Viv Forbes

Curse Less and Dam More

Water conservation peaked in Australia in 1972 – our last big dam was Wivenhoe in Queensland built 35 years ago. Elsewhere in Australia, water conservation virtually stopped when Don Dunstan halted the building of Chowilla Dam on the Murray in 1970 and Bob Brown’s Greens halted the Franklin Dam in 1983 (and almost every other dam proposal since then). The Darling River water management disaster shows that we now risk desperate water shortages because our population and water needs have more than doubled, and much of our stored water has been sold off or released to “the environment”.

The Year of the Pig

This is the Chinese Year of the pig – appropriately it is the year we must remove the snouts of many pigs from the troughs kept full by tax payers and electricity users. An election year is the best time to put maximum pressure on all politicians. Soon we will have gone so far backwards in management of electricity, essential infrastructure, water, vegetation, bushfires, education and the climate war on hydro-carbons that recovery will be very difficult. Things are bad now but if the Limp-LNP’s or the ALP/Greens again get control of energy policy, what is now bad will get much worse. We are faced with either a confused calamity or a dreadful disaster. The Saltbush Club and its members must do as much as possible to change the climate of public opinion which is the only thing that will replace or re-focus politicians. We are not a political party, but we do have a political agenda. We will not run candidates but we are happy if members run on Saltbush priorities. We have credibility and knowledge. We must use our influence.

A Modern Mania

Every society seems destined to suffer at least one episode of crowd madness. They range from the Dutch Tulip Mania in 1636, the British South Sea Bubble in 1720, hyper-inflation in the Weimar Republic in 1923 and in Zimbabwe in 2008, bank failures, booms and depression, and evil eras of murderous madness like those of the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Red Guards in China and Pol Pot in Cambodia. Today we have a modern madness, less dramatic but more insidious, which is affecting the affluent West. It is the phobia about hydro-carbon energy which is now being blamed for every natural disaster, and the parallel religious worship of everything “green”. “Green Energy” is a relic from a bygone era when most people lived or worked on farms and relied on animal power, windmills, sailing ships, solar energy and biomass. Subsidising, mandating and promoting its use in modern urbanised industrial society is a con-trick worthy of the shady salesmen of past manias. Weather-dependent “Green Energy” may suit remote or stand-alone applications, but is unreliable and destabilises electricity grids. It is destroying Australian industry and jobs and harming consumers, while disfiguring the landscape and having no measurable effect on global temperature. Manias always end badly. Suffering electricity consumers forced to endure the costs of its unreliability will eventually revolt and we will abandon this modern “Green Energy” mania. But as Churchill said: “How much greater the cost, for each day’s delay.”

Man-Made Wildfires

Carbon dioxide must be an almighty gas – it gets blamed for almost every human disaster. Now we have the alarmist Climate Council blaming bushfires on carbon dioxide and global warming. Focussing on the wrong problem is doing more harm than good. It is disappointing to see respected firefighters like Greg Mullins now blaming “climate change” for more and worse bushfires, and now even promoting the misguided Climate Council.

Saltbush Launches an EXIT PARIS Campaign

The growing Saltbush Club has announced a national campaign to support Australia’s immediate withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. The new group aims to prevent ratification or local enforcement of the Paris targets and taxes.

Save Queensland Rural Colleges

The Saltbush Club today called on the Federal government to slash spending on the climate alarm and climate conference industries and use the money to save the threatened Queensland pastoral colleges in Longreach and Emerald. The executive director of the Saltbush Club, Mr Viv Forbes, said that for too long tax payers have watched federal agencies like CSIRO waste money on climate models that do not work, on carbon accounting that is not needed, on never-ending climate jamborees and on re-invention of “carbon farming”. “They also watched in disbelief as ex-PM Turnbull in one afternoon found $444 M to donate to a small charity living off the Great Barrier Reef. “Our great rural industries need trade-skilled people with relevant academic knowledge. They do not need urban academics in green uniforms who are hostile to rural industry. “Farmers and graziers would prefer their taxes were spent on local colleges educating their sons and daughters in practical skills rather than sending them to the coast to learn how to smoke pot, drink beer, buy ice and follow the green religion. “Our rural food bowl is far more important to Australia than all the tax-supported wind turbines, solar panels and climate propagandists put together.”

$500M Climate Carnival Concludes

Stop Wasting our Dam Water

The Saltbush Club today accused state and federal governments of wasting water often desperately needed everywhere west of Australia's Great Dividing Range. The "Saltbush Water Watch" has been established to monitor government action and inaction and report on priorities.

Come Clean on the UN COP24 Meeting in Poland

The Saltbush Club today called on the Morrison Government to come clean on what additional burdens for Australians are being discussed at COP24, the UN climate jamboree now taking place in Poland.

The Revolt of the “Yellow Vests”

For decades now, working people, tax payers and retirees have been battered by the Green elites who shelter in well-paid tax havens like the UN and Greenpeace. These Green elites have been supported by fellow travellers like the Clintons, Obama and Hollywood in America; Merkel in Germany; David Cameron, Prince Charles, David Attenborough and the BBC in UK; Macron in France; Gillard, Turnbull, Flannery and the ABC in Australia; the Trudeau dynasty in Canada; plus ranks of pious clerics, scheming oil sheiks, green energy speculators and guilt-stricken big business executives.

Smash the Paris Shackles

A new lobby has called for Australia to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. Calling itself “The Saltbush Club” the group includes top scientists and engineers covering every aspect of the global warming/energy debate, as well as representatives from small business, big business, farmers and consumers. It challenges the whole idea of a consensus on man-made global warming, condemns the unjustified demonization of CO2 and denounces the baseless war on coal. Australia’s push to meet the Paris carbon dioxide emission targets is leading to higher electricity prices and unreliable supply. People think the Paris Accord is just about commitments to lower CO2. It is really about transferring wealth via the sticky-fingered UN to the so-called Less Developed Countries. It’s about advancing centralised UN control of people’s lives on a global scale. We must reject the UN Agenda which is crippling western industry with high-cost unreliable electricity, in a futile attempt to control global climate.

Australian Politicians Again Show “Real Genius”

Back in the chaotic dying days of the Whitlam-Cairns-Connor government, Canberra was buzzing with Rex Connor’s grand plans for a national energy grid and gas pipelines linking the NW Shelf to the capital cities, all to be funded by massive foreign loans arranged by a mysterious Pakistani named Khemlani. Malcolm Frazer staged a parliamentary revolt. The economy slumped.

Fix Real Infrastructure, Dump Green Grandstanding

Here are two messages for Canberra: Firstly, Australia does not have a problem with too much carbon dioxide going to the sky – we have a problem storing enough of the water coming from the sky. Secondly, Australia does not have a shortage of wind and solar “farms” - we have a shortage of water, stock feed and low-cost electricity on real farms.

Drought Proofing a Dry Continent

Earth is a blue watery planet. 70% of its surface is covered by oceans of salt water, some of which are extremely deep. These oceans contain about 97% of Earth’s water. Another 2% is locked up in snow, ice caps and glaciers. That leaves just 1% of Earth’s surface water in inland seas, lakes, rivers and dams. We have plenty of water, but not much to drink.

Dollar Bills smother the Reef

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has become a money magnet for those with green political agendas. The climax of this green racket was the sudden dumping of $444 million by the Australian Government into a small foundation controlled by big businesses and groups committed to one side of the man-made global warming debate.

All on the Road to China

The Green-ants said “You can’t burn coal” – so we sent our coal to China. Then our factories and our smelters closed and followed the coal to China. The Green-ants said “You can’t eat beef” – so we sent our beef to China. Then burger chains and canneries closed and followed the beef to China.

Time to Drain the Energy Swamp

The Australian electricity market has become a stinking swamp covered with a tangled net of treaties, laws, rules, obligations, prohibitions, targets, taxes and subsidies. The swamp conceals the rubble of demolished coal generators; another plant destined for destruction (Liddell) is gradually sinking in the green ooze.

Watching Weather Waves, but Missing Climate Tides

The climate alarm media, the bureaucracy and the Green Energy industry follow an agenda which is served by inflating any short-term weather event into a climate calamity. They should take a long-term view.

Quit Paris Treaty.

Tony Abbott is right – Australia should quit the Paris Climate Treaty. China, India, Russia, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia will ignore Paris. USA has already quit and Japan even withdrew from the Kyoto Treaty. Germany will fail to meet its obligations and Poland will not try very hard. France relies heavily on nuclear power and naturally supports imposing Paris handicaps on competitors. Australia has huge coal, gas, oil and uranium resources. To export these, while we hobble our industries with windmill power, is insane.

Innocent Bystander Lynched

I live in SE Queensland. Yesterday the surface air temperature rose from a frosty 2ºC at sunrise to a balmy 22ºC in mid-afternoon. The enormous heat needed to achieve this 20ºC of warming came via radiation from the sun. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no significant part in this daily heating event – in fact it may intercept a tiny proportion of the incoming solar radiation and re-radiate it in all directions, thus keeping the daytime surface temperature a tiny bit cooler than it would have been otherwise.