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Published: 21 November 2011

Businesses warned to back up carbon-price claims


The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has launched a guide for businesses on carbon-price claims.

The ACCC is on the alert for companies unable to substantiate price rises attributed to the impact of carbon pricing.
The ACCC is on the alert for companies unable to substantiate price rises attributed to the impact of carbon pricing.
Credit: DNY59/iStockphoto

‘The ACCC is launching this guide to assist business in understanding their rights and obligations when making claims about the impact of a carbon price,’ says ACCC chairman, Rod Sims.

‘Business costs increase all the time, and businesses are free to set their own prices. However, if a business chooses to raise their prices they should not misrepresent this as a result of the carbon price when it is not the case.

‘This is not new – the message is simple: if you are going to make a claim, you need to make sure it is right.’

Australian Consumer Law provides the ACCC with powers that will be used to investigate the accuracy of claims about the impact of a carbon price.

The ACCC may issue a substantiation notice that requires a business to provide information to support any claim it makes about the impact a carbon price.

Source: ACCC







Published: 2010

Salinity changes show wetter wet regions, drier arid ones


Evidence that the world’s water cycle is changing, making arid regions drier and high rainfall regions wetter as atmospheric temperature increases, is contained in new research published online in the Journal of Climate.1

Ocean salinity changes indicate that arid regions are becoming drier.
Ocean salinity changes indicate that arid regions are becoming drier.
Credit: ScienceImage/Greg Heath

The study, co-authored by Hobart-based CSIRO scientists Paul Durack and Dr Susan Wijffels, shows the surface ocean beneath rainfall-dominated regions has freshened, whereas ocean regions dominated by evaporation are saltier.

The paper also confirms that surface warming of the world’s oceans over the past 50 years has penetrated into the oceans’ interior, changing deep-ocean salinity patterns.

The research was based on historical records and data provided by the Argo Program’s worldwide network of ocean profilers – robotic submersible buoys that record and report ocean salinity levels and temperatures to depths of two kilometres.


1 Journal of Climate, http://tiny.cc/mb35z




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