Tim Blair and money well spent

Remember Tim Blair?

Yep, he’s still merrily blogging away, irrelevantly but happily cocooned within his protective layer of fans, well-wishers and TrollDelay™.

Tim recently announced to his fawning followers...

Remember the great big terrifying Gulf of Mexico oil disaster of 2010? No? Well, neither does the gulf.

Followed an exulting quote from the Wall Street Journal reporting that, although “many scientists predicted that a significant amount of the resulting chemical pollutants would likely persist in the region’s waterways for years ... those scientists were wrong.” (Tim’s emphasis.)

You see, apparently those clueless scientists had, unlike Tim, failed to predict that a “fortuitous combination of ravenous bacteria, ocean currents and local topography helped to rapidly purge the Gulf of Mexico of much of the oil and gas released in the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010.”

Tim does this exulting thing from time to time. December 2010...

Remember the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? The worst environmental disaster in decades? The worst in US history? That just keeps getting worse? It was no big deal.

Followed an exulting quote that “the ecosystem of the Gulf itself turns out to have suffered remarkably little damage.”

Indeed, given the extent of the disaster (which, lest we forget, tragically killed 11 oil workers), who could be unhappy about a result like that? I know I’m happy and relieved.

Relatedly, it was reported yesterday that the disaster looks like costing BP a total $41 billion. The company will be budgeting to cover these costs for years to come.

Of that $41 billion, a figure was cited a while ago of $13 billion for “oil spill response” costs related to cleaning up the environmental damage. The rest all goes on compensation, law suits and fines.

I don’t know who could reasonably argue that BP’s $40 billion isn’t money well spent to keep Tim and his merry band of jokers feeling good about themselves.

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I don’t say Andrew Bolt is relentlessly partisan

. . . But, following news that the desalination plant at Wonthaggi, Victoria, looks like becoming a $23.9b “white elephant,” Andrew Bolt has declared it to be:

The greatest green folly in Victoria’s history.

The problem with Doctor Easychair’s analysis is that the Greens have always opposed the desalination plant as “a loser for the environment, greenhouse gases and the household budget.”

Moreover, as Jeremy Sear notes at Pure Poison,

Friends of the Earth have been long opposed. Likewise the Australian Conservation Foundation, and a coalition of environmental groups operating as “Watershed Victoria” with their Your Water Your Say campaign.

In fact, the Greens and environmental groups were the biggest opponents of the desalination plant. Where the Herald Sun columnist disingenuously pretends that “almost no journalists or academics even questioned this gigantic folly at the time” and concludes that the plant represents “what green madness, unchecked, can lead to”, it is clear looking at the record that there were many, many people campaigning vigorously against the proposal all the way through, and that the Greens and greens in general were those leading the fight.

I try to avoid Doctor Easychair’s writings as far as possible, but from what I’ve seen he’s only opposed desalination plants when his ‘warmist’ bogeyman Tim Flannery advocated for them.

All imarges by Jarcob, January 2008.

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Tim Blair’s epic bean-counting fail

On the question of the purported ‘liability’ of the Australian coal industry for the floods in south-east Queensland, Tim Blair has been doing some number crunching:

Australia’s annual contribution to global carbon output is just 1.5 per cent, which works out to .000225 per cent of the overall human component. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that the coal industry generates an entire third of Australia’s amount — a mighty .000075 per cent of the carbon emitted globally which ends up hanging around in the atmosphere.

On current estimates, the floods may result in damage worth $13 billion. The total bill owed by the Australian coal industry (and this assumes that the floods are entirely due to carbon-driven climate change): $9749.99.

I admire a dude who spreadsheets stuff, but Blair has, for his own silly argument’s sake, fluffed at least one significant factor, completely ignoring the contribution to global emissions of Australian coal exports.

Australia’s annual coal exports are around 263.4 million tonnes per annum. Around 2.93kg of carbon is emitted for each kilo of coal burned. Assuming global carbon emissions per annum of 29,321.302 million tonnes, Australia’s exports of coal would alone contribute 771.762 million tonnes, or 2.632% of global man-made carbon emissions.

So, employing the figure of 2.632% (rather than 0.000075%) would increase the “total bill owed by the Australian coal industry” to at least $342,171,231.

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