IF the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) goes ahead as planned, a carbon price of $30/t will produce a direct cost of $3000 every year for a family of four.
That was the warning from Professor Bob Carter when he addressed a public forum at Bunbury on Monday.
Prof Carter, who is an experienced geologist and environmental scientist from James Cook University in Queensland, said the reduction in global temperature would only amount to one thousandth of one degree Celsius by the year 2100, a “pretty poor return on the $270,000 these families will have paid by then”.
“In other words, the effect will not be measurable, a fitting verdict for a scheme that appears to be deliberately misnamed, just to confuse the public,” Prof Carter said.
“In the first place, the legislation should refer to carbon dioxide (CO2), not carbon, plus it is blatantly inaccurate to claim that carbon is a pollutant.
“Doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere would increase wheat yields by 60 per cent, increase legume yields by 62pc and increase the yields of other cereals by 70pc ? some pollutant!
“In fact, during the current period of increasing atmospheric CO2, the Green Revolution saw a massive increase in global food production, with somewhere between 5pc and 15pc of the increase being caused by higher CO2 levels.
“CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have increased from 228 parts per million (ppm) at the start of the industrial revolution to around 328ppm now, but if it increased to 1000ppm, it would not only assist plants to grow, the plants would be more efficient users of water.”
Prof Carter admitted that he was “guilty of the crime of political incorrectness” by questioning current beliefs on global warming.
“Climate is what you expect, but weather is what you get,” he said.
“Meteorologists have only 150 years data to study, so it is up to geologists to go further.
“Six million years ago it was considerably warmer than today and temperatures three million years ago were very much the same as now, but we have had some major changes since then with most of the intervening time being colder, although a major heat spike occurred just 125,000 years ago.
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