No change on voting intention from Essential Research this week, at all – Labor leads 54-46, from primary votes of Coalition 37%, Labor 38%, Greens 10% and One Nation 6%. Nonetheless, there is a net positive response for the budget, which records 41% approval and 33% disapproval, and for each of eight individual measures, ranging from 82-7 in favour of a levy on vacant properties owned by foreign investors to 49-39 for the Medicare levy increase. However, 56% felt the increase should be higher for high income earners, as per Labor policy, with 27% favouring a flat increase (though no allowance was made for those who didn’t think it should happen at all). For all the “Labor lite” talk, the Liberal Party’s reputation dies hard, with the budget rated best for “people who are well off” and “Australian business”, and worst for “you personally” and, suggesting at least some insight as to what the budget specifically contained, university students. On the question of preferred Treasurer, Scott Morrison (26%) and Chris Bowen (22%) ran a distant third behind “don’t know”.
Putting your hand up Rex.
RD
You only ‘suspect’ something?
Golly, RD, are you off your tucker today?
Why not just assert it?
Like you usually do?
rex
Yep. They’ve got Tones primed to sweep in.
dingbat the first @ #1101 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 4:48 pm
Hmm… have we conversed before, dingbat ?
boerwar @ #1102 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 4:49 pm
You’re talking to me again Bw !! 🙂
A five degree temperature rise would put Sydney, Brisbane and Perth firmly into the tropical zone climatically. We could live with that if that was the only problem. But many locations that are very hot now but densely populated (e.g. parts of India, around the Persian Gulf) would become simply uninhabitable.
Of course it’s not just a matter of everywhere getting 5 degrees hotter. Some places are likely to experience stronger warming, others less so. Crops that are viable in some locations will no longer be so. You might be able to grow them further from the equator than you could now, but that would be no easy transition.
The deadliest impacts would be on rainfall distribution, both in terms of geography and timing, severely disrupting food production. In Australia, monsoonal rains might fall in deserts as the wheat belt dries out. Some places will get more rain, some less, and many will get it in the wrong season. Farmers can’t quickly up stakes and move. Many, especially in poorer countries, would starve. And people will not just accept their fate. There will be civil disturbance, wars and rumours of wars.
But apparently none of this is as bad as paying a carbon tax or converting to renewables.
Boerwar @ #1096 Friday, May 19th, 2017 – 4:41 pm
I’m generally quite supportive of GMOs. However, using them as a last-minute desperation-play to fend off mass starvation seems extremely risky.
How do you move quickly enough to prevent an impending famine while still ensuring that someone’s new “heat and drought tolerant tomato spliced with bioluminescent jellyfish genes because why the hell not” doesn’t propagate out of control and start forcing native plants out of the ecosystem (and kill off the native animals that rely on those plants)?
Good luck with that. I think you’d have better chances at getting people to consider alternative sources of protein like insects than getting them to abandon animal protein altogether.
Bonus: It comes out of the ocean already halfway cooked!
Steve777 @ #1105 Friday, May 19th, 2017 – 4:53 pm
Don’t forget that those are all relatively low-lying coastal cities. Or the extent of sea-level rise that a 5 degree increase would cause.
There will be gondola rides aplenty.
Vogon Poet How many contractors did Plutus have?
I am not sure what the IT contractors expect to get paid these days but lets say its $180,000 per year.
Income of $180,ooo pays 48% tax
165,000,000/90,000 = 1833 contractors
Please check my logic and arithmetic
AR
I agree that we are taking monstrous and unjustifiable risks.
My main reason for raising GMOs is that inserting heat resistant and heat thriving genes fairly quickly is going to be crucial.
They are working new rice varieties that are more heat resistant as we speak.
In terms of the political difficulty of getting rid of protein in order to enable a billion people to survive, I agree. IMO, in that case mass deaths become not a global warming issue but a political/distribution of resources issue.
In relation to seafood and nutrients and temperatures, again there is significant flexibility in the global system. Some warm to hot seas today are productive. Some cools seas are not. The productivity issue seems to be the relationship between nutrients and oxygen – not between temperature. Whether the heat-adapted seafoods would colonize hot areas quickly enough is a real question. For example, the Reef will eventually be colonized by heat-adapted corals that live in the sort of water temperatures that will become much more globalized with +4.
Many coral species will become extinct, along with specialized biota associated with each species.
GBR productivity will suffer badly in the interim, but possibly not in the long run.
IMO, the more important productivity issues for Australia will be whether our sea grass meadows, kelp forests and mangrove forests survive.
rex douglas @ #1100 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 4:46 pm
So when are you making your move Rex?
The flaws in my calculations are
1. Plutus siphoned off all tax
2. All contractors were high paid IT
So probably more than 5,000 contractors. It was amazing how fast Plutus grew
billie @ #1109 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 5:06 pm
48% is the marginal rate. See the scales here https://www.ato.gov.au/rates/individual-income-tax-rates/
billie @ #1109 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 5:06 pm
For a start, the 48% is the marginal rate, way above what the average rate would be.
I suspect that leadershit will crop up every time it’s obvious that Labor is creaming the government.
So, basically, constantly.
bemused @ #1111 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 5:10 pm
I had thought of it following Shortens dog whistle to Racist Queenslanders… but I’ll wait for the next stuff and then POUNCE !
Rex, you are so entertaining!
Rex
“I suspect Albo is just a stalking horse for a fresh new ALP leader being prepped for 2019….”
I suspect you’re very wrong.
I don’t know how reliable it is, but the book “Six Degrees – Our Life on a Hotter Planet”, explored various global warming scenarios degree by degree. It is summarized here …
The was a TV series made from the book by National Geographic …
One of the conclusions was that at 4 degrees warming, Australia would support almost no agriculture.
rex douglas @ #1116 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 5:14 pm
I look forward to seeing you crash and burn.
An IT contractor earning $180,000 p.a. with, say $20,000 in deductions, would pay an effective tax rate of about 31%:
https://www.industrysuper.com/understand-super/tax-and-super/tax-calculator/?gclid=CMyC0d20-9MCFRR8vQodo4cA_w
bemused @ #1120 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 5:19 pm
I’ll win in a crushing landslide ridding the LNP benches of all those RWNJ’s.
Boerwar
Don’t you see any danger in companies like Monsanto controlling GMO seeds and spreading poison?
Billie, from the guardian:
“As many as nine government agencies may be involved with the payroll company at the centre of a $165m tax fraud investigation, Labor senator Doug Cameron has said.
Cameron said on Friday he had been contacted by contractors working for eight federal and state government departments, the ABC and private companies such as Telstra and Fujitsu, who said their pay had been affected by the scandal.
He said contractors working for the departments of immigration, foreign affairs, social services, defence and industry, as well as the NDIS and ABC, had all been affected.
Transport NSW and the NSW Department of Justice have also been hit, as have Telstra, Fujitsu Australia, FinXL and Sirius Technologies, he said”
Thanks Tom. Jane Norman is one of the worst.
billie
The base income tax payment on $180,000 is $54,232 excluding Medicare levy of 2% and Temporary Budget Repair Levy of 2%.
Much less than 48% of $180,000.
So what’s the working theory in relation to this Norman/Gribbin piece? That Albanese intoning the words “fake news” discredits the contention that a Labor MP described his comments as “utterly confusing”, and that the reporters are just making it up? Or was it wrong of them to say Albanese’s comments “appeared to be relatively benign”, and to devote all but a handful of lines in their report to quotes defending Shorten and Albanese?
lizzie @ #1122 Friday, May 19th, 2017 – 5:25 pm
Monsanto is about as evil as it’s possible for a corporate entity to be. I don’t think that means GMOs themselves are bad.
Dogwhistle to racist Queenslanders? What rot.
The ad showed 12 people (6 men, 6 women) meant to represent Australian workers, one (possibly 2) of Asian appearance and the rest white (but not necessarily Ango – maybe they should they have worn ancestral traditional costumes? Anglos in bowler hats?). Should they have thrown in a token Aborigine or a Muslim wearing a keffiyeh or hijab? Does it matter?
As to the words, give jobs to Australians, no need to import workers. Hardly racist. The 457 program ad being exploited (as I am sure that it’s replacement will be) by many less scrupulous employers to avoid to Australian labour market. Labor will stop that.
It’s an important message. Maybe it could have been done more effectively. In any case let the Tories do their own dirty work, we don’t need to help them.
Boerwar
As a marine science graduate I can tell you that this is a gross over simplification.
Other posters also talk blithely of a 5 degree increase in global temperatures as though it were a simple shift of Darwins weather and ecosystems to Sydney.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
Just one example – the unprecedented increase in ocean acidity is going to reach a threshold for animals with carbonate shells and a collapse in ecosystems – not a nice gradual transition to something else. We are not giving organisms sufficient time to migrate or adapt. The ocean could end supporting little else but jellyfish, and there could be as yet unforeseen effects on oxygen production. (Most oxygen comes from the oceans – not from land based plants.)
People without science training – the bulk of the population – do not understand systems, and the nature of dynamic equilibria. They see all change as a linear progression, which does not reflect reality.
It is also at the core of the “energy wars” on PB with some failing to understand the nature of exponential growth and disruption.
If certain events are triggered by climate change, such as a reversal of the Altantic conveyor, the ocean current system that makes Europe livable, or a major release of methane from clathrates in the Arctic tundra, humanity could find things rapidly spiraling out of control.
Forget 5 degrees – half the population could be dead well before we get there.
‘As a marine science graduate I can tell you that this is a gross over simplification.’
Of course it is. So are most of the predictions of billions starving.
boerwar @ #1097 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 4:41 pm
My sister in law and her husband are farmers and the industry standard for their main crop is the disposal of 30% of their crop for cosmetic reasons (too small/big, cosmetic blemishes) at the farm. That’s before we talk about food which is wasted during transport, by the retailers or consumers.
There are other fruit and vegetables that have industry standard wastage rates for cosmetic reasons as high as 70% at the farm.
There is plenty of food, we just need to stop wasting it for cosmetic reasons.
Trog
One of the hottest and driest places in Australia is producing nationally significant scads of tomatoes. The surrounds consist of ecosystems such as samphires, chenopods and mallees.
The notion that Australia will have virtually no agriculture at 4 degrees is based on false assumptions about what ag will look like in a couple of decades.
The area required for production is, at our continental scale, miniscule.
There is no particular reason to think that the basic system can not be adapted to 4 degrees.
In terms of some of the inputs – seawater and energy – the hotter the external environment the better.
Rex… pfffft
Lizzie
I have long been sorry that I did not invest heavily in Monsanto when it was cheap and only the visionary ones could see what a nice little earner it was going to be….
Well, only half sorry, to be truthful.
The gene I really admire is the one that switches things off when Monsanto wants it to.
Boerwar
If we let it get to 5 degrees then there is a good chance that they will. It may be that only 2 degrees is necessary to force massive release of methane and an abrupt temperature jump.
As I have stated many times on this blog I don’t think it will come to this, because, fortuitously, we now have the tools and the economic drivers to fix the problem.
As people come to see this, they will become more proactive in addressing global warming, as the situation will no longer appear out of control, and they will see real and immediate benefits in managing and protecting ecosystems.
Bw
US patents / IP should have been resisted strongly.
G
That is true for western consumers but when people get hungry the 100% perfect fetish disappears tout de suite… along with rats, cats, dogs and (one presumes) quokkas which look tasty to say the least.
There seems to have been some correlation between the Great Depression and the disappearance of Scrub Turkeys and the subsequent gradual recolonization of the latter as people have stopped eating them.
billie @ #1109 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 5:06 pm
Where to even start on that ill-informed tax calculation…
We have a progressive tax system for which income in excess of $180,000 is taxed at 48.5%
(https://www.ato.gov.au/rates/individual-income-tax-rates/).
Someone on $180k does not lose 48% of it to income tax. An individual would have to have an income of many millions to actually loose 48% of their income taxed.
The hypothetical individual above, assuming they had complying private health insurance, would pay $54,772 in tax, including the Medicare levy.
CTaR1
Ahem. We were in their pockets in the relevant negotiations. Seamless.
john boy @ #1134 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 5:51 pm
fascinating… !
Boerwar
That has absolutely nothing to do with earth’s ecosystems or livability. You could build a solar thermal powered greenhouse on Mars – in fact I think it highly likely within the next 30 years. That greenhouse also cost a couple of hundred million dollars. Most of the worlds population lack the resources to knock up something like that.
I also don’t want to be in survival situation on a planet that is fucked, where the ocean is simply populated by jellyfish and plastic rubbish, and where the general outlook is that of a desert.
William Bowe
I would have thought that the two bob each way storm in a teacup achieved the desired unicorn effect.
boerwar @ #1135 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 5:51 pm
I admire how they allow their GM modified crops to spread to neighboring farms … and then sue the neighbouring farmers for daring to grow their GM crops!
william bowe @ #1127 Friday, May 19, 2017 at 5:32 pm
The theory is to begrudgingly address the issue in such a confusing way as to deter any accusations of bias.
As fascinating as your delusional Shorten hate and predictions.
The Permian got 5-6 degree hotter than today and by golly 95% of all species carked it. So 5 degrees ? Easy peasy eh ? Will the oceans will become cesspools as hotter hotter means less and less dissolved oxygen .
I bit and worked it out, for a taxpayer who had complying health insurance to actually lose 48.5% of their income in tax, they would need a taxable income (after all deductions) of $6,793,600.
My heart bleeds for such a person, I can’t imagine the inhumanity of having to live off $3,498,704 per year.
‘That has absolutely nothing to do with earth’s ecosystems or livability.’
I beg to differ.
Broadacre crops and horticultural crops may cost over $1-2000 per hectare per annum just to plough, sow and keep free of weeds and pests.
The annual investment in ag in Australia used (a decade or more ago) to be $30 billion. I assume it is heading towards $50 billion per annum now.
Yet, in terms of investment, the diseconomies of scale and distance are humungous. One per cent by area of the MDB generates over 90% of its production by value.
So, Australia has huge inefficiencies in its current broad acre and pasture systems.
A couple of years worth of investment of $50 billion in high intensity, highly productive closed systems could set us up with food and with export potential.
As noted above, there are opportunity costs but the notion that Australia will produce nothing at 4 degrees appears to assume that there is zero adaptive potential.
Player One @ #1143 Friday, May 19th, 2017 – 6:03 pm
No, no, they sue for patent infringement. Or some such nonsense.