This sounds like a solution looking for a problem. I have no view on the economic merits of the proposal, but it does indicate how keen people with particular barrows to push are to embrace the AGW theory as the means by which they can promote their own particular causes. AGW credulists who ask 'Why would anyone want to make AGW up?' please note: they make it up because it serves their own private purposes, and those of many other people with profits in mind or reform on their agendas.

If AGW theory goes down -- and it will -- people like Mr Putland will have to find some other threat to wave in the hope of promoting their causes. In the meantime they hope to make hay while the sun shines -- so to speak.

Jon J. On what basis do you reject GW as a personal barrow?
You see I work with the BOM and CSIRO on climate science related issues and it is precisely because there is an international consensus that the issue has persisted for the last decade or more. Science is inherently sceptical...it is built into the process. There is *no way* that conspiracy, or more likely group-think could perpetuate this around the world in both public and private industry and competing countries. Unlike the Iraq war lies, the media is hostile and only the fact that science *works* and has respectability has allowed to to compete against the relentless anti-truth movements.
Science, unlike economics and politics, is transparent and evidence based. Rather than assuming a world-wide geek conspiricy...could it be that instead there is evidence of a real problem? Doesn't the unprecedented nature of recent weather (such as Russia's 1st in 1000 year heat wave) ring any alarm bells?
If not then I'd say your attitude is more faith and/or personality based. (and good luck with that!)
As for economics: So long as rent seeking investors are allowed to make "profits" on infrastructure our grandparents paid for (the privatised power grid as an e.g) and hold up modernisation...the problem will persist. The failure to maintain, let alone improve our grid reflects the experience in the US where profit based utilities have resulted in reduced reliability without *any* long term investment.
Remember one man's cost is another's profit, one industry job lost in coal is another in green power. The power of the incumbents combined with the bias and incompetence of the press will continue to muddy the waters, but transition to a modern energy economy must happen. Maybe we'll have to wait until the BB gen is paid for (again), but it will happen regardless.

Dear Ozandy,

"Don't feed the trolls." If AGW is bunk, and if a carbon price is a solution in search of a problem, then we still need to discuss how to avoid or compensate for the economic damage caused by a carbon price, just in case it becomes reality. That's what my article does. So for present purposes there's no need to argue with AGW deniers. (But, as a matter of idle curiosity, I'm not an AGW denier.)

Hi Ozandy,

Gosh! weren't you among the people telling us six months ago, during the coldest Canadian and European winter in decades, that 'climate is not weather'? And yet, when the weather gets hot you are quick to embrace it as 'evidence' of AGW. Perhaps the phrase should read 'Climate is not weather, unless it is expedient for it to be so'.

Your 'conspiracy' is a straw man. Nobody is claiming that thousands of scientists have got together to fabricate AGW claims. But I have worked in science too, and I know that he who pays the piper calls the tune. With an estimated $US79 billion dollars available in government grants to 'study' global warming, it's a rare scientist who is going to turn down that opportunity just for the inconvenient reason that the phenomenon doesn't exist. All the paymasters have to do is apply some selection to what gets published, and what gets relegated to the archives of the university library, to produce a spurious 'consensus'. We have written evidence of them doing exactly that.

And why do governments promote AGW theory? Because spreading fear gives them power. Plenty of examples of THAT in Australian political history.

As for the Russian weather, you must not have been reading Watts Up With That -- the most popular climate science blog, by the way; you really should have a look at it -- in particular

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/07/world-weather-roundup

You could read up on the record ice coverage in Antarctica and the freezing conditions that have killed millions of cattle in South America while you are at it.

11 08 10

It is real, near palpable, that the Schools of Economics, and there is one of them in nearly all Universities around the world, disgorge graduates in that discipline by the hundreds if not thousands, every academic year.

These are knowledgeable individuals that are to be fed, clothed and amused.

Not clear is where the economy of this world can find the resources to supply their needs.

Another pertinent question comes to mind. Is homo-economicus profitably served by the phenomenon of an army of economists?

Or, rephrasing the question,: Is the world with an army of Economists more equitable than the world before The London School of Economics came to be?

Interestingly Gavin did not bother to tell us why we would want a carbon tax. Probably has no idea, except that it would offer lots of good jobs for economists.

Ozandy has confirmed what I have always thought, he's on the gravy train. I wonder if he is too dumb to realise what a crock the whole thing is, or if he just doesn't care.

Wouldn't it be nice if some of these economists, mostly "educated" at considerable public expense, tried to do something useful, like show governments how to get along on less tax, rather than ways to maximize the take, with least chance of that costing the current lot the next election.