bonmot,

I am all for the planet reducing greehouse gas emissions. This is made quite clear in article.

However, let us not kid ourselves that Gillard and co are on top of issues through their mere focus on the carbon tax.

Truth is that industries staying here may indeed be a better solution than moving offshore, a reality that may be forced on them by higher domestic costs.

The author has, perhaps not deliberately, highlighted the immense problems involved in any attempt to reduce CO2 world-wide.

He points to reductions in the emission levels in Britain. Quite right. If you read the reports for the Kyoto Protocol and the Europen ETS, you will see that the redution was due to Britain switching its power industry mainly to gas.

Reductions in overall emission levels in Europe were mainly the result of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which eventually resulted in the collapse of the inefficient Eastern bloc industries, and their rebuilding in more efficient forms.

It is, in fact, very difficult to point to any effort to reduce emissions on a national basis that has actually succeeded in any other country, apart from doing the obvious such as switching the power industry to gas. All a carbon tax might do, as the author points out, is to shift polluting industries offshore (although it may help switch power stations to gas, that can always be done by other means).

Then there is China. The Chinese government announced this supposed "crackdown" but did any of it actually happen and were the plants going to be closed any way? for that matter, were they operating in the first place? In any case, what did any of it mean; are 22 plants significant? Statements made by the US or Australian governments can be checked. the Chinese government can say anything and have the statement believed by activists who want to push their own government into action.

bonmot "However, it is extremely difficult to have a rational debate when there is a concerted effort by ideologues to maintain the status quo, no matter what the long term consequences of that may be."

You need to let go off this attitude that unless the debate is action, or action, then it cannot be a debate - many people see no reason for change at all, and indeed that warming of the earth is natural and should not be fooled with by amateurs trying to find the optimum position of the imaginary thermostat.

What is wrong with any part of the community stating they want no change, and that being a valid point of view? They are still Australians and entitled to their view, regardless of your intolerance.

It is, in many people's opinion, difficult to have a rational debate when there is a concerted effort by ideologues to maintain the chant of "do something", no matter what the long term consequences of that may be.

There, fixed .. see, it depends on where you stand on this what makes sense.

Your view appears to be the same as Senator Milne's, that you can only join the debate if you commit to action, and the debate is about the size of the action ..

It begs the question, are you Senator Milne? There appears to be much similarity in your approach and tolerance to differing POVs.

Look the whole thing is just too ridiculous for words.

The entire argument in favour of AGW is "the government told me so". The governments of the world having paid out $80 billion to find a crisis, their interested dependants have duly done so. The chain of reasoning, from climatology, to ecological crisis, to the presumption of government's selfless indispensability at managing the economy *and* the ecology - is so long, so tenuous and so full of uncertainty and downright dubiosity (like that? new word) at every stage, that to reason that this chain of reasoning proves an urgent and important priority over people's voluntary choices is fatuous nonsense.

Even if we disregarded the vested interests and corruption, the only thing we can rationally conclude from the entire global warming hoo-haa is that the people in government have *far* too much time on their hands.

Yet all the argument from the warmists boils down to this "You couldn't possibly have the knowledge, or the good faith, to question your overlords who know better."

Taking warmist calculations at their face value, if all Australia were shut down, the result would be a reduction in warming of .015 of a degree. And Tim Flannery has recently said that the positive results of reducing carbon emissions would not be felt for 1000 years.

It's like, what are these guys smoking? What reason is there to think that government, of all people, would be capable of
a) identifying, and
b) rationalising
the problem of directing resources to the most urgent or important needs, which the carbon tax pretends to do? The proposition is laughable.

Talk of a carbon tax is offensive to the productive people who are to be parasitised to pay for this vain and corrupt religious lunacy.

"It begs the question, are you Senator Milne?"

hahaha

You obviously haven't understood my pro-nuclear POV

Peter Hume sums it up beautifully

'And Tim Flannery has recently said that the positive results of reducing carbon emissions would not be felt for 1000 years. '

What sort of Government with any credibility will force pensioners to be cold because these fools want us to swallow their ideologies. Thankfully the people of NSW have spoken. The Greens/Labour are a disgrace. Tony Abbott should stop being so gutless and call man made climate change c_ap like he knows it is.