Who cares who stops the nonsense. Long may we be without either an ETS or a republic.

"Shouldn’t Australia do its bit to combat climate change now?" When will some people wake up to the fact that anything Australia does will have bugger-all effect on the global scheme of things. I agree that we should curb our emmissions but there are far more practical measures that could be put in place other than an over bloated trading scheme that will cost all Australians in every aspect of their lives. The CPRS is "a great big tax on everything" that Australia neither needs or can afford.

Although I'm sure Prof Johnson's analysis of the politics is competent as far as it goes, she overlooks the fact that reality has moved on. Trading schemes have never been shown to be of any use in reducing emissions - the European scheme has yet to achieve any reductions at all - and so they were only of limited appeal even before the Copenhagen Conference. But now its clear, even to the most rapid environmentalist, that a proper, effective interenational agreement just isn't going to happen there is no point whatever to a local trading scheme. It would be a serious waste of time and money, or at best an ideological gesture. Time to move on.

Wow, what a close shave we had.

Yes Carol, we know it's going to be hard to come up with another scheme to ensure that huge flow of funds from the tax payer to academia, but hay, you're supposed to be resourceful people, you'll manage, with only a bit of belt tightening.

Interesting the CSIRO, & the bureau coming out with their new scare campaign. Shame for them that more of us can now find the satellite figures, that put thew lie to their doctored figures.

I don't know how long you people are going to keep whipping a dead horse, but you can't blame the left. No, you are just going to have to blame it in the weather.

Off topic somewhat, but;

Hasbeen >> Interesting the CSIRO, & the bureau coming out with their new scare campaign. Shame for them that more of us can now find the satellite figures, that put thew lie to their doctored figures. <<

Perhaps you can explain to all of us Hasbeen why you think both the CSIRO and BOM are involved in a "scare campaign". I know their message is cause for concern, but would you rather censor them?

Also, can you provide the evidence that the CSIRO and BOM have "doctored figures"? These are serious allegations that need to be backed up - just you saying so is not good enough mate.

And, the "satellite figures" you have found, can you link to them please? I would like to see if they are from the same sources that I have. Thanks.

“Interesting the CSIRO, & the bureau coming out with their new scare campaign.” (Hasbeen)

Yeah. The CSIRO also comes up with some pretty ineffectual (often dangerously wrong) diets to lose weight. They are also after more money. As for the weather bureau, well, they often don’t know what the weather is going to be one day to the next.

And, I have to say it, if scammers and Rudd are still convinced of the ‘human-cause’ theory of climate change, why the hell is Rudd still looking for a ‘big Australia’? Our miniscule emissions will rise the more people we have here, so there’s not much point in doing anything while Rudd is bringing more people here.

An excellent summation of the Greens responsibility for the defeat of the CPRS. Ironically, if the Greens were to finally wake up to their stupidity,they would realise the bill currently delayed in the Senate is even more "polluter friendly" than the one they earlier defeated in such a short sighted and cavalier fashion.

If we believe that pollution is a great worry we should remember that recycling is a pollution solution. Read http://www.colorado.edu/econ/Kenneth.Boulding/spaceship-earth.html
If we believe that man is increasing world temperatures, ask what the USA Senate Inquiry wrote;
USA Senate Inquiry into CRU emails.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=7db3fbd8-f1b4-4fdf-bd15-12b7df1a0b63
If we wonder if there is any doubt about the CRU's emails ask why the UK Parliament have set up an Inquiry.
Evidence presented to the UK Parliamentary Inquiry by Stephen McIntyre.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc3202.htm
ditto by Prof McKitrick
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc3102.htm
ditto by Dr Sonja Bochmer-Christiansen, Editor of Journal Energy & Environment, published by Multi-Science
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc2602.htm
Ask if we have suffered an increase in temperatures. Read
Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception
SPPI Original Paper By Joseph D’Aleo & Anthony Watts, Jan 27, 2010 pages 10 to 14 are best.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/policy_driven_deception.html
USA’s Contiguous Temperature Trends using NCDC raw & adjusted data.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Rate_of_Temp_Change_Raw_and_Adjusted_NCDC_Data.pdf
The Global Average Urban Heat Island Effect in 2000 Estimated from Station Temperatures, Population
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog
Please Carol, we didn't want the CPRS Bill to pass because global warming is a non problem that is best solved by doing nothing.

The way in which we all first world countries live in this present day is unsustainable and we all know this. It is the twisted debates of parliament in not only Australia but all over the world which has put doubts in peoples minds about the authenticity of the matter. Australia being a developped nation may have little impact on the world in terms emmissions, however Australia is a leading nation and there is no denying this fact. Now i am a firm believer that Australia needs to take action in reducing our emmissions however suppressing our economy is not the correct way in doing so. This needs to be rethought and redrawn not by informed politicians but by another separate body selected by parliament with the proven capabilities of understanding the issue. Now we do not just want scientists in this body but also economists who will hopefully help keep the important of our economy in the climatologist's minds.

Qanda, that is a question I have asked myself a hundred times, from 5 different directions, & I can't come up with a definitive answer. I am sure money, prestige, pride, fame & a few other things like arrogance, ratbag greenie beliefs, & obedience to their political masters all get a look in somewhere, with all, or some of them, to some extent, but I still wonder why.

You see, until a couple of years ago, like most uni graduates, I simply believed what we were told. It was inconceivable that these people could be so wrong, or lie to us, on such a matter. Besides what would they have to gain?

Then, someome I respected gave me his opinion, & some references. The more I read, the more angry I became. Then I did some math, & became totally disgusted.

As a horseman, I get very angry with people who tow horse floats, badly, discourteously, blazing a trail of ill will for me.

As a B Sc, to say I am very angry that a bunch of "scientists" would cheat & lie, to try to hide the fact that they are WRONG, on such an important matter, puts it very mildly. No punishment is too great for these con men.

Yes, they probably thought they were right, once. Now they know they are wrong, & are prepared to destroy the lives of millions, rather than admit it.

The amount of data tampering they have used speaks of desperation, & their desire to "correct" satellite & Argo bouy data, drives the final nail in the coffin of their own making.

Perhaps some of them still hope some miracle will save them, & their reputations, but only those who believe in fairies.

Well, you did ask.

In fairness to the Greens, it is ludicrous to suggest that in the case of a cost of living impost such as the CPRS, 'public opinion is gradually won over to tougher measures'. Prominent Greens have already suggested 'democracy may need to be abandoned in order to fight climate change', so perhaps it is the author who is misjudging the Greens. Presumably the fight against climate change applies whether the planet is warming or cooling, so satellite climate data doesn't come into play for the Greens, nor in this article. Also notably absent from this article of recent climate political history, is any mention of the collapse in the credibility of the climate alarmist camp since the CRU leaked email event of November last year. This has been compounded by an endless stream of scandals surrounding non-peer reviewed material and errors contained within the IPCC 2007 report. Phil Jones of the CRU, University of East Anglia has now admitted the medieval warm period may have been hotter than recent years (so much for Michael Mann's alarming hockey stick graph). He has also admitted that temperatures are back to 1995 levels (fortunately he must have finally come across the satellite data). There are investigations into climate science in the UK and the US and then we have articles such as this one, blindly locked in a time warp in history, just like our current government.

An obvious response: if sensible people on both sides of the ideological divide agree that a policy is wrong, then it probably is wrong. If this is evidence-based government, then let's have more of it!

CO2- care to give us a source for the "Democracy may need to be abandoned" quote?
I just googled that phrase and nothing came up.

Anyway- excellent news, an expensive empty facade that does naught but make some people feel good they're somehow 'helping the environment' while certain others would have our money lining their pockets got CANNED!

Happy days!

Hazza has it about right. The ETS model as presented in the failed Bill would have achieved nothing more than allowing the Rudd government to claim to be doing something about AGW, while allowing the big polluters to continue business as usual.

The Greens rejected the CPRS because to do otherwise would have been the height of hypocrisy - the lack of which in the Greens is a major reason that a steadily increasing proportion of the electorate supports them.

While Johnson is superficially correct that the Greens were instrumental in denying the passing of the flawed CPRS Bill, she doesn't succeed in making the case that the particular model of ETS proposed would have made anything other than an illusory difference to AGW.

What I find particularly disturbing from the denialist commentariat is that they've now abandoned any pretence at 'skepticism', and are now attacking such institutions as BoM and CSIRO - and indeed science generally - on the basis of what are clearly ideological rather than empirical grounds.

Hasbeen's comments here are a good example - he impugns the scientific consensus on AGW, but when pressed to support his defamation with facts he completely dodges the question. Unfortunately, these are increasingly the tactics of the denialist camp - slagging off the scientists on the basis of factoids and manufactured quotes that nobody actually said.

Personally, I think that the Greens are the only political party in Australia that has approached AGW with anything like honesty, unsullied by populism and corporate manipulation. Eventually the Greens will be proven correct, but unfortunately by then it is very likely to be too late to do anything effective about it.

Ah well, who cares. Very few of us will be around when the sh!t really hits the fan anyway, eh?

CJ Morgan

<<< Ah well, who cares. Very few of us will be around when the sh!t really hits the fan anyway, eh? >>>

Yes, we should leave the entire issue of pollution, exploitation of fossil fuels, sustainable v. consumerism and the like to the next generation.

I also agree that the Greens are the only party to have shown some backbone on standing for a strategy that actually achieves investment in clean sustainable technology, which neither Labor nor the Libs have a clue about.

You folks *still* believe that hundreds of scientists world-wide can fiddle the figures and get away with it? do you know how competitive science is? Do you realise how much easier is it is to get funding for "anti-global worming science" then it is for proper balanced science?
Talk about wacky conspiracy theories!

Wake up and really look at the data. Real sea surface temps, air temps, ice loss, etc are tracking at the most extreme upper end of the model predictions. The middle range of the current predictions are now looking even worse than what was considered bad in the 2007 IPPC report. *This* is why the science community is getting more public information out there. There is *nothing* to gain from science lying, and everything to lose.
The folks pushing "teach the controversy" are playing the same patsies that believed Iraq's WMDs were a threat, and for the same reasons:profit. The real sceptics prefer the overwhelming professional opinions of Climate Scientists when dealing with the real climate situation.
Check out this page. Keep in mind the amount of energy needed to warm oceans is much more than the air above them, its a bit like the canary in the coal mine.
http://reg.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=sst&area=aus&season=0112&ave_yr=0
Hasbeen: If there data was "manipulated" incorrectly then another team in another country will pick it up. Science is very competitive. What you are probably referring to is the Quality Assurance process, which is absolutely necessary to draw real conclusions from raw data from various sources. Data adjustments and re-factoring are always required as single source from a single instruments will not achieve a realistic result. Of course this won't convince the die-hards for which denial is now a faith, but the real data from many sources is *very* convincing! I'm sure you can cherry pick to find "evidence" to the contrary but the real science takes longer and must use all the relevant sources. Don't worry the next decade will soon produce some events that will convince people!

Ozandy, you said to Hasbeen. << If there data was "manipulated" incorrectly then another team in another country will pick it up. >> Absolutely correct, and they have! Truck loads of them.

That’s why the UN, UK Parliament, UAE, UK Met Office and Pen. State Uni. are holding hearings and inquiries. That’s why the Russian, Canadian, Australian and Chinese ST data are under interrogation. That’s why the New Zealand’s premier research establishment NIWA, has been forced to admit, in writing, that it cannot substantiate its warming claim for NZ. That’s why Phil Jones has had to admit no warming since 1995 and that the CRU cannot reproduce the warming report in the AR4, that Heat Island effects do indeed contribute up to 40% of measured temps and that the MWP should be factored back in. That’s why 16 Litigation notices have been issued against the US EPA, including one from the State of Texas. That’s why the UN’s de Boer has resigned and why Pashauri is facing the “perfect storm”. Rest assured Ozandy, they did pick it up.

Back to the CPRS thread. The UK Telegraph two days ago reprinted a translation from a German newspaper along the lines of, if no other countries sign up for similar CPRS schemes, with whom are the EU going to trade carbon credits? A good question I thought. Why would we put Australia in that position?

Hasbeen,
I think qanda was asking for proof not an extended opinion.
I too would like to see your source proof....I don't believe it exists.
You have never produced fact and figures on anything beyond the news paper.

Time to ante up.

spindoc. The enquiries have been held and the scientists have been exonerated of fraud. They may be guilty of getting angry and acting a bit unprofessionally, but they *are* human!
I dare say most folks would get annoyed if they were accused of lying and constantly hassled for their workings in a dishonest way.
This particular beat-up has been and gone...yet the *huge* quantity of data world wide is just getting stronger.
Check out New Scientist magazines summary of the email "scandal" for a balanced assessment of the situation. Yes, a cooperative effort involving thousands of people across many countries will have some errors. Given they are less than 1% of the content, this is actually pretty good compared to say...economists predictions, accountants reports and politicians "facts".
Did you see the SST data? Do you care, or is the slip-up of one or two hassled academics *that* important that data is irrelevant?

Hasbeen

Thanks for your response. You still haven’t explained where the CSIRO and BOM have got it “wrong” (or cheated and lied).

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough;

1. Can you provide the evidence (link) that the CSIRO and BOM have "doctored figures"?

2. The "satellite figures" you have found, can you link to them please?

________

spindoc

You continue to trot out the ‘same old same old’ – you are sounding desperate.

Thank you, Professor Johnson - your article is exactly right. In conversations with various industry representatives, many are baffled as to why the Greens - of all parties - are as dogmatic and impractical as they have been. One can only assume this is an attempt to win over the green socialist vote? There are (hopefully) not that many, but their blocking tactics, and the reality that we could be on the way to implementing, and in time, refining, the world's most comprehensive emissions reduction scheme, is regretful.

While the comments on any pro-ETS/CPRS article are dominated constantly by a vocal minority, I hope you have received many personal expressions of support. THIS is what the media should be writing about.

The Liberal Party, in a post-Howard scramble for identity, are finding it in negation. But they are not the only ones to blame for Australia's failure to act. Labor's terrible PR, the silence of business groups (in fact, and in time, crippled by legislative uncertainty), extremist green groups who want it all at once, are all contributing.

Legislation will come, it's just a matter of how much we will lose in the wrangling.

I think Carol Johnson is wrong; this is not a failure of the Greens but the utter failure of Labor and Liberal - of mainstream politics - to come up with effective and appropriate policy to deal with a problem of unprecedented scale. Sure the Greens could have voted for a policy that Labor bent over backwards to weaken in order to get Liberal support, but the Liberals could have and should have supported a policy they proposed first.

So, yes, this is the fault of Liberals (and Nationals). They've invested heavily in climate change denial for the sake of the easy votes inherent in the apathy of the uninformed and misplaced fears of an increasingly misinformed public.

Policy that can deal effectively with climate change is reasonable, achievable and desirable, but for the sake of short term advantage Liberals and Nationals have no qualms in bequeathing irreversible climate damage on our future. And they do know better; they have full access to the same scientific advice that the government gets, from Australia's and the world's leading scientific institutions. And from an international panel they helped set up and that Australia's leading scientists contribute to.

Senior Liberals who have made the effort to be genuinely informed know there is no grand conspiracy ala Monckton and know that Plimer and Carter are hacks who wouldn't know a scientific argument if it bit them but denialism is undeniably popular and the capacity for people to ignore good advice in order to avoid a short term cost is bottomless.

For the sake of political opportunism mainstream politics will sell out our future and plenty of Australian's will cheer them on.

Maybe my comment above that Plimer and Carter wouldn't know a scientific argument if it bit them was over the top; they almost certainly do know but are unable to come up with any that have real merit, that can stand the kind of real sceptical scrutiny that got AGW the widespread scientific acceptance it has. Unable to make inroads on the real science front they confine their efforts to persuading non-scientists using arguments that would get a first year undergraduate failing grades. These guys are the darlings of the Liberal and National denialists and I suspect they are the primary source for Abbott's prevarication on climate change. Scary to think any future PM would choose to believe them in preference to the CSIRO, BoM and Chief Scientist for no better reason than that they feed the denialism that gets them votes.

I endorse those commenters who have defended the Greens' position in the Senate. However I would also challenge Dr. Johnson's attribution of the defeat of the 1999 republic referendum to "sections of the left".

The only prominent left-wing individuals associated with the "No" campaign were Phil Cleary and Clem Jones. Only a few tiny Trotskyist organisations supported the "No" campaign. The entire Labor Left, the Greens in all States, and left-identified Democrats such as Natasha Stott-Despoja advocated a "Yes" vote. The ACTU and the Women's Electoral Lobby both called for a "Yes" vote. The Democratic Socialist Party and Green Left Weekly advocated a "Yes" vote. The SEARCH Foundation and a range of well-known left-wing individuals such as Tim Costello and Dorothy McRae-McMahon advocated a "Yes - and more" vote which entailed advocating a "Yes" vote in the referendum whilst calling for issues such as direct election to be reviewed if the referendum was carried. These facts are all on the public record.

I am surprised that none of the later posts have not picked up that
the European ETS scheme has collapsed.

It fell from E12 a tonne to E1 a tonne overnight.
It appears that they have discovered that the system has been
systemically rorted and they have no idea what credits are real and
which are counterfeit.
I would think they might cancel the whole scheme

Update
I have been trying to new prices for the Eu ETS scheme.
The latest I could find is the 6th February.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/06/carbon-price-record-low
The Guardian article reports that the price has fallen from E30 to E10.
The report I saw, which I cannot remember where I saw it was a fall
from E13 to E1.

There will be a dealer that quotes the price but the ones I have found
you need to be a customer to gain access to prices.

Interesting Bazz

I'm sure that won't stop Labor pushing for it anyway.

I have come accross further information on the ETS scandal.

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2259761/recycled-carbon-credit-scandal

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2243535/record-lows-carbon-prices

If you read some of the links the European ETS scheme seems to be
totally manipulated by the EU government and its organs.