I think we have to decarbonise global warming or not. Independent analysts conclude that crude oil production peaked in the period 2005-2008 and is now in permanent decline. That decline may accelerate in a few years preventing a full economic recovery. Of course if there were no global warming we could make liquid fuel from coal as is done in South Africa. That hasn't happened apparently because refiners believe something else will come up. So far not enough.

Extrapolating 2007 coal consumption rates analysts also think global coal production (not just Australia) could peak around 2030 to be followed by a slow decline. How that interacts with oil and gas is not clear. Perhaps lack of transport fuel will reduce demand for coal so there will be excess production capacity. At this point it is also unclear whether there are adequate and affordable alternative forms of propulsion for transport such as plug-in electric cars and compressed natural gas (CNG) as a diesel substitute. Whatever the direction low carbon energy takes the level of current investment is woefully inadequate.

The Green Chip review lands on my desk daily promising me 32% profit per month, so it is obvious that there is a heap of money to be made from harnessing CO2.
Problem is that so many human beings have considered that they can control climate and all, so far, have been proven wrong!
If I meet my old Science Teacher in the next world, I am going to ask him how come he didn't teach us that CO2 is a pollutant?
Al Gore et.al. are going to be billionaires through trading in the control of hot air.
How can mature, university educated prawns get sucked in to this scam?

The statement that no one is listening to "climate change skeptics" is plainly wrong.
Every poll in the developed world taken about the subject shows that the general population is becoming more wary and weary about the climate change alarmism the closer we get to the Copenhagen talks.
Hence the current increase it the volume and tenor in the retoric of the alarmists.
An economic argument can be made to increase CO2 in the atmosphere because crops grow best with atmospheric CO2 about the 750ppm mark.
With the projected world population at 2050 being 2.5 billion more than today (9 billion) we are going to need as much food as we can grow.
We are better off spending our money dealing with this burgeoning population rather than giving it to the carbon dioxide reduction rent seekers and derivative market players for something that will not produce a reduction in atmospheric CO2.
Sea level and climate has changed through out earths history.
No one complains about Australia moving to the North by 7cm a year on it's tectonic plate.
Get use to it!

Taswegian: "... we could make liquid fuel from coal as is done in South Africa. That hasn't happened apparently because refiners believe something else will come up."

I too have wondered about why it hasn't happened. But unlike you I didn't find an answer. Got some links I can read demonstrating it is because they think "something else will come up"?

Taswegian: "Extrapolating 2007 coal consumption rates analysts also think global coal production (not just Australia) could peak around 2030 to be followed by a slow decline"

Maybe. The situation for coal isn't the same as oil. One reason those Hubbert peak predictions for oil worked so well is oil production was limited by supply - there is simply no more liquid oil in the ground.

This is not so for coal. For instance the UK hit peak coal ages ago - but I was speaking to a UK mining engineer who pointed out it wasn't because the UK had no more coal. It was just because countries like ourselves produce it much, much more cheaply than the UK can. Their remaining coal is now a long way down. They can and would resume mining if the world prices changed.

Here in Australia we have similar coal reserves that are similarly a long way down. There is a coal seam under Northern NSW / Southern Queensland the size of a small country. It is expensive and dangerous to get to but if there were no other energy sources available I am sure we would do it.

All this makes me suspicious of anybody that just mindless applies Hubbert peak style calculations to coal.

The Report "The Economics of 350" is based on a falsehood, that at present ALL anthropogenic emissions of GHGs add to their atmospheric concentration, when in fact even these authors' own data source CDIAC shows that since 1958 nearly 60% of gross emissions has been absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial biospheres. Their favoured model MAGICC 5.3 equally falsely assumes that there will never ever be any such natural absorptions again. Why the necessity to lie? To repeat, the natural world already deals with close to 60% of gross emissions, so what is the point of reducing emissions to below the level of natural uptakes (60% FROM 2000 level as proposed for endorsement at Copenhagen implies TO 40% of 2000's emissions, or less than 3 GtC, while actual absorptions of emissions of c. 10 GtC in 2008 were c. 6 GtC (CDIAC). Is that arithmetic too difficult for those authors? They of course like Hansen could not care less when their 350 target is achieved, reducing the annual new absortion by trees and crops and phytoplankton to ZERO. O brave new world. Pity the whales, never mind us.

An informed and informative view. It rather suggests that Australia’s bi-partisan 2020 target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 5% below 1990 levels is not going to achieve anything. Nor is there reason to believe that government will revise the 2020 target to a more realistic 30-40% below 1990 greenhouse gas emissions, which is what scientists call for. But our enlightened and supposedly slightly green government will have none of it.

Rudd and Turnbull are adamant that at all costs, including the dangers of global warming, jobs must be preserved, the coal industry must be protected and we must do nothing which would jeopardize our oil refineries or continued production of fossil fuelled vehicles. That increased employment opportunities would result from transferring to a carbon free economy are to be neither examined or accepted. A more realistic greenhouse reduction targets will be achieved through carbon capture and sequestration when it becomes affordable, possibly by 2035.

Of course for the skeptics who either do not believe in climate change or its scientifically proved causes – and there are plenty of them! – our fearless leaders are doing the right thing but would be better doing nothing. Meanwhile land based ice continues to melt at an increasing rate. It will result in dangerous sea level rise but, no worries, its not going to happen for many years and by that time we will have found ways of dealing with it, wont we?

So, drink and be merry. Above all, lets not do anything to jeopardize our life-style or the pleasures it brings us. As for wild ideas of there being a risk of global warming from CO2 emissions, we have it on the authority of that world expert, Professor Plimer, that CO2 is good for the environment, has nothing to with global warming and anyway wouldn’t it be nice to have milder winters? Ask Senator Joyce. Ask Rudd and Turnbull. But whatever you do, do not ask an informed scientist who specializes in matters of climate change.