It’s time, once again for the Monday Message Board. As usual, civilised discussion and absolutely no coarse language, please.
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John Quiggin 
In between all the celebrity hype etc, what are the actual facts regarding the Tasmanian pulp mill?. Because thats the bottom line, what actual impact will it cause the environment.
Four corners did an interview with a scientist stating that the worst atmospheric pollution from the Mill would be 1/400th of what is put out by the wood burning heaters in the Tamar Valley.
So, why is it with things like this that we never actually discuss the facts?
Dave,
I didn’t know that wood burning heaters put dioxin into the water? We need more information.
dave, i believe that one consequence of non-democratic society is unreasoned protest. people with no power and little information will strike out blindly from frustration.
i suppose it’s possible to build a closed loop, non-polluting pulp mill. i know no corporation will waste money on safeguards unless driven to it by political constraints. i suspect the structure of oz political society can not deliver those safeguards.
so the greenies are right, even if uninformed about this particular situation: the track record of pollies and greedies is well established and despicable.
According to its website, the liberal (and antiwar) blog Thinkprogress has been banned from access by US soldiers in Iraq.
I understand that a certain Mr Wagner is starting work for you soon, John. Treat him gently! 🙂 I know him from the maths dept at UQ.
Dave,
It is not important what the facts are if they are not going to be taken into consideration. This is the major problem with the pulp mill projects in both Tasmania and Penola in South Australia. The latter is likely to have a disastrous impact on the water table supporting Coonawarra wines and other agriculture in that region.
People using their previous knowledge and information know that to get a project up like a pulp mill with a truncated investigative environmental process, means that information hasn’t been collected, as it is unlikely to support the project. Further they know that any information they are given is likely to be pro the project. Paul Lennon’s citing of the consultant with 40 years experience in the logging industry to support the Tamar Valley project does not give confidence that it is unbiased or complete.
Al Loomis is therefore right when he says that politicians and those looking to make big money will do whatever it takes to get a project up and then thumb their noses at environmental concerns. Whyalla can provide an excellent example of how the Government can change the law to meet the environmental standards of a major industry rather than the standards local residents desire – and even then the air quality standards are regularly not met.
From the AGE on Saturday:
I certainly hope he makes a full recovery – selfishly, I’d miss his writing too much.
Talk about facts; he’d always supply the facts the spinmeisters are trying to keep from us. We need KD. Get well soon Ken!
And “Dave”, your claim that opponents of the pulp mill have not supplied any facts is an absolute disgrace. Read what’s been written in the news for the last six months, and transcripts of what has been on radio, before you tell such an egregious porky.
I just found an interesting preprint from Martin Weitzman: “Structural Uncertainty and the Value of Statistical Life in the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change, August 2007. ”
Click to access ValStatLifeClimate.pdf
Here is the abstract:
Talk about facts; he’d always supply the facts the spinmeisters are trying to keep from us.
I like Ken Davidson as well. Unfortunately he often got the facts wrong. Still, I hope he gets well soon.
As for the pulp mill – it’s not and never has been close to ‘world’s best practice’. The fact is we all still seem to need a lot of paper and it’s disgusting that we will ship the chips (together with the coal and kaolin) to Japan, China, Indonesia) and then ship the paper back here, but remain too virginally innocent to allow pulping and paper manufacturing here.
A pulp mill should exist in Tassie. It just shouldn’t be the one Gunns are proposing.
“A pulp mill should exist in Tassie. It just shouldn’t be the one Gunns are proposing.”
Go read all about ‘the world’s greenest pulp mill ‘
http://www.gunnspulpmill.com.au/
That’s an emphatic, checkable statement by a corporation that falls under the Corporations powers. I guess they could be at risk for false advertising if their proposed pulp mill isn’t the world’s greenest.
According to research by Professor Andrew W. Wadsley, from Perth’s Curtin University, the Gunns draft Integrated Impact Statement makes a number of serious errors when calculating the impact of dioxin from the pulp mill effluent. These errors include calculation errors, use of inappropriate parameter values, failure to include background dioxin concentrations, and failure to use the permitted maximum limit of dioxin in the effluent.
A. W. Wadsley, A Review of the Calculation of the Concentration of Dioxin Sorbed to Bed Sediment: Gunns’ Draft Integrated Impact Statement, May 2007, http://tasmaniantimes.com/images/uploads/Review1_Dioxin_Concentration_at_Mill_Effluent.pdf
A. W. Wadsley, A Review of the Impact of Dioxin Accumulation: Gunns’ Draft Integrated Impact Statement, June 2007, http://tasmaniantimes.com/images/uploads/Review_Impact_of_Dioxin_Accumulation.pdf
I am more interested in the economic justification of the pulp mill, which I understand to be pretty weak. In particular:
(1) Gunns economic justification in its DIIS portays the options as either a pulp mill or nothing else, when any modelling of economic benefits should recognise that resources must be diverted from other potential uses toward a pulp mill.
(2) The Allens report referred to in the DIIS does not take account of the need for the Tasmanian Government to spend money to upgrade associated infrastructure or to spend money to support training for prospective employees.
(3) I am not sure whether the Tasmanian Government is charging an adequate resource rent tax on the use of forests on crown land, which has meant that logging in Tasmania has been receiving, and will continue to receive a hidden subsidy from Tasmanian taxpayers and resource allocation is distorted.
The close links between people in the Lennon Government and Gunns makes this, in my view, an extreme example of the general tendency of State Governments to oversell the virtues of this or that large scale project as an economic saviour for their State.
Bilb, I’ve got an open mind. I was saying that the atmospheric pollution looks to be very minor indeed from the pulp mill, I am not sure about emissions into the water, there could well be a problem here.
I’m saying that really this debate should be based far more on actual science and facts rather than the emotional nonsense being thrown around at the moment.
Also Helen, if you’ve read my comment, my point was that the general debate was not presenting any facts. I wasn’t saying that opponents of the mill haven’t produced any facts, but more that the current celebrity/media campaign hasn’t produced any scientific discussion. Lets hear the facts for sure!
dave, the facts don’t matter. if you had all the facts, would you participate in the decision? no, unless you’re in cabinet, you won’t.
discussion and debate don’t matter in oz, because the chatterers don’t have the power to do anything. it’s just simulated politics, clayton’s democracy.
The NY Times reports on the second thoughts many US States are having about deregulation of the electricity generation industry. An extract:
“More than a decade after the drive began to convert electricity from a regulated industry into a competitive one, many states are rolling back their initiatives or returning money to individuals and businesses…
The main reason behind the effort to return to a more regulated market is price. Recent Energy Department data shows that the cost of power in states that embraced competition has risen faster than in states that had retained traditional rate regulation.
One prominent critic of competitive pricing — Marilyn Showalter, a former Washington state utility regulator who has become an advocate of publicly owned power systems — has calculated that, in the year ending May 31, customers in competitive states paid an extra $48 billion for their power, compared with what they would have paid under rates in regulated states.
The combination of higher and faster-rising prices has outraged individual consumers and small businesses and prompted big electric customers to fight back on political, regulatory and legal fronts…”.
The NYT says that Ms. Showalter is executive director of , which has reports on each state, and she operates a blog where she analyzed the data.
That NYT report is here.
OK, trying to go too fast here….
The NY Times reports on the second thoughts many US States are having about deregulation of the electricity generation industry. An extract:
“More than a decade after the drive began to convert electricity from a regulated industry into a competitive one, many states are rolling back their initiatives or returning money to individuals and businesses…
The main reason behind the effort to return to a more regulated market is price. Recent Energy Department data shows that the cost of power in states that embraced competition has risen faster than in states that had retained traditional rate regulation.
One prominent critic of competitive pricing — Marilyn Showalter, a former Washington state utility regulator who has become an advocate of publicly owned power systems — has calculated that, in the year ending May 31, customers in competitive states paid an extra $48 billion for their power, compared with what they would have paid under rates in regulated states.
The combination of higher and faster-rising prices has outraged individual consumers and small businesses and prompted big electric customers to fight back on political, regulatory and legal fronts…�.
The NYT says that Ms. Showalter is executive director of Power in the Public Interest, which has reports on each state, and she operates a blog where she analyzed the data.
Gordon, the converse of the argument is that regulated markts do not pay enough for their power. Someone is subdising cheaper power – normally the poor sodding taxpayer.
Re regulation and cheap electricity: a lot of people have pointed to California as an example where deregulation has produced more expensive electricity. But more expensive electricity as lead to California continually finding more efficient uses of electricity, and better conservation practises. Indeed, despite it having one of the fastest growing populations and economies of any state, it’s electricity usage (and consequence greenhouse gas emissions) has already risen at all in over a decade. So if deregulation brings higher prices, then I say bring it on. Higher energy prices are the only truly effective way to encourage conservation and efficiency.
The Chaser’s wildly successful motorcade stunt is reported here at Crooks and Liars.
Online Opinion article: Living standards and our material prosperity
The article, written by myself, challenges the measures of economic prosperity, that are cited incessantly in our newsmedia, which serve to give many the misleading impression that the Howard Government is managing our economy well.
It was published on Online Opinion on Thursday. A significant amount of interest in the article is evident and most of the comments, so far, are supportive.