Leading Australian actor Cate Blanchett fronts carbon tax campaign
May 29th, 2011 by Warwick HughesLook Cate – we love your movies – thanks for all the hours of enjoyment – and we look forward to enjoying your work for years to come – but please you should stick to what you know best. You are too good an actor to lend your image in political advertisements.
“And finally, doing something about climate change,” Blanchett adds.
Sorry Cate but nothing we do in Australia can possibly make any difference – as this graphic comparing Chinese and Australian emissions proves.
What this tax will certainly achieve is to reduce the standard of living for many Australians – who will be overwhelmingly be less wealthy than you. Not a good look for you I don’t think.
We could de-industrialise Australia – just leaving some quarries for the Chinese – and the drop in global emissions would not be noticed alongside the scale of Chinese increases.
In the same advert – Michael Caton says, “What if we say yes, to making big companies pay, when they pollute our skies?
“We’d be saying yes to less carbon pollution”.
What pathetic GreenLabor spin – trying to blame “big polluters” – when the reality is that all of us who use electricity, or drive our cars, or fly in an airliner, or eat bought food, ride a bus, ride a train, use manufactured products – we are the “polluters”, according to the rationale behind the crazy IPCC inspired GreenLabor great big new Carbon Dioxide Tax.
Posted in News and Views | 16 Comments »
May 29th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
Warwick,
hmm, increased CO2 means global cooling perhaps? Given that CO2 loses energy via both Brownian motion and radiation, it’s more likely that increased CO2 will cause cooling than warming.
Oh sorry for any trolls reading here, but this is how the scientific method is applied – data come first.
I’ll be near Jigalong for a couple of weeks – drilling met holes.
May 29th, 2011 at 2:08 pm
In a world where CELEBRETY = CREDIBILITY, this is “Propaganda with the Stars”
May 29th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Someone should tell these actors/actresses that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. If it was they would be polluting the atmosphere every time they open their mouth. I saw a calculation by an English professor that humans exhale 10% of the total annual human generated C02
May 29th, 2011 at 5:20 pm
[...] Leading Australian actor Cate Blanchett fronts carbon tax campaign [...]
May 29th, 2011 at 7:08 pm
It is all a bit like life immitating art (CB as QE1)acting out the history as written by winners
May 30th, 2011 at 9:33 am
new take on that ad
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw1mWOlmk58&feature=player_embedded
if that link doesn’t work try this one
theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2011/05/say-yes-to-election.html
I prefer this version
May 30th, 2011 at 3:05 pm
I think people are being rude about Cate.
Granted her life involves fantasy, suspended belief and divorce from reality, but she is better looking than that other Government snake oil salesman. And she is apparently being paid much less, and on top of that she probably knows as much about climate change as he does. She couldn’t know less, could she?
May 31st, 2011 at 3:32 pm
[...] Leading Australian actor Cate Blanchett fronts carbon tax campaign [...]
June 1st, 2011 at 7:33 am
It seems Cate might be just a bit gullible.
www.looktothestars.org/news/1831-cate-blanchett-inspired-by-al-gore
June 1st, 2011 at 10:28 am
Alan Jones talking to Prof Carter
www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=9032
well worth listening to
I’ve never heard Prof Carter so angry
June 1st, 2011 at 10:43 am
Meaning:
Intentionally untrue
the new word in my life (thanks to Prof Carter)
and its meaning
www.audioenglish.net/dictionary/mendacious.htm
Context example:
a mendacious statement
Similar:
false (not in accordance with the fact or reality or actuality)
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:26 pm
If the science on global warming is so good, why are we told lies?
That is the true disgrace of those behind the ad that features Cate Blanchett telling us to “say yes” to the Gillard Government’s carbon dioxide tax.
It’s not that it stars a multi-millionaire actor blithely instructing the little people to pay a tax that she wouldn’t even feel herself.
It’s not that it stars a hypocrite telling us to cut our emissions while she herself jets off to Cannes, New York and LA, and helps to flog luxury Audi cars.
No, it’s the lies that should shame Blanchett and the ad’s other star, Michael Caton, of Packed to the Rafters, who are not responsible for them, but speak the lines put in their mouths.
It’s the flagrant lies in this ad that should shame all the green groups and unions which made the wretched thing — and that should warn the rest of us there is much less to this scare than such shameless people claim.
How dare they? And where are the regulators? Does the Advertising Standards Bureau exempt global warming alarmists from its demand that “ads shall not be misleading or deceptive”?
The lies start with the very first shot of the ad, showing Caton standing under black skies made filthy by a power station billowing soot –labelled “carbon”.
Says Caton: “What if we say yes to making big companies pay when they pollute our skies? We’d be saying yes to less carbon pollution.”
Stop right there.
First, where in Australia are our skies black with “carbon”?
Answer: nowhere. The ad describes a problem we don’t actually have.
Do our power stations — the main target of the carbon dioxide tax — actually belch out black smoke like that?
No. Most coal-fired ones here emit little more than steam and invisible gas. Drive past one and see for yourself.
So what power station are we shown in this ad?
The Battersea plant in Britain.
Does it vomit out black soot like that?
No, it was closed almost 30 years ago.
So will the Government’s tax close the Battersea plant? Don’t be an idiot.
Well, will the tax at least remove that sooty carbon in our skies Caton wants gone?
No, because the sign perched over Caton’s head deceives, too. The Government’s “carbon” tax is not actually designed to remove carbon, which is a solid, but carbon dioxide, which is a gas that’s invisible, as you can see when you breathe out.
And that is what makes Blanchett’s big scene completely wrong.
She appears in the ad, trilling that the tax would be “finally doing something about climate change”, and demonstrating that change by replacing the sooty skies with a clean, sun-filled one.
That imagery is another lie.
No, this tax has got nothing at all to do with giving us cleaner and sunnier skies. Zero. Zip.
Pretending it will is a contemptible deceit — and so are most of the other claims put in the mouths of the unwitting actors in this ad.
How about the actor who claims that by saying “yes” to the Government’s tax, we’ll be saying “yes to new money for clean energy that never runs out”?
One of the great problems with solar and wind power is that it does indeed run out.
Solar power stops when the sun doesn’t shine, and wind turbines stop turning when the wind dies.
This is not some silly debating point. It’s one of the hard facts that makes solar and wind power so horribly expensive.
To switch to such unreliable power sources means we still need backup power plants to take over when the renewables fail. That’s twice the infrastructure to guarantee the same power.
But back to the lying ad, which also shows a woman claiming we’d be saying “yes to help for people struggling
with bills”.
Actually, the reverse is true. The tax will instead make those bills an even bigger struggle, because it will drive up the cost of electricity and everything made with it.
Only half the money the tax raises will come back in compensation for just some Australians, and no compensation will be enough for those whose jobs will be killed off by the higher cost of power.
Then there’s the claim by another woman in the ad that we’d be saying “yes to better health for our kids”.
Pardon? Where’s the proof for that emotive claim?
This seems a desperate attempt to suggest the Government’s tax will cut asthma-causing soot, rather than plant-stimulating carbon dioxide.
And then there is the ad’s ultimate fraud.
Just “say yes”, it urges.
But where? When? To whom?
The ad suggests we do actually have a choice — that the Government may even put the question to a vote in an election.
But as we know, we’ll get this tax without us ever having said “yes”.
Indeed, 146 of the 150 people in our House of Representatives were elected at the last election on the specific promise that they’d say “no” to it.
Yet here it is, to be imposed on us next year with no mandate. All we get is this ad, telling us to say “yes” to something to which our consent is in fact not sought and our objection is not heeded.
Such arrogance, and this ad drips with it.
Fancy the ad’s makers thinking we’d swallow falsehoods that wouldn’t fool a schoolgirl.
So how is it that such a deceitful and unscientific ad can not only be shown on television, but is endorsed by politicians demanding we “accept the science”.
All that the rest of us can conclude is that if alarmists responsible for the ad must tell such lies, then the truth can’t be so scary.
And that, at least, is true.
(Source: Malcolm Roberts)
June 5th, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Just an observation re temperature and CO2 correlation.
1981-90: quick rise in global temperature – increase in CO2 of about 1.5ppm/year.
1991-2000: continuing rise in global temperature – increase in CO2 of about 1.5ppm/year.
2001-2010: no discernible rise in global temperature – increase in CO2 of about 2.0ppm/year.
Whoops! Can we have an advertisement about that?
June 8th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
A little doodling on the back of an envelope shows the “benefits” of green energy.
Using a 30% substitution for coal fired (the limit for wind and nuclear) at a cost of $35 per MWh it looks like this
Basic cost per MWh % Increase in electricity price overall reduction in CO2 emissions
WIND 140 67 2%
NUCLEAR 96 53 8.2%
GAS 65 26 4.7%
The figures for Wind and Nuclear are from the UK & French Governments. Note that the cost of wind power has been rising for the last 10 years, mostly from rising prices for steel & concrete (partly affected by carbon taxes). This for the “standard” 2 – 2.5 MW turbines being made in their thousands. Larger turbines are more expensive due to the higher operating stresses mandating more exotic (costlier) materials. So much for mass production! (I haven’t put in solar as it is even more expensive).
The 30% limit is from the lowest demand point on the grid. Wind capacity can’t exceed this because we never know when all the turbines will start working at once (admittedly perhaps 2 days a year). Besides wind really needs hydroelectricity to balance its output, so even this figure is far more than the stand alone Oz grid could take. Nuclear is slow to adjust to demand so also limited.
Of course total capacity of both could exceed that limit but only by shutting them down when demand falls. That pushes up the cost of the electricity.
Were the “carbon tax” set at $100 a tonne to make wind power competitive, and we installed wind power in equal capacity to coal, we still wouldn’t reduce Australian overall emissions by more than 6%. So much for Julia and “tax it and it will come”.
June 8th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Sorry – hope this is clearer.
method—-cost/MWh—–% increase—–reduction in emissions
WIND——-140———–67————-2
NUCLEAR—–96———–53————-8.2
GAS———65———–26————-4.7
June 8th, 2011 at 6:57 pm
Graeme Inkster at Comment 14.
You can make Wind Power as competitive as you like, but until you can get it to actually deliver, which will never be achieved, they will remain unsuited to replace the electrical power that is required absolutely, 24/7/365.
You might like to read the Post at this link.
What A Clean Energy Future Looks Like – An Absolute Nightmare
Tony.