Oil interests were caught funding a film attacking their competitors – shale oil fracking in America. See:
http://dailysignal.com/2012/09/28/matt-damons-anti-fracking-movie-financed-by-oil-rich-arab-nation/

And a Russian oil company was exposed funding US anti-carbon green groups. See:
http://freebeacon.com/issues/foreign-firm-funding-u-s-green-groups-tied-to-state-owned-russian-oil-company/

The Chinese of course are great supporters of green energy as long as it is installed elsewhere – eg they supply the machines and solar panels and then welcome the factories forced from the host country by soaring electricity prices.
Gas, nuclear and hydro power will be the greatest long term beneficiaries of the war on coal. Initially they will be needed to provide base load and back up for intermittent green power like wind and solar. Then as green subsidies are withdrawn to appease angry taxpayers, the green play-toys will fail and grown-up generators will step easily into full time electricity production.

Finally, the government bureaucracy and the research grants industry justify their existence by “solving community crises”. They love “The Climate Crisis” because it can be blamed for any weather event anytime, anywhere. It is unlikely to be solved, no matter how many dollars are thrown at it – a problem that does not exist can never be “solved”. And the sinister “Greenhouse Effect”, like any good ghost, is invisible, mysterious in operation, debatable, and allows anyone to produce their own scare story.

Opposing this coalition of climate alarmists and opportunists is a rag-tag army of stressed tax payers and electricity consumers and a scattering of sceptical scientists and media researchers.
But the imposing alarmist empire has a hollow heart – the globe has refused to warm, the alarmist “science” is crumbling, their climate models are discredited, some researchers have been caught manipulating records and results, and the costs of green electricity are becoming obvious and onerous. The public is growing restive, governments can no longer afford the climate industry cuckoo in the public nest and the ranks of sceptics grow. Groups like UKIP in UK and the Tea Party in US have abandoned the war on carbon.

The climate revolt is spreading.

Disclosure: Viv Forbes is a shareholder and non-executive director of a small Australian coal exploration company. His views are not shared or supported by most Big Coal CEO’s.

Brilliant Discussion on the Issue of “Global Warming”….

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

The Sensible Believer

I consider myself a “sensible believer” in Global Warming.

In my definition, what does “sensible believer” mean?

I believe that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and thus that increased concentrations of it in the atmosphere would tend to increase the amount of heat trapped by that same atmosphere.

Also, I believe there is enough relatively unbiased evidence to state that over the past 50 years, the average temperature of the planet has increased by ~0.64°C.

So far, so good, but then come some “inconvenient” questions, like, for example:

Of the ~0.64°C, how much is man made?
Is all this temperature increase due to increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere?
Are there other mechanisms that would provide positive / negative feedback to the effect of the CO2?
Would all the effects of an eventual warming of the planet be negative? Or, could there be positive consequences also?
If there could also be positive consequences, would they compensate, at least in part, the negative consequences?

Now, as a “sensible believer,” let me state what I don´t believe in:

That we know for sure how much the average temperature of the Earth will increase vs the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
That there is a “carbon budget” we shouldn’t exceed.
That Global Warming is the most serious problem for humanity.
That any cost / suffering is justified to fight Global Warming.
That renewables (in particular Solar and Wind) are the best solution to reduce our CO2 emissions.
That the IPCC is perfect and that it’s intentions are purely the presentation of science.
That the believer side is “pure” and thus that no paid lobbyists are pursuing interests that have nothing to do with Global Warming.
Carbon taxes. When you boil them down to their essentials, carbon taxes are just another tax. So thanks, but no thanks.
“Freak” energy such as wave, tide, etc. They are “interesting” but will continue to be almost irrelevant in our total primary energy supply.
That we have all the questions and all the answers: in other words, we are too arrogant. If the persons in 1915 would have tried to prevent our problems today, they would have failed miserably.

So, as a “sensible believer” these are my inputs to the energy / climate discourse:

Intensely pursue improvements in efficiency. We have barely scratched the surface here and it is, for the most part, a win-win situation because efficiency does not reduce our standards of living.
Aggressively replace coal with natural gas. Aside from efficiency, probably nothing can reduce CO2 emissions faster.
In general, increase as much as possible the production of natural gas to not only replace coal with it, but minimize the usage of coal in the first place in developing economies.
Do not go all out for renewables (Solar & Wind), this might end up being counter-productive. Thus, remove all overt / covert subsidies for renewables. They are valuable under some circumstances but let them stand on their own feet. While at it, let’s remove subsidies for FF also, however, let’s consider that per unit of energy produced renewables are today more subsidized than FF.
Let current nuclear continue to flourish, but more important, invest in R&D for future generations of nuclear (fission and fusion). Eventually (say in 100 to 150 years, nuclear may be our #1 energy source).
Support innovation in general.
Help reduce population growth in countries that cannot afford it.
Carefully evaluate other “controversial” partial solutions: CCS, geo-engineering, etc.
Our global energy use is of such gigantic proportions that whatever we do, will take decades to show results. “It takes time to bring an elephant to term.” Hysteria and doing something (anything) for the sake of doing it might prove counter-productive.
Essentially, the Global Warming issue is not primarily scientific. It is a political, economic, engineering, psychological, (plus many other things) issue.

Both Robert Bryce and Richard Muller consider natural gas the best energy source we have, and the former states that our plan, long term, should be N2N, in other words: natural gas to nuclear.

From the energy point of view of our civilization, this plan seems to me perfectly reasonable.

Thank you.

Feel free to add to the conversation in Twitter: @luisbaram

Bad Investments in “Novelty Energy Sources” are a Burden for Ratepayers!

July 1, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Power price hikes bite in Queensland

By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 01:08 GMT, 1 July 2014

Queenslanders face a dramatic hike in power bills with the start of the new financial year, and households with solar panels are also likely to take a hit to the hip pocket.

The average power bill is expected to rise by $191, or 13.6 per cent, pushed up by green policies and the increasing cost of poles, wires, and electricity generation.

However, prices will only go up by about 5.1 per cent if the federal government’s carbon tax is repealed.

Queensland’s Energy Minister Mark McArdle has blamed much of the hike on the former Labor government’s over-investment in the power distribution network.

“Every power bill that is issued, 54 per cent of that bill relates to the cost of poles and wires – the gold-plated legacy of Labor that we’re now having to unravel,” Mr McArdle told ABC radio.

Pensioners and seniors will be able to apply for an electricity rebate of $320 after the government upped concessions to $165 million for this financial year.

“The Queensland government promised to lower the cost of living wherever we could and we’re making sure that pensioners and other vulnerable Queenslanders get some relief on household costs,” Mr McArdle said.

Consumers are forking out 50 per cent more for electricity than they did three years ago, and shadow treasurer Curtis Pitt says price hikes under the Newman government total $560.

“Campbell Newman arrogantly promised to lower Queenslanders’ electricity bills, yet ever since he’s become premier they’ve just gone up and up and up,” he said.

This financial year, about 50,000 homeowners who have solar panels will no longer be guaranteed a feed-in tariff of eight cents.

Government-owned distributors will no longer be responsible for paying the tariff and households will have to negotiate directly with electricity retailers for the price they are paid for the solar power they generate.

The 44 cent tariff, paid to some 284,000 people who were first to sign up to the scheme, will remain unchanged.

Australian Solar Council chief executive John Grimes says consumers need to shop around, or join forces to negotiate as a block with electricity retailers.

“As an independent customer, with an average-size system on your roof, you really have little leverage when talking to a utility,” Mr Grimes told ABC radio.

Aussies to Scrap the Carbon Tax, next it’s the Renewable Energy Targets!

June 27, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

PM’s Top Advisor – Maurice Newman – Hammers Palmer’s “Inconsistent” RET Plan

June 27, 2014 by stopthesethings 2 Comments

As the dust settles on the Palmer/Gore circus of the bizarre, it’s now evident that the PUP’s leader has pulled one the greatest confidence tricks since Paul Newman and Robert Redford joined forces in “The Sting”. As the hard-green-left stared in awe at their grand warming alarmist, Palmer slipped through the net unnoticed.

It was a good 24 hours before the green-lefty press (Fairfax/ABC) and the Greens worked out that they’d been had. The play was a good ol’ fashioned “swithcheroo”. Clive put forward an ETS with the impression – sucked up by the Greens and their acolytes – that this was a die-in-a-ditch condition for supporting the Coalition’s plan to abolish the carbon tax. So far, so “green”.

But – as with most politics – the Devil’s in the detail. With the price for a tonne of CO2 under Clive’s ETS set at zero until all of Australia’s major trading partners also sign up to an international ETS, there will be NO price placed on CO2 at all: not now; not ever. Good one, Clive. To the horror of the Greens, it soon became clear that even that “policy” was a rubbery as Clive’s ample figure.

By lunchtime on Thursday, big Clive had dropped his demand to have his ETS replace the “carbon” tax, when repealed. The “carbon” tax will hit the legislative scrapheap within weeks – without a whimper; to be replaced by nothing: the “Sting”, complete.

There is, however, the small matter of the mandatory RET – which – as covered in detail in our last post – Palmer seems keen to support – at least for the moment.

The mandatory RET will see power prices double again between now and 2020, when the target hits the full annual 41,000 GWh target. The risk to the economy is something we’ve been banging on about for some time now. And it’s a matter not lost on the PM, Tony Abbott’s top business advisor, Maurice Newman – among others.

Here’s The Australian on the risk to real businesses in maintaining the mandatory RET.

Palmer’s RET policy ‘too costly for businesses’
The Australian
Annabel Hepworth
27 June 2014

THE head of the Prime Minister’s business advisory council has warned the Palmer United Party’s plan to retain key climate-change policies is at odds with getting electricity prices down and boosting industry competitiveness.

In the wake of Clive Palmer’s move to back the repeal of Labor’s carbon price, Maurice Newman said the carbon tax repeal should lower costs on businesses and households. “But it’s only part of the story,” he said, arguing that “we need to go a lot, lot further”.

He criticised the plan to oppose any changes to the renewable energy target before 2016 and to block the government’s plans to scrap Labor’s $10bn Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Climate Change Authority.

“Mr Palmer seems to want to hang on to them, which seems totally inconsistent with this idea of bringing down the price of energy,” Mr Newman said.

Australia needed to reduce its energy prices. “Australia is getting less and less competitive … We’ve got a very high wage structure and we’ve got very high energy costs.”

Other leading business figures lined up to back the warning on the RET, which is being reviewed by an expert panel headed by businessman Dick Warburton.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Kate Carnell said it was “enormously expensive”.

EnergyAustralia chairman Graham Bradley said it was “a very good thing” the carbon tax was likely to go swiftly, but that the RET should be changed to a “real” 20 per cent.

Executives at EnergyAustralia, which owns the Yallourn brown coal power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, estimated that delivering the required investment in renewables to meet the target would require a fivefold increase on past investment.

“We don’t believe this is achievable without driving up the cost of renewable energy,” group executive manager of strategy and corporate affairs Clare Savage said.

Mr Palmer’s single condition for his support for the carbon tax repeal is a legal requirement that power companies pass savings from scrapping the tax to households. This would go beyond government plans to give the competition watchdog extra monitoring arrangements in the carbon tax repeal.

Energy Supply Association chief executive Matthew Warren said: “It is not clear to us what other head of power the commonwealth could use, as regulating energy prices is a matter for state governments,” Mr Warren said.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox raised concerns most businesses had been unable to pass carbon costs to their customers.

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission should “not expect reductions in prices for those goods and services that never rose in the first place”.

ACCC chairman Rod Sims said he was confident that when the carbon tax repeal passed the savings would be passed on.
The Australian

A while back, Maurice Newman identified the mandatory RET as the Elephant in the room – tagging it as being responsible for the demise of motor manufacturer, Ford and lots of other energy intensive businesses (see our posts here and here and here).

The mandatory RET must go. As retiring Queensland Senator, Ron Boswell put it: “We can have a carbon price and renewable energy targets or viable manufacturing. We can’t have both” (see our post here).

The Climate Change Scam….It has always been, “About the Money!!”

June 27, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

‘Climate Reparations’ an idea that seems to be all about money

Posted on June 26, 2014

Climate Reparations—A New Demand

Guest opinion by Peter Wood

At the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009, leaders from more than a hundred nations gathered to consider an agenda that included a massive transfer of money from developed countries to the Third World. The developed states were tagged to provide $130 billion by 2020 to help developing nations deal with the consequences of global warming. The proposed transfer was widely discussed as “reparations” for the damage caused by use of fossil fuels in the developed world.

The Copenhagen proposal went down in ignominious defeat. A motley collection of Third World countries brought the idea up again in 2013 in the run-up to the UN’s climate conference in Warsaw, but by then whatever impetus the idea had had was gone. President Obama instructed the U.S. delegate to oppose it. The State Department explained:

“It’s our sense that the longer countries look at issues like compensation and liability, the more they will realize this isn’t a productive avenue for the [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] to go down.”

The U.S. Government may have sidled away from this climate change compensation scheme but the underlying idea hasn’t gone away. When the broader public and the world at large dismisses a “progressive” idea, that idea is almost certain to find an enthusiastic welcome on university campuses. The notions of “climate reparations” and more broadly “climate justice” have settled in as things that campus philosophers philosophize about and campus activists activize over.

Possibly this is something that busy people should ignore. “Climate reparations” may turn out to be like the campaign to establish Esperanto as a world language. Esperanto, invented in the 1870s, was put forward as a tool for ending ethnic conflict and fostering world peace. It enjoyed an American vogue in the 1960s, perhaps best remembered for a 1966 horror movie, Incubus, starring William Shatner, in which the entire dialogue was spoken in Esperanto.

Those who speak to Americans right now of climate reparations might as well be lecturing in Esperanto, since few of us want this economic incubus. But it is never wise to entirely ignore the ideas gestating in the faculty towers. Sometimes they get translated into actual political movements.

From Race to Environment

This thought came to mind when I came across an essay by a writer for the New America Foundation. In “The Cost of Ignoring America’s Past,” Hana Passen begins by setting forth an astonishing parallel:

“If we do not face the lasting impact of slavery, which has been abolished by law and condemned in the court of morality, how will we be able to legislate issues like climate change, which some still deny?”

Passen, it turns out, hadn’t conjured the moral equivalence of slavery and climate change out of thin air. She was paraphrasing Atlantic editor Ta-Nehisi Coates, who sets it out even more starkly:

“What [slavery] reparations requires is a country and a citizenry that can look at itself in the mirror naked and see itself clearly,” Coates said during a recent conversation with New America President Anne-Marie Slaughter. “And that’s the same argument for climate change. What is required for reparations, that kind of citizenry, that kind of patriotism, is not just required on that front.”

Coates’ article in the Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” was a huge hit for the rather stodgy journal. According to its editor James Bennett, Coates’ article “brought more visitors to the Atlantic [website] in a single day than any single piece we’ve ever published.” It also sold out on newsstands. But in his article Coates stuck entirely to the theme of racial reparations and did not raise the green flag of climate reparations he brought up his New America interview.

Reparations for slavery is an idea that has been churning among African-Americans for a very long time, and one that grows less and less plausible as a practical political matter with every year that passes since the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the passages of the 13^th and 14^th Amendments (1865, 1868). But slavery reparations, or reparations for racial injustice more broadly conceived, are a durable fantasy, and it isn’t wholly surprising that a fresh enunciation of the case for them has excited attention.

But that’s a topic for another day. The relevance of racial reparations to “climate justice” is that it serves as a conceptual and moral model. Somebody has done something bad to someone. Somebody has to pay.

Cotton Mather’s View

Mr. Coates is an editor, not an academic. But the academic world is astir with ideas about how to apportion responsibility for climate change. In this realm, any debate whether global warming is occurring and to what degree it can be attributed to human actions is entirely foreclosed. It is simply assumed or asserted that catastrophic man-made climate change is upon us, and the discussion moves directly to identifying the culprits and apportioning the costs. In this vein, the discussion bears a certain resemblance to debate in 17^th century New England on how to handle the danger posed by witches. It is as provocative today to express doubt in anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as it would have been to argue with Cotton Mather about relying on spectral evidence. As Mather said, “Never use but one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a Denial of Devils, or of Witches.” In what follows, I will abide by Mather’s counsel.

What do academics argue about when it comes to climate reparations? Simon Carey, a professor of political theory at the University of Birmingham, lays out some useful distinctions in “Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change.” There is wide agreement on the “polluter pays principle” (PPP), Carey says. But there is disagreement whether the true polluter is the individual who pollutes or the nation that benefits from his actions. “Many of those who adopt the PPP approach to climate change appear to treat countries as the relevant units.” Carey, who might be described as a climate liberal, rejects this collectivist approach, which he said is founded on the “beneficiary pays principle” (BPP). Current generations have benefited from the pollution caused by their ancestors, so the current generation should be held collectively responsible. The Copenhagen proposal—which came four years after Carey’s article—embodies BPP logic.

Carey himself, however, believes that BPP violates PPP. The original polluter often doesn’t pay at all, because he is dead, and the payments ignore all the improvements to the standard of living that flow from past industrialization. Carey isn’t against making people pay; he just wants individuals to pay for the harm they themselves do. Presumably he would endorse making BP (the oil company) pay for the damage caused by the 2010blowout of its well in the Gulf of Mexico.

This summary is probably enough to suggest that the debate over climate reparations is a serious matter drawing serious attention from scholars. I won’t take the space here for a deep dive into climate reparations scholarship, but a little snorkeling around the reef is enlightening.

Backward-Looking Laws

In 2008, Daniel Farber published “Basic Compensation for Victims of Climate Change” inEnvironmental Law and Policy Annual Review. Farber attempted to identify the injuries that deserve compensation and the “responsible parties.” He also gave voice to the racial reparations analogy:

“The problem is somewhat analogous to the diffuse issues raised by those seeking reparations for slavery and past racial discrimination.”

Farber is a professor of law at UC Berkeley where he holds a named chair and co-directs the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. He is a consequential and well-published figure. His works include, not incidentally, a law review article, “Backward-Looking Laws and Equal Protection: The Case of Black Reparations” (2006). His books include Disaster Law; Disaster Law and Policy; and Eco-pragmatism: Making Sensible Environmental Decisions in an Uncertain World. His article on black reparations is essentially a meditation on Justice Stevens’ approach to reparations, who he says, “clearly prefers forward-looking rationales for affirmative action over remedial ones” and “might vote against reparations on that basis.”

Farber’s article on compensation for victims of climate change elicited a number of responses, most interestingly from Kenneth Feinberg, the man who served as Special Master to the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund and who also ran the $20 billion BP oil spill victims’ fund. Feinberg disagreed with Farber’s approach that distributes financial responsibility among culprits by a “market share” contribution formula. Feinberg thinks it “more reasonable—and more politically feasible—to expect governments themselves to fund any compensation regimen.” Feinberg also thinks it is premature to start cutting the checks. “There is a great deal to be said for waiting until climate change litigation develops and matures…”

Why Wait?

There are many in the sustainability movement, however, who aren’t inclined to wait at all. They act quickly, as we saw recently when an adjunct professor at American University ventured a criticism on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal of the climate reparations movement. Professor Caleb Rossiter noted that:

“More than 230 organizations, including Africa Action and Oxfam, want industrialized countries to pay ‘reparations’ to African governments for droughts, rising sea levels and other alleged results of what Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni calls ‘climate aggression.’”

Rossiter argued that the campaign extended to efforts “to deny to Africans the reliable electricity—and thus the economic development and extended years of life—that fossil fuels can bring.” The reward to Rossiter for his airing this complaint was a prompt firingfrom his position as a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. (Cotton Mather would approve.)

As part of the National Association of Scholars’ study of the sustainability movement, I have begun to track the “reparations” thread within the universities. It has several aliases, including “environmental justice,” “climate compensation,” “climate change liability,” “climate debt,” and “climate reparations.” The last in the list is the term preferred by Maxine Burkett, a law professor at the University of Hawaii, who argues that reparations put the “moral issues” appropriately at the center of the debate and offer the possibility of “galvanizing greater enthusiasm and commitment to repair from individuals, communities and nation-states.” She thinks reparations would “foster civic trust between nations and manifest social solidarity.”

Judging from the Copenhagen and Warsaw conferences, that dream of international amity is far-fetched. We might have a better chance by sitting ourselves down to learn Esperanto.

But lest this seem too airy a dismissal of a movement that combines heartfelt sympathy for a world imagined to be warming to disaster with cold determination to plunder the West by litigation and treaty, let me add that I take the reparations movement as a force to be reckoned with. Hundreds of professors are honing it at law schools, environmental institutes, and schools of public policy. Who pays? As we say in Esperanto, Finfine, vi kaj mi. [Eventually, you and me.]

===============================================================

Originally published in Minding the Campus. Peter Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars.

Aussie, Clive Palmer, Supports Demolition of Carbon Tax Scam….while Al Gore, Looks On!

June 27, 2014June 27, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

The truth inconveniently dawns on the Clive show THE AUSTRALIAN

JUNE 27, 2014

CLIVE Palmer must have been tempted to throw out some chicken pellets as he left. The former media adviser to Joh Bjelke-Petersen had just sold the chooks of the Canberra press gallery a chopping block and rotisserie, and they gobbled it up.

Journalists and commentators who had long campaigned against Tony Abbott and in favour of a carbon price had just been advised of a package that would kill the carbon tax, defer an emissions trading scheme into the never-never and put an end to carbon abatement through “direct action” — and they applauded. “Palmer in carbon tax blow to PM,” bellowed the front page of The Age, suggesting the Prime Minister’s plans to abolish the tax were in “chaos”, while The Sydney Morning Herald, which favours a price on carbon, editorialised that Mr Palmer’s intervention was a “positive” move for the environment.

That the Queensland coalmine developer and nickel-refining billionaire was audacious enough to think he could snow the media just by having Al Gore share his podium was bizarre enough. That so many in the media fell for it is droll and depressing in equal measure. As for Mr Gore, given his claims about the origins of the internet, he might have found 10 minutes to Google his new political ally before administering self-harm to his diminishing reputation as a climate evangelist. Did Mr Gore even know he was sharing the stage with a man who had often denied global warming was a problem and was planning to make billions of dollars from coal exports? Did the man who shared a Nobel prize for climate activism not even take the time to ascertain that what he was endorsing was the abolition of any and all substantial carbon emissions reduction schemes in this country?

SMH columnist Mike Carlton took to Twitter saying the announcement would “screw the Tories” but succeeded only in demonstrating his venom and lack of political acuity. “Cute of Palmer to front with Al Gore, though, it will drive the climate change deniers at News Corpse to an apoplectic frenzy, just watch,” was his take. If that weren’t embarrassing enough, no lesser figure than the managing director of the ABC shared an identical sentiment. “Sensing hyperventilation in The Australian’s editorial room,” tweeted Mark Scott. We should welcome Mr Scott’s honesty in publicly aligning himself with the embittered left fringe of politics but we should also despair that the ABC’s editor-in-chief should misunderstand policy and politics so comprehensively.

The policy implications of Mr Palmer’s stand are neither disappointing nor surprising. As expected — indeed, as promised — he will support the abolition of the carbon tax. Further, he has vowed to oppose Mr Abbott’s direct action plan. The Australian has always been sceptical of this policy because it will not lead to the lowest cost abatement. However, Mr Palmer’s stand means that the nation could be left with no scheme at all to enable the delivery of its emissions reduction target of 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020. The trump card, strangely lauded by much of the media, is his proposition to legislate an ETS that would be set at $0 until our major trading partners adopted similar schemes. This is a fundamentally sensible position at one level but includes some obvious paradoxes. Australia, effectively, already has an ETS because the carbon tax is due to switch to a market price next year. So what Mr Palmer really suggests is that a fixed price should be kept in place indefinitely but cut to the rate of zero. It would be a carbon price signal without a price signal. This is bizarre, of course, and really no more than spin. Few people could or would argue against an ETS to be imposed if and when our major trading partners adopted one. In fact that has been the consistent policy thread of most sensible advocates in this country since the Shergold report first informed the Howard government on these matters in 2007. And this newspaper has always supported that policy direction: an Australian ETS acting in concert with our trading partners. This is the only way to ensure we do not place ourselves at an economic disadvantage or simply export emissions, and jobs, offshore. The elephant in the room, which we suspect Mr Palmer sees but his media throng doesn’t, is that this won’t be happening any time soon. If ever. To demonstrate what a setback this is for carbon price supporters we simply need to consider the most optimistic scenario. Let us pretend for a moment that global agreement for a trading scheme occurred a decade from now. If that were the case we could see now that the ABC and Fairfax press have been cheering a policy that switches the nation from a $25.40 a tonne carbon price escalating every year for 10 years and raising a minimum of $70 billion, to one set at $0 raising nothing across a decade. Some progress.

And to shatter their climate dreams further, Mr Palmer, with Labor and the Greens, promises to axe the Coalition’s $2.5bn direct action plan that would have been spent entirely on domestic schemes to reduce carbon emissions. This is a great win for carbon pricing in the same way that the Titanic’s maiden voyage was a great win for trans-Atlantic travel.

Mr Palmer is demanding the renewable energy target remains in place. This initiative has long held bipartisan support but is under government review. Dismantling or reducing it would be difficult economically and politically, but keeping it will continue to put upward pressure on electricity prices. The heaviest burden will fall on the poor; not businessmen like Mr Palmer. By also insisting the Clean Energy Finance Corporation remains, Mr Gore’s newest friend ensures only some ongoing government subsidies and investments for industry; although without a carbon tax to fund it, the CEFC soon may wither and die.

So let’s consider the winners and losers from this week’s theatrics. Mr Palmer certainly wins because he has ensured that none of his companies will pay carbon tax and he has again been lauded by the ABC and other media, blowing more CO2 into his political balloon. Mr Abbott wins because he gets rid of the carbon tax and pockets the unexpected bonus of a $2.5bn budget benefit because he can’t get his direct action plan through the Senate. The Labor Party and the Greens lose because they will have conspired to eradicate any emissions reduction scheme — unless either of them backflips and supports direct action. The Greens eventually should wear the odium of having pulled off the extraordinarily counterintuitive feat of killing off climate action under Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Mr Abbott. The hypocrisy eventually may catch up with them. Or not.

The Palmer United Party may stay united or may fracture in the Senate; we would not presume to guess where this coagulation of characters and interests might end. But in the best traditions of the Queensland white shoe brigade, Mr Palmer has spun the media and the southern politicians to his personal advantage. Wednesday night on the ABC’s 7.30 Sarah Ferguson said the PUP leader was “putting himself at the vanguard” of climate policy. A couple of hours later on Lateline Tony Jones asked Mr Palmer what had caused his “road to Damascus conversion” on climate. At least Jones also asked Mr Palmer if he was “feeding the chooks”. Still, praise from a Nobel laureate, the ABC and the Fairfax press is not bad for a bloke who killed off climate action.

Eventually, reality began to set in. Even the Ten Network’s Paul Bongiorno, who tends to make Radio National hosts sound mainstream, could see through the smoke and mirrors. “The Australian seems to call it as it is,” he summarised, referring to our front page headline of “Palmer kills carbon action”. Independent senator Nick Xenophon declared the Palmer-Gore doctrine was “more ham than plan” and Mr Palmer emerged from talks with the Prime Minister confirming the carbon tax would, indeed, be axed. Almost 24 hours on from the excitement of seeing Mr Gore take the stage with a man who has an equally large carbon footprint, the overexcited media pundits started to grasp what was happening. It dawned on the Greens that they had been sold a pup (pun intended) and they began hoping Mr Palmer was befuddled. And over at Fairfax, Tony Wright had worked out that an ETS dependent on action from our trading partners might be some time off. “Say, just after world peace is achieved,” he mused. “Or when Clive becomes Jenny Craig’s poster boy.” Or, perhaps, when Mr Gore next endorses a death blow to climate action.

Savings Are Rarely Passed on to Consumers. Increases, Always Are!

June 26, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

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Carbon tax abolition won’t translate into big electricity bill changes: ESAA

By consumer affairs reporter Amy Bainbridge

Updated 1 hour 49 minutes ago

O'Farrell pushes for power bill compensation

PHOTO: The electricity industry collects about $11 million per day in carbon liability. (7pm TV News NSW)

MAP: Australia

Consumers are being told not to expect a big windfall gain in their power bill if the carbon tax is repealed.

With Palmer United Palmer leader Clive Palmer pledging support for the repeal of the carbon tax, the Energy Supply Association of Australia (ESAA) wants the repeal to be passed as soon as possible.

ESAA chief executive Matthew Warren says if the Senate wants to repeal the carbon tax, the best result for consumers would be for it to swiftly end uncertainty in the industry.

“The electricity market is incredibly complicated and there is thousands of electricity contracts with carbon in them and millions of dollars of them being traded,” he said.

“Unwinding that process after days and weeks and months into the financial year gets extremely complicated.

“So if the Senate wants to give consumers a clean run and a carbon free electricity bill then the best way of doing that is to repeal [it] in the first weeks of July.”

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been given additional funding to ensure money is returned to consumers.

Mr Warren says it is difficult to give an estimate of how much people will save, because it depends on which state or territory they live in and how intense their electricity use is.

The carbon is in the order of cents per day so 20, 30, 50 cents a day is carbon in an electricity bill so that’s the kind of numbers you’ll see come out the other side.

Matthew Warren

“So we’ve already seen numbers like 8 per cent in Queensland, 7 per cent in Tasmania, that sort of order of magnitude,” he said.

“[It’s] a bit less in South Australia where they use more gas so there’s less carbon in their power bills but that’s the kind of size of reduction we should expect to see once the tax is repealed.

“The carbon is in the order of cents per day so 20, 30, 50 cents a day is carbon in an electricity bill so that’s the kind of numbers you’ll see come out the other side.”

Mr Warren says because many consumers receive their bills monthly, they will not necessarily notice a substantial difference in what they pay.

Industry has been collecting about $11 million per day in carbon liability, which Mr Warren says is part of the complication.

“We square the carbon tax up at the end of the year so a repeal that occurs swiftly after that time is pretty easy to execute,” he said.

“If we’re deep into the financial year and we’re trying to unwind $11 million accumulating every day it starts to get extremely complicated, so that’s why our advice is if the Senate is serious about repealing then let’s just repeal quickly.”

According to a 2013 St Vincent de Paul report on energy prices, South Australia has the largest annual average electricity bill of $2,300.

However, because the carbon tax is only applied to the generation component of power supply, the 8 per cent reduction due to the repeal will not apply to the whole bill.

The St Vincent de Paul report also shows combined electricity and gas bills have risen as much as 85 per cent since 2009 in some parts of Australia.

Martin Jones from the Consumer Utilities Advocacy Centre says the carbon price is in the long-term interest of consumers.

“Should the carbon price be repealed, we would expect energy retailers to pass the savings on to their customers quickly and in full,” Mr Jones said.

“However, we think the ACCC will find it difficult to enforce this for retailers not operating in regulated markets and that consumers may not fully realise savings as a result.”

Do you know more? Email investigations@abc.net.au

MPAC Property Devaluation Studies Are Not Worth the Paper They Are Written On!

June 24, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Municipal Property Assessment Corporation

2012 study of wind turbine impacts on

residential property assessments

Author: “Gulden, Wayne”

Last week [April 2014] the Ontario Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) released the 2012 version of their continuing study (following one in 2008) of wind turbines and property values in Ontario, entitled Impact of Industrial Wind Turbines on Residential Property Assessment In Ontario. To sum it up, they still find no evidence that wind turbines cause property value declines.

The study consists of a 31-page main section [backup link] along with 12 appendices. MPAC seems to have their own language and it isn’t easily penetrated by a layman. I’ve read over it carefully several times and there are still aspects of it that escape me. The appendices are generally beyond anyone who is not a professional. On page 4 they state their goals for this version of the study:

Specifically, the study examined the following two statements:

1. Determine if residential properties in close proximity to IWTs are assessed equitably in relation to residential properties located at a greater distance. In this report, this is referred to as Study 1 – Equity of Residential Assessments in Proximity to Industrial Wind Turbines.

2. Determine if sale prices of residential properties are affected by the presence of an IWT in close proximity. In this report, this is referred to as Study 2 – Effect of Industrial Wind Turbines on Residential Sale Prices.

Their two main conclusions, on page 5, are:

Following MPAC’s review, it was concluded that 2012 CVAs of properties located within proximity of an IWT are assessed at their current value and are equitably assessed in relation to homes at greater distances. No adjustments are required for 2012 CVAs. This finding is consistent with MPAC’s 2008 CVA report.

MPAC’s findings also concluded that there is no statistically significant impact on sale prices of residential properties in these market areas resulting from proximity to an IWT, when analysing sale prices.

Actually, there are three parts to this study, with the third contained in Appendix G [backup link]. Early in 2013 one Ben Lansink published a pretty solid study that showed property value declines of anywhere from 22% to 59% and averaging about 37% on residential properties close (all within 1 km) to IWTs, which I posted on at the time. Apparently Lansink’s work was solid enough that MPAC felt obliged to attack it.

For me to critique all three parts would make for a very long posting, so I’m going to divide it up. Obviously the details will follow in my subsequent postings, but for the impatient let me summarize below.

Part 1, are MPAC’s evaluations close to IWTs as accurate (equitable, in their words) as those further away? This section is only of tangential interest to me, as the central question isn’t MPAC’s accuracy, but rather the effect of IWTs on prices. It seems that, given MPAC’s explanations, their appraisals are accurate. Still, there are some items in this part that are of interest. For example, it seems that MPAC has been playing games to get the appraisals to agree with the market while hiding the effect of wind turbines. They studied turbines 1.5mw and larger, not older turbines and the areas in Ontario where the impact has already been felt.

Part 2, do IWTs have an effect on properties closer to them? This section is of central interest. Unfortunately there are only 5 pages in Part 2, leaving lots of details missing. Things like the sales prices within the close-in areas. MPAC’s major tool for doing mass appraisals (4.7 million in Ontario) is multiple regression analysis and we’ve had lots of experience with how that can be manipulated to obtain the answer your sponsor wants. Instead of providing us the prices and letting us judge for ourselves what any effects might be, they opaquely run those prices through their regressions and voila! claim there’s nothing to see here!

But whoever wrote Part 2 must not have been talking to whoever wrote Part 1. On page 18, well within part 1, there’s Figure 2. It’s purpose there is to show how close the appraisals are to the sales data (the paired blue and green bars) for the different distances from the IWTs.

Note the blindingly obvious. Prices (and appraisals) within 5 km of IWTs are substantially lower than those further away. I’ve added the horizontal lines so we can better determine the values, which are noted to the side. Michael McCann, among others, has done a number of studies on IWTs and prices, and his overall conclusion is a decline of 25-40%, with almost 100% in some cases. Does anyone want to calculate the decline from 228,000 to 171,000? Perhaps the disparity is due to something as simple as the spread between rural and urban properties, but don’t you think MPAC would at least mention something? Nope. Nada.

Part 3, what are the problems with Lansink’s study? Appendix G is more or less readable and provides an excellent example of what David Michaels book, Doubt is Their Product, talks about. MPAC throws up, by my count, 7 objections to Lansink’s methodology; of which exactly zero actually indicate that Lansink’s numbers are wrong. Sewing confusion seems to be the most logical explanation. As an example, objection #4 of the 7 is that for some of the pre-IWT prices Lansink used, gasp!, MPAC’s own appraisals. Perhaps whoever wrote Appendix G didn’t bother reading the conclusions in Part 1.

There’s more details, of course, in the following.

Critique of Part 1

Critique of Part 2

Critique of the Lansink hatchet job

MPAC 2012, Study 1

Part 1 of MPAC’s 2012 study asks if MPAC has as equitably assessed properties close to IWTs as properties further away. This part, although of only tangential interest to wind opponents like myself, occupies the central part of the entire study. We think the larger question is: do IWTs reduce property values, not whether MPAC is clever and honest enough to correctly recognize those reductions.

MPAC is in the business of mass assessments, nearly 5 million in Ontario. Given this volume they have no choice but to use computers and computer-friendly techniques to do their assessments. That translates to a significant reliance on multiple regression analysis. They determine what sorts of characteristics influence the selling prices and then use the computers to find out how much influence each characteristic has. In their experience, 85% of the selling price can be calculated using 5 characteristics, or variables: location, building area, construction quality, lot size and age of the home adjusted for renovations and additions. Note that distance to a wind turbine is not one of their characteristics and MPAC seems determined to keep it so. But also note that location could be used in lieu of distance – more on this later.

MPAC uses the ASR, Assessment-to-Sales Ratio, to determine if their assessments are accurate. It is simply the assessment divided by selling price, with a ratio of 1.0 being a perfect match. MPAC expects ratios between 0.95 and 1.05, and presents what seems to be an endless series of charts demonstrating this, primarily in the appendices. While obviously MPAC (actually everyone) has an interest in accuracy their emphasis on it seems misplaced in a study entitled Impact of Industrial Wind Turbines on Residential Property Assessment In Ontario, which to me and most residents is quite a different question.

Just think of the ramifications if MPAC decided to include distance from an IWT in their regressions. I have little doubt it would make Ontario’s lawyers very happy. It would also put Ontario’s very-pro-IWT ruling party in a difficult political spot. And don’t forget that the board of MPAC is appointed by the Minister of Finance, who is a member of the ruling party’s cabinet.

Upstream I mentioned that MPAC could use the location variables that already exist in their regressions to finesse their way out of this problem. I point to Wolfe Island as an example of how this might work. The western half of WI is now home to 86 IWTs, a project that had been in development since roughly 2000. If this half constitutes a “neighborhood” then MPAC could reduce the values in that neighborhood in a uniform manner and never have to recognize the elephant in the room. As it happens, I posted on MPAC’s actions on Wolfe Island about 18 months ago. In the 7 years when the wind project went from being developed to operational, the roughly 700 properties on Wolfe received the following number and average reductions:

2005/06: 130, 9.3%
2006/07: 33, 15.2%
2007/08: 12, 28.8%
2008/09: 34, 12.4%
2009/10: 44, 29.0%
2010/11: 22, 30.0%
2011/12: 27, 24.0%

That’s a total of 302 reductions, which seems like a rather large percentage of the properties there.

A Wolfe Island couple, the Kenneys, asked for a reduction which they say MPAC was willing to grant, although MPAC wouldn’t let IWTs be used as the reason. It ended up in court, and a local paper [backup link] had a reasonably good account of it. Perhaps MPAC’s reluctance to admit the obvious is that once they admit it they must then include distance in their regressions and doing that (and the legal and political repercussions) is just too unpleasant. So they limp along, using the location instead.

Their favored overall chain of logic seems to be: since the ratios in neighborhoods close to IWTs aren’t much different from those further away, and since those ratios indicate their assessments are accurate, and since MPAC doesn’t include distance to an IWT in their regressions, ergo distance from an IWT isn’t a factor in reducing values. Part 1 of this study is a necessary part of this chain. So the real main purpose of this part of the study (and the study as a whole) seems to be to publicize MPAC’s skills at keeping the assessments in line with reality, and at the same time deflect how MPAC is going about doing this. MPAC is, after all, in a tight spot. The reality is that home prices take a dive when close to IWTs. MPAC somehow has to lower the assessments around IWTs to keep the ASRs in line while keeping their bosses happy.

Unfortunately, the wind industry will be using this study for quite a different purpose – to bolster their argument that IWTs don’t impact home prices in the first place.

MPAC 2012, Study 2

I fear that this part will be a difficult one for most people to follow, not to mention being lengthy. Feel free to skip it. But I think it is important to document what this Study contains, and MPAC made no effort to make understanding it easier. I recommend you print out Study 2′s 5 pages (pdf pages 26 to 30) and have them at hand as you read this.

The purpose of Study 2 is to “study the effect of proximity to industrial wind turbines on residential sale prices.” In summary, Study 2 finds that “With the exceptions noted above, no distance variables entered any regression equations for any of the other market areas.” Say what?

It seems that people who are in the business of estimating real estate prices tend to fall into one of two camps. First are those who make their living providing services to the people who actually own the properties, with real estate brokers being the most obvious examples. These people tend to focus on one property at a time and generally use comps or repeat sales to obtain their estimates. Second are those who make their living providing services to people who don’t actually own the property. Academics and mass appraisers (like MPAC) are the most obvious examples. These people tend to focus on many properties at a time and generally use statistical techniques like multiple regression analysis to obtain their estimates. The second class tends to think in terms of rejecting the null hypothesis – you assume there is no difference between two sets (in this case close-in prices and far-away prices) unless you have “statistical significance”. As a snarky aside, getting to statistical significance in real estate can be quite a challenge, given the wide variance among prices, and can be even more difficult when your sponsor/boss doesn’t want you to do so.

So of course MPAC used their main tool, regression equations that run multiple regression analyses. They created three new variables based on distance from an IWT and entered these into regression equations to see if the new variables were statistically significant. If they aren’t statistically significant they don’t “enter” into the regression equations. As for the exceptions (which we’ll get to shortly), out of 30 possibly significant variables, only 4 were significant and 3 of them were positive! Whew!

So right off the bat MPAC is using a tool that doesn’t provide the answers the actual owners of potentially affected properties really care about. A binary statistical significance indicator does not provide an answer to the “how much” and “how likely” questions a homeowner is going to have. In this case, MPAC has skipped through the study so opaquely that I can’t even have much confidence in my critique. There’s just too many omissions, too many unexplained leaps, too many dangling statements.

There are just 5 pages in Study 2. The first of these (page 25 of the study) lists the three new distance variables and sets their criteria for statistical significance at either 5% or 10%. For those unfamiliar with that concept, the significance is a measure of the odds two populations are in fact just randomly part of the same larger population. In this case, a 5% significance means that there is only a 5% chance that the prices of the close-in homes are the same as the far-away home prices. In other words, there’s a 95% chance that the close-in prices are different from the far-away prices. What if there’s only an 80% chance your home value will drop? Not significant, from MPAC’s perspective.

The second page (page 26) is dominated by Table 9. For MPAC’s purposes Ontario is divided into 130 “market areas”. These areas presumably have some common basis that allows them to be treated as a unit for their regression equations. Unfortunately I couldn’t find where the areas were or how many homes were in each. Of the 130 MPAC found 15 that had large enough turbines in them to be of interest. These 15 are listed in Table 9, along with the numbers of sales within each of the 3 distance variables for both pre-construction and post-construction. MPAC didn’t bother adding them up either horizontally or in total, but I did. The numbers inside the grid add up to 3136, which would be the total sales within 5 km in all the areas. But if you add up their numbers along the bottom you come up with 3143. It turns out that their 142 should be 139 and their 1584 should be 1580. Now this isn’t much of an error, except that any pre-teen with a spreadsheet and 10 minutes wouldn’t have made it.

At the bottom of page 26 they introduce pre-construction and post-construction periods, and that only two of the 15 have enough sales to test both distances and periods. Most of the remaining 13 have “sufficient sales within 1 KM to test the value impact within that distance”. Also that the “sales period to develop valuation ranges from December 2008 to December 2011&”. And that Table 10 provides a summary.

The third page (page 27) is dominated by Table 10. It lists the remaining 10 market areas that presumably have “sufficient sales within 1 KM to test the value impact within that distance”. 2 of these have enough sales to test both distance and periods while the other 8 have enough sales to test just the distance. For each of the 10 areas MPAC list square footage etc and median adjusted prices. Are these the prices for the entire area or just within 1 km? MPAC doesn’t say. What is the criterion for “sufficient”? MPAC doesn’t say. Nor does MPAC include what should obviously be included – both tables. I suspect they are for the entire area, in which case they are useless for our purposes, at least without the close-in comparison.

Presuming the criteria for inclusion into Table 10 is the 1 km test mentioned on page 26, one has to wonder how 26RR010 and 31RR010 got into it, as Table 9 shows they had zero sales within 1 km. Snark alert – maybe the missing 7 sales from Table 9 took place in these areas? And if 1 km isn’t the criterion, what is? MPAC never says.

At the bottom of page 27 they mention that some sales at the 5 km distance were in urban as opposed to rural market areas and thus were eliminated. They don’t say how many, nor what their effects on the regressions might be. They also reiterate their statistical significance levels.

On the fourth page (page 28) they present two more tables, 11 and 12. Table 11 lists the 8 market areas that had sufficient sales (within 1 km?) to test the distance variables while Table 12 lists the 2 market areas that had sufficient sales to test both distance and periods. These tables made absolutely no sense to me until I noticed Appendix F.

For all 10 areas they entered the 3 distances and ran their regressions. In Appendix F they list all the “excluded” variables, in this case all the distance-related variables that didn’t get to statistical significance. They apparently are called “excluded” since, being “insignificant” they don’t enter into MPAC’s final pricing calculations. If you look at the “sig” column you will not see any value less than .100, or the 10% significance level MPAC mentioned on pages 25 and 27. I assume by omission (and that’s all I can do here) that any of the 3 distance variables that are NOT listed in Appendix F are in fact significant.

On my first pass through Appendix F I came up with 6 omitted, and thus assumed significant, variables. Two of the omissions were for zero sales, for areas that shouldn’t even be there by the <1 km criterion. But, maybe the < 1 km variable was never even entered on the exclusion listing in Appendix F, so maybe I had erroneously assumed it was not excluded when in fact it didn’t exist in the first place. So maybe the criterion for inclusion in Table 10 wasn’t significant sales less than 1 km, but rather significant sales less than 5 km out. Just a typo, right? At least Table 11 now is consistent with Tables 9 and 10.

Finally! Out of the 30 tests (10 areas times 3 tests) I count 4 that are significant. Those 4 make up the “non-DNE” entries in Tables 11. MPAC provided absolutely no guidance or explanation about any of this, apparently writing for a very small audience.

Table 12 shows the 2 areas that had enough sales to test both distance and periods. You’d think that they’d be creating 6 variables for each of them instead of the 3 variables the other 8 areas received. Looking at Appendix F all you see is the same 3 as everyone else got. And all of those variables were excluded. But Table 12 shows 2 of the variables being significant for 26RR010. Perhaps Appendix F was based on a 5% significance level and Table 12 was based on 10%. Who knows?

I can only guess that the dollar amounts in Tables 11 and 12 are the effects of being in those areas upon the prices. So, in the Kingston area (05RR030), if you live within 1 km of an IWT, you can expect the value of your home to increase by $36,435! Very impressive – 5 digit accuracy, especially with a sample size of 7.

Finally, thank goodness, we come to the fifth page (page 29). It is the Summary of Findings and contains more words than the rest of the Study put together. This section mostly lists the significant variables and adds some fairly cryptic commentary.

Some Commentary

As I read through and dissected this Study I couldn’t escape the sense that MPAC didn’t want to put much effort into it. Any narrative or explanations or even public-friendly conclusions are absent. The tables that are included are ok, once you take the time to figure them out, but what about all the stuff they should have included but didn’t? Things like the median prices in the areas represented by the 30 variables. Or an Appendix F1 that shows the included variables, allowing us to see the t-scores etc for ourselves. Etc., etc.

These missing items cause this Study to be terribly opaque. I hope my explanation above is accurate, but I can’t be sure due to all the missing items. Maybe the Study reaches valid conclusions, but I sure can’t verify that. Perhaps MPAC thinks we should just trust them to be an honest pursuer of the truth. Sorry, that no longer flies, if it ever did. You have to wonder, is there some reason other than laziness or stinginess that this Study seems so empty? In addition to the opacity the Study includes several cryptic items that MPAC never explains. For example, from the summary, what do these sentences actually mean?

“Upon review of the sales database, it was determined that the IWT variables created for this study were highly correlated with the neighbourhood locational identifier. This strong correlation resulted in coefficients that did not make appraisal sense, and thus have been negated for the purposes of this study.”

If you look at the excluded variables in Appendix F you notice that most of them are named “NBxxxx”. Probably those are neighborhood identifiers the somehow overlay the market areas. MPAC never mentions how many there are or what the criteria are for forming one. But pretty obviously the areas around an IWT could easily coincide with their neighborhoods. So what gets negated? Some of the coefficients? All of them? MPAC provides no further information.

As an aside, I found it interesting to scan over the other excluded variables to see what sorts of things MPAC puts into their regressions. Many of them make no sense and they seem to vary greatly from market to market. I can’t help but think of a bunch of regression-heads sitting at their desks hurriedly making up variables and desperately running regressions in an effort to get the ASRs closer to one (ASRs are covered in Study 1).

I’ll leave (thankfully, believe me) this Study behind with the final thought that it seems so slapped together, so opaque, so disjointed that perhaps even MPAC themselves weren’t sure what significance it holds. Unfortunately, the wind industry won’t care about any of that, and will use this study to continue harming Ontario residents.

MPAC 2012 and Lansink

Ben Lansink is a professional real estate appraiser based in Ontario. In February 2013 he published a study of two areas (Melancthon and Clear Creek, Ontario) where 12 homes all within 1 km of an IWT were sold on the open market. He used previous sales and MPAC assessments to establish what the prices were before the IWTs arrived and then compared that with the open market prices after they went into operation. The declines were enormous, averaging above 30%. The following (thankfully clickable) spreadsheet snapshot gives a good summary of his results.

In quite a departure from MPAC’s style, Lansink lists every sale, every price, every time-related area price increase rate and every source. Lansink establishes an initial price at some time before the IWTs were installed, applies a local-area inflation rate over the period between the sales, and compares the “should-have-been” price with what the actual sales prices was after the IWTs were installed. In all 12 cases the final price was lower than the initial price, leading to an actual loss on the property. When the surrounding real estate price increases were factored in, the resulting adjusted losses are even greater. The compulsive reader might notice that the numbers above vary slightly from Lansink’s. In order to check his numbers I reran all his calculations in the above chart and there are some rounding errors – like on the order of < $10. I posted on Lansink’s study when it came out, along with a second posting on a previous version of his study.

These numbers are pretty easy to understand, and for most actual property owners are a hard-to-refute indication of what awaits us should we be unfortunate enough to own property within 1 km of an IWT. It is powerful enough and inconvenient enough that MPAC felt the need to single it out for a hatchet job, which is contained in the 7 pages of Appendix G. The first couple of pages are introductory stuff. Starting in the middle of page 2 they start their critique with, by my count, 7 issues with Lansink’s methodology. The 7 are:

Lansink uses the local area MLS price index in calculating the inflation rate. MPAC points out, correctly I guess, that within the MLS local area there could be neighborhood variances that could differ from MLS’s area average. MPAC has lots of neighborhoods defined (see Appendix F for a sampling) and it would be more accurate to use them. While more discrete data is generally a good thing, I think most people are quite willing to accept the local area MLS price index as a reasonable proxy. Besides – how would Lansink obtain MPAC’s neighborhood data? He used the best that he had, and that best is no doubt good enough for everyone besides MPAC. As you increase the number of neighborhoods you necessarily decrease the number of homes in each, increasing the chances of distortion by a single transaction. Issue #5 below will mention this as a problem from the opposite direction. No doubt if Lansink would have used neighborhoods MPAC would be criticizing him for not using the more reliable area average. Additionally – how far apart could a neighborhood be from the local area average? Does MPAC provide any indication that this caused an error in Lansink’s conclusions? Of course not.

Lansink used just two points to “develop a trend”. I have no idea what they are talking about. Lansink is not developing any trends. As with neighborhoods, MPAC has more discrete timing adjustments than what Lansink used. In theory, more discrete data might be more accurate. In practice, maybe not, due to outliers. A monthly MLS area average is good enough for, again, everybody but MPAC. Additionally – how far apart could a their timeline be from the local area average? Does MPAC provide any indication that this caused an error in Lansink’s conclusions? Of course not.

Two homes in Clear Creek have their initial and final sales 8 and 15 years apart and there was likely something changed in the interim, affecting the price. People are always doing things to change the value of their homes – does MPAC have any indication that something substantial changed in one of these properties? If not, this is simply idle speculation, designed to instill confusion. Does MPAC provide any indication that this caused an error in Lansink’s conclusions? Of course not.

For the other 5 home in Clear Creek Lansink used MPAC’s 2008 evaluations as the initial price, and MPAC is complaining about that. MPAC is apparently unaware of how ironic this sounds. They just finished, in this very study, bragging about how close their ASR’s were to one. Does MPAC provide any indication that this caused an error in Lansink’s conclusions? Of course not.

For the properties in Melancthon Lansink used the buyout prices from CHD (the wind project developer) as the initial prices. To confirm these prices were at least in the ballpark of local market prices he obtained a local per square foot average price and it compared favorably with the prices paid per square foot by CHD. Since there was only 4 samples in this part of his study, even one outlier becomes a possible source of distortion and this is one of MPAC’s “major concerns”. This seems an odd criticism, coming from someone who relied upon the data in Table 9, with its fair share of single-digit samples. Does MPAC provide any indication that this caused an error in Lansink’s conclusions? Of course not.

MPAC found one house with a basement and since footage in basements is treated differently from footage above ground, this would have changed the square footage price used by Lansink in his comparison with the local average. Since there are only 4 houses in this sample, it would have moved the average up. MPAC spends the bottom of page 2, all of page 3 and part of page 4 discussing basements and whether they are finished or not. Does MPAC provide any indication that this caused an error in Lansink’s conclusions? Of course not.

I’ll quote issue #7 in its entirety so you can fully appreciate it. “One final issue with the sales used in the Lansink study was that the second sale price was consistently lower than the first sale price despite the fact the time frame being analyzed was one of inflation. The absence of variability in the study make them suspect.” Suspect? THESE ARE PUBLIC RECORDS. There’s nothing suspect about them. These are facts. They won’t change. If they don’t fit your narrative perhaps your narrative needs to change, eh? Does MPAC provide any indication that this caused an error in Lansink’s conclusions? Of course not.

These 7 issues are an excellent example of spreading confusion, hoping that some of it will stick, saying whatever you can come up with to discredit an opponent. When you’re reduced to spending over a page discussing basements it provides an idea of just how desperate you are.

The second part of MPAC’s critique involves them running their own study of resales to see how it compares with Lansink’s. They find 2051 re-sales that were part of this same study’s ASR calculations (in Study 1). They use their more discrete time variables in place of Lansink’s MLS local area averages. They use multiple regression analysis because “Paired sales methods and re-sale analysis methods are generally limited to fee appraisal and often too tedious for mass appraisal work.” Their conclusion: “Using 2,051 properties and generally accepted time adjustment techniques, MPAC cannot conclude any loss in price due to the proximity of an IWT.”

In spite of the voluminous tables and examples, MPAC leaves some very basic questions unanswered. Like where were these 2,051 properties located and how were they selected? There’s no mention of them in the body of the 2012 study. Over what period were the resales captured? What were the prices of the close-in re-sales vs the far-away re-sales? Lansink has documented 7 losing resales within 1 km – why does your summary say zero?

MPAC has this habit of expecting us to be impressed with large amounts of data, without divulging where it came from and what filters might have been employed. Same with throwing all these numbers into a computer and expecting us to uncritically accept the output. In short, MPAC expects us to trust them to be fully honest, fully competent and fully independent. I hate to be the bearer of bad news to the fine folks at MPAC, but that trust is no longer automatic for increasing segments of Ontario’s population. Lansink’s numbers are out in the open and are processed in a way that anyone can verify. Your numbers suddenly appear and rely upon computers with undocumented processes that always support the agendas of your bosses. Your methods may be satisfactory to some media, some politicians, some courts and all trough-feeders, but please don’t be surprised that they are not satisfactory to those of us living in the trenches.

Aussies Prepare to Rid Themselves of the Carbon Tax Scourge!!

June 23, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Carbon tax revisited in final Senate week

By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 06:20 GMT, 22 June 2014

It may by the current Senate’s final hurrah, as its sits for one last week before the new senators take their place.

But even before it begins what amounts to a farewell lap, attention is focused squarely on the Senate that will replace it.

The Abbott government will on Monday reintroduce its carbon tax repeal laws into the parliament, in readiness for the new, more conservative upper house that take effect on July 7.

The legislation has already been knocked back once by Labor and Greens in the Senate, but the host of conservative crossbenchers are expected to pass the legislation.

“This week the government will bring the carbon tax repeal bills back to Parliament to get rid of this dodgy tax once and for all,” Environment Minister Greg Hunt says.

While signature policies such as the carbon tax are expected to be waved through by the likes of the Palmer United Party, others such as the GP co-payment face continued resistance.

Assistant infrastructure minister Jamie Briggs is confident the new senators can be talked into supporting the co-payment and reform of universities fees – two changes opposed by the PUP.

“I’m not at all sure that the positions some of the new senators have outlined will necessarily be their position in a month’s time,” Mr Briggs told Sky News on Sunday.

“When they’re in Canberra and they’ve had the discussions with the relevant ministers … I’m very confident people will understand this is the right direction.”

Environmentalists also had their minds turned to July 7, with the Climate Institute bringing two life-size dinosaur replicas to Parliament House in a last-ditch attempt to save the carbon tax.

“There are dinosaurs in politics and business who want to hold back progress,” chief executive John Connor told reporters.

“This is an appeal to all parliamentarians, particularly the new senators, not to be rushed into a vote literally when they haven’t even got their feet under their desks in parliament.”

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the carbon tax was bad for jobs, hurt families and didn’t help the environment.

Scrapping the tax would save the typical household $550 a year, with electricity prices to be about nine per cent lower, he said.

“It’s time to end this bad tax and to terminate Labor’s failed carbon tax experiment,” Mr Abbott said in a statement on Sunday.

Proof That Climate Change is Much Older than the Industrial Age!

June 21, 2014 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Receding Swiss Glaciers Reveal 4000 Year Old Forests

– Warmists Try To Suppress Findings

JUNE 21, 2014

By Paul Homewood

As many sources, including HH Lamb, have pointed out, back in the Bronze Age around 2000BC, the climate in the Alps was much warmer than now.

It is therefore no surprise to find direct evidence of this from geologist Dr. Christian Schlüchter, Professor emeritus at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

Larry Bell at Newsmax has the story:

Dr. Christian Schlüchter’s discovery of 4,000-year-old chunks of wood at the leading edge of a Swiss glacier was clearly not cheered by many members of the global warming doom-and-gloom science orthodoxy.

This finding indicated that the Alps were pretty nearly glacier-free at that time, disproving accepted theories that they only began retreating after the end of the little ice age in the mid-19th century. As he concluded, the region had once been much warmer than today, with “a wild landscape and wide flowing river.”

Dr. Schlüchter’s report might have been more conveniently dismissed by the entrenched global warming establishment were it not for his distinguished reputation as a giant in the field of geology and paleoclimatology who has authored/coauthored more than 250 papers and is a professor emeritus at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

Then he made himself even more unpopular thanks to a recent interview titled “Our Society is Fundamentally Dishonest” which appeared in the Swiss publication Der Bund where he criticized the U.N.-dominated institutional climate science hierarchy for extreme tunnel vision and political contamination.

Following the ancient forest evidence discovery Schlüchter became a target of scorn. As he observes in the interview, “I wasn’t supposed to find that chunk of wood because I didn’t belong to the close-knit circle of Holocene and climate researchers. My findings thus caught many experts off guard: Now an ‘amateur’ had found something that the [more recent time-focused] Holocene and climate experts should have found.”

Other evidence exists that there is really nothing new about dramatic glacier advances and retreats. In fact the Alps were nearly glacier-free again about 2,000 years ago. Schlüchter points out that “the forest line was much higher than it is today; there were hardly any glaciers. Nowhere in the detailed travel accounts from Roman times are glaciers mentioned.”

Schlüchter criticizes his critics for focusing on a time period which is “indeed too short.” His studies and analyses of a Rhone glacier area reveal that “the rock surface had [previously] been ice-free 5,800 of the last 10,000 years.”

Such changes can occur very rapidly. His research team was stunned to find trunks of huge trees near the edge of Mont Miné Glacier which had all died in just a single year. They determined that time to be 8,200 years ago based upon oxygen isotopes in the Greenland ice which showed marked cooling.

Casting serious doubt upon alarmist U.N.-IPCC projections that the Alps will be nearly glacier-free by 2100, Schlüchter poses several challenging questions: “Why did the glaciers retreat in the middle of the 19th century, although the large CO2 increase in the atmosphere came later? Why did the Earth ‘tip’ in such a short time into a warming phase? Why did glaciers again advance in the 1880s, 1920s, and 1980s? . . . Sooner or later climate science will have to answer the question why the retreat of the glacier at the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850 was so rapid.”

Although we witness ongoing IPCC attempts to blame such developments upon evil fossil-fueled CO2 emissions, that notion fails to answer these questions. Instead, Schlüchter believes that the sun is the principal long-term driver of climate change, with tectonics and volcanoes acting as significant contributors.

Regarding IPCC integrity with strong suspicion, Schlüchter recounts a meeting in England that he was “accidentally” invited to which was led by “someone of the East Anglia Climate Center who had come under fire in the wake of the Climategate e-mails.”

As he describes it: “The leader of the meeting spoke like some kind of Father. He was seated at a table in front of those gathered and he took messages. He commented on them either benevolently or dismissively.”

Schlüchter’s view of the proceeding took a final nosedive towards the end of the discussion. As he noted: “Lastly it was about tips on research funding proposals and where to submit them best. For me it was impressive to see how the leader of the meeting collected and selected information.”

As a number of other prominent climate scientists I know will attest, there’s one broadly recognized universal tip for those seeking government funding. All proposals with any real prospects for success should somehow link climate change with human activities rather than to natural causes. Even better, those human influences should intone dangerous consequences.

Schlüchter warns that the reputation of science is becoming more and more damaged as politics and money gain influence. He concludes, “For me it also gets down to the credibility of science . . . Today many natural scientists are helping hands of politicians, and are no longer scientists who occupy themselves with new knowledge and data. And that worries me.”

Yes. That should worry everyone.

The only real surprise in this story is why the so-called “experts”, that he was up against, were so surprised by his findings. There is ample evidence from HH Lamb and others that temperatures in this part of the world were higher then than now. Apart from anything else, there is the body of Oetzi the iceman, which was discovered a few years ago in a glacier, high up in the Alps, near the Austro-Italian border, at an altitude of about 10,000 feet. Oetzi had attempted to cross the Alps about 5000 years ago.

Anyone, with the slightest knowledge of the Alps, would know that nobody these days would attempt to cross a glacier at this height with the sort of clothing and equipment available to Oetzi.

In 2008, the BBC offered a fuller explanation.

Melting alpine glaciers are revealing fascinating clues to Neolithic life in the high mountains.

And, as a conference of archaeologists and climatologists meeting in the Swiss capital Berne has been discussing, the finds are also providing key indicators to climate change.

Everyone knows the story of Oetzi the Ice Man, found in a glacier on the Austrian-Italian border in 1991. Oetzi was discovered at an altitude of over 3,000m.

He lived in about 3,300 BC, leading to speculation that the Alps may have had more human habitation than previously suspected.

Now, more dramatic findings from the 2,756m Schnidejoch glacier in Switzerland have confirmed the theory.

It all started at the end of the long hot summer of 2003, when a Swiss couple, hiking across a melting Schnidejoch, came across a piece of wood that aroused their curiosity.

They took it down with them, and gave it to canton Berne’s archaeological department, where careful examination and carbon dating revealed the piece of wood to be an arrow quiver made of birch bark, dating from about 3000 BC.

Unique findings

“Finds in the Alps are very rare anyway,” explains Albert Hafner, chief archaeologist with the canton of Berne. “But this is unique; we don’t know of a quiver like this anywhere else in the world.”

At first, the news of the find was kept quiet; historians feared treasure hunters on the Schnidejoch as the ice melted. But teams of archaeologists went up, and more and more artefacts were discovered.

The ice has protected the leather for thousands of years

“We now have the complete bow equipment, quiver and arrows,” says Mr Hafner “And we have, surprisingly, a lot of organic material like leather, parts of shoes and a trouser leg, that we wouldn’t normally find.”

And the finds are not confined to 3000 BC. Some of the leather found, and a fragment of a wooden bowl, date from 4500 BC, older even than Oetzi, making them the oldest objects ever found in the Alps.

And from later periods, a Bronze Age pin has been discovered, as well as Roman coins and a fibula, and items dating from the early Middle Ages.

Key to climate change

What fascinates scientists about the age of the finds is that they correspond to times when climate specialists have already calculated the Earth was going through an especially warm period, caused by fluctuations in the orbital pattern of the Earth in relation to the Sun.

At these times, historians now speculate, the high mountain regions became accessible to humans.

The Roman coins found on the Schnidejoch are being seen as proof that the Romans used this route to cross the Alps from Italy to their territories in northern Europe. Interestingly, one of the Earth’s chillier periods coincides with the decline of the Roman empire.

As the Earth cooled and the glaciers grew again, the Schnidejoch and other passes like it would have been blocked by ice. So did fluctuations in the Earth’s climate contribute to the fall of the Roman empire?

“Well that may be stretching things a bit,” laughs Martin Grosjean. “But what we do know is that the climate has fluctuated throughout history; in the past the driving force for the changes was the Earth’s orbital pattern, now the driving force is green house gas emissions.”

Global patterns

For Martin Grosjean, the leather items found on the Schnidejoch, dated at over 5,000 years old, are proof, if any more were needed, that the Earth is now warming up.

“The leather is the jewel among the finds,” he says. “If leather is exposed to the weather, to sun, wind and rain, it disintegrates almost immediately.

Bit by bit, the Neolithic way of life is being revealed

“The fact that we still find these 5,000-year-old pieces of leather tells us they were protected by the ice all this time, and that the glaciers have never been smaller than in the year 2003 and the years following.”

Scientists and archaeologists from all over the world attended the conference in Berne to hear about the Schnidejoch findings, and present research of their own.

Patterns have begun to emerge: researchers in Canada’s Yukon region have found evidence of Neolithic farming and domesticated animals at high altitudes.

Again, they correspond with the calculations climatologists have made about the Earth’s warmer periods.

Unexpected history

In Norway, Atle Nesje has been analysing glaciers for the past 25 years. His calculations for the Norwegian icefields show a similar shrinkage and growth pattern to the alpine glaciers.

“Now these archaeological findings seem to fit quite nicely with our glacier reconstructions,” he says. “This is very important in the debate about climate change in the past, the present, and also in the future.”

A reconstruction of the shoes these mountain people used to wear

For historians however, the Schnidejoch is unexpected evidence that early man was far more at home in the high Alps than had been previously thought.

“In 1991, we were completely surprised by Oetzi,” remembers Albert Hafner. “Up to then, we had always thought the Alps were not used, that people never went there.

“Now with Schnidejoch we know they were rather keen on mountaineering. It was a big challenge for them; look at the shoes, no Goretex for them. But we know they went up regularly.”

The reality is straightforward. The Alps, and regions elsewhere, were much warmer than now around 5000 years ago, and, indeed, for most of the time before that going back to the end of the Ice Age. There is absolutely no evidence at all that suggests current temperatures are, in any way, unusual.

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