The Greens’ Shane Rattenbury is up in arms over the ACT’s climate budget being used to fund the Chief Minister’s beloved arboretum:
ACT Greens MLA for Molonglo, Shane Rattenbury MLA has slammed the Government’s funding of the Arboretum from the climate budget following the tabling of a report* that indicated the emissions that will be saved by the project.
“The Government has indicated that over a period of 200 years, the Arboretum will sequester around 63,000 tonnes of CO2. Annually this is around 0.00007 percent of the ACT’s emissions each year!” Mr Rattenbury said.
“Yet the Government is spending something like 16 percent of the climate budget on the Arboretum, even before they had any indication of its effectiveness as a climate mitigation measure.”
Would we expect anything else?
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200 years! Who says the Government doesn’t plan for the long term?
No government should be spending *any* money on so-called “climate change” which is the biggest con ever perpetrated on the public.
Why can’t we offset our carbon outputs by getting all the people on the dole to plant trees all day?
Rattenbury is being pretty sensible, I think. Rather than going “treees! oh treeeeees” he’s applying some actual objective thinking to it.
And I’d love ot hear how the arboretum (which I support) is worthy of all this funding, when they’re planning to deracinate the ACT of street trees. They’re somehow less environmentally powerful than the special arboretum trees?
When Rattenbury argues against the absurdly costly and ineffective way to generate renewable energy, the feed-in tariff scheme for small solar generators on peoples roofs that the rest of us pay for in our electricity bills then I might take some notice of anything else he might have to say.
For every 63 000 tonnes of CO2 saved by roof-top solar generators under this scheme in its July 09 form, ACT electricity consumers will pay about $34 million using current figures that place the price of CO2 saved between $490 per tonne rising to $590 per tonne for the smaller solar arrays.
At least the Arboretum has other functions and over its life will not have produced hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste that this 2MW of solar generatoring capacity will have.
so-called “climate change” which is the biggest con ever perpetrated on the public.
Wow. I’ve NEVER seen anybody come with that sort of insight on a climate change thread. Just BAM! You sure showed all those scientists, destroying their crazy conspiracy with just one sentence. Can I subscribe to your newsletter?
Woody Mann-Caruso said :
Bahaha!
Trunking symbols said :
toad’s coterie aside, it is of course entirely disingenuous to compare ration of carbon savings to government expenditure: so, if pubic health isn’t going to cut carbon emissions it gets, let’s see, zero percent of the budget. right…
the arboretum does, of course, posses the potential to add significantly to carbon emission reductions through research and propagation, in the long term, of plant species that may play a vital role in some future plan for ghg reductions, etc… definitely money well spent.
Wow. I’ve NEVER seen anybody come with that sort of insight on a climate change thread. Just BAM! You sure showed all those scientists, destroying their crazy conspiracy with just one sentence. Can I subscribe to your newsletter?
Wow! As usual Woody, you just proved global warming in one succinct post! I’ve NEVER seen anybody come with that sort of insight on a climate change thread. Just BAM! You sure showed all those scientists, sorry, denialist flat earth creationalist religious freak, right wing fascists destroying their crazy conspiracy with just one sentence. Can I subscribe to your newsletter?
I am so impressed.
The carbon of people driving out there to visit the arboretum?
I agree with #2, total waste of money.
I love trees, but I’m afraid the Arboretum leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I would rather that more deciduous shade trees were planted and maintained (especially on nature strips and in the small suburban parks, which only seem to have horrid, widowmaker gums) across the entire city to beautify the whole place (ie not just inner North and inner South).
And I have not forgotten that there was an apparent load of cash for the Arboretum when schools were being ‘rationalised’.
Ditto – I love trees – but the ones we have as our street trees are suffering serious neglect – look after what you have, then branch out into new plantings.
Stanhope can water his legacy but not Green Square?
I’m in total agreement with #11 and #13 on this one. Stanhope’s legacy at best might replace trees throughout Canberra that die as a result of the drought and long term poor water management strategies.
I don’t think that it really matters where the money comes from. It’s a great idea and just the sort of thing government should be spending money on – rather than trying to compete with the private sector to deliver services like education and health.
What about the pile of money the Chinese Gov chipped in ? “that wasn’t enough?”
I agree with #11
The aboretum, however, will be quite superb when it has matured.
denialist flat earth creationalist religious freak
Now you’re getting it. See, much as you denialist tossers like to sit around with a beer and convince each other that you’re all right, and that getting your scientific data from tabloid journalists is the same as real peer-reviewed research, the rest of the world has already moved on. The world’s scientists accept climate change, and now so do the world’s governments. Sure, there are some people who think they’re wrong, but there are some people who believe that Elvis was an alien, and it’s about time you accepted you’ve got the same standard of intellectual rigour as those nutjobs and so your views deserve the same respect – none whatsoever.
The days when denialists could hoot ‘lies! conspiracy! prove it!” and expect some sort of rational debate in response are gone. We don’t need to honor your ignorance with debate anymore than you’d try to have a rational discussion with a flat earther or a Holocaust denier. If you want a sympathetic ear, maybe you could move to South Australia and vote Families First with the rest of your medieval counterparts.
He may not be an alien, but he is still alive right???
Wow, so Woody says there’s no debate. I’m convinced.
I’d better ring prof Ian Pilmer and tell him you said so hey?
I love trees, but I’m afraid the Arboretum leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
You do realise these trees aren’t for eating, right?
You need to stew them for at least 30 minutes and add garlic.
Using climate change as a justification for the arboretum is a bit of a retrofit and a con. Hence with the maths – a cheap but hilarious point.
The arboretum was proposed while there was no official ACT Government greenhouse/climate change policy.
I agree with Monomania,
when the Greens stop supporting stupid ideas that will have no effect on climate change or are ridiculously expensive, then i will listen to their argument about the Arboretum.
plimer isn’t a climate scientist, thumper. well said, woody. and exactly, housebound, the arboretum is in itself a good thing and should be resourced. the rest of the guff around this is just politics.
housebound said :
And that’s it in a nutshell. (boom boom).
Neither is Tim Flannery, but he seems to be an expert on the subject.
Nor Al Gore for that matter.
i didn’t see them cited here. who has declared flannery a climate science expert? [he is of course a hugely respected paleontologist which discipline adds data to the stockpile used by other scientists]
if you ask woody i expect he’ll provide you with the ipcc and the myriad refereed scientists cited therein…
Neither Plimer and Flannery are climate scientists. But I think the point here is that people working across a really diverse spectrum of fields – atmosphere, oceanography, glaciology, meteorology, flora and fauna ecology, biology etc. are consistently coming up with results for which a changing climate is the most probable explanation.
Some sceptics have tried to suggest that the agreement of a significant body of the worlds scientists is in fact a sign that something is amiss, but ‘agreement’ is essentially a misunderstanding of what is happening – there researchers are not so much agreeing with each other, as time and time again turning up results for which a changing climate is the most probable explanation.
But should the ACT government be spending climate change programme money on the Arboretum? Hell yeah, it’s got to be a far superior investment than subsidising the private cost of insulation or slapping solar panels of the roofs of eco-mentalists in the leafy suburbs even if it doesn’t contribute to sequesting a gram of carbon – it’s benefit comes from starving out other nonsensical ideas that the greens would otherwise breath life into.
I take my climate change advice from Steve Fielding – because his imaginary friend in the sky knows everything!