Seems I touched a nerve there spindoc. Perhaps I am a bit of a hypocrite since while I personally try to be energy frugal a bunch of people are flying over to visit this weekend. I should have told them to take the bus and ferry. I have no problem with extravagant energy use, just not from coal, gas or oil. I'm not the one struggling with AGW. I think it is real and a serious danger to the wellbeing of humanity. If that becomes even more apparent in the next few years we'll all have to ask ourselves what we did to help.

Here's another reason to burn less fossil carbon; it helps prepare for the inevitable. It appears that global crude oil production peaked in July 2008 and is now declining about 4-5% a year. There's plenty of coal but China the world's biggest user may experience shortages by 2015. Australia can't logistically make up the difference and I suggest it is also unwise to flog so much LNG as we may want a lot of gas for ourselves. We should make the transition away from carbon smoother and earlier than what will happen anyway under likely conflict and economic hardship. That means as Australians we should
a) get used to less carbon, not necessarily less energy
b) help the rest of the world to do the same.

@Curmudgeon: Any economic trade off was doubtful enough

If you think the CPRS was about us winning economically, your wrong. It was always going to harm us economically compared to developing countries.

@Curmudgeon: there is simply no point to a CPRS, now that any hope of any international agreement vanished with the Copenhagen Conference.

Sadly, I think this is probably right. All we could do is offer moral support, and we did that at Copenhagen. Politically, AGW's time in the sun is over for now. The planet has effectively decided to take a "wait and see" approach, and Australia can't do much to change that.

But don't count your chickens just yet. If we get another 1998, and that is looking statistically more likely as time goes on, it will be on again. The fundamental concern that drove the AGW concern in Australia - the drying out of the southern half of the continent, proceeds apace.

rstuart - I think 1998 is well recognized as being very hot due to an El Nino event, which I'm pretty sure we can't actually be blamed for (yet). Same as we're in now and why the east of Canada was warm during the Winter Olympics recently while the USA was freezing.

So regardless of a CPRS or similar, nothing we can do, at present, can stop or change El Nino, or even La Nina events, let alone stop or reverse climate change.

Imagine if we could control the climate, who would we trust with the control panel .. PM Rudd, Tony Abbott, Lara Bingle, Bob Brown, George Clooney, Bob Carter, Phil Jones, Rowen Atkinson, you, me?

We'd have as much chance finding consensus on what the climate should be like as we would on a republic in Queen Elizabeth's lifetime.

And that's the way it is .. the climate changes, yep, I can accept that and am not in denial about it.

sorry, the WEST of Canada .. senior moment!

rpg - there is no point in getting stuck into me. I am simply the messenger. Reality is a pain, I admit, but there it is - if you really believe in any of these dire scenarios then adaption is the only way out.
RStuart- when I said that the economic case for the CPRS was dodgy I was refering to the case with the assumption that it would have made a difference. The economic case for cutting emissions always required both extreme assumptions and playing fast and loose with the time value of money. The Stern report basically assumed that the value of a dollar today is not much different from the value of a dollar in the 22nd century - on ethical grounds. The report made other, major assumptions but that was the main one. It was the only way to make the case work. Now its all moot of course, but I don't think the general public realised how dodgy the economic case was.

curmudgeon - sorry mate, certainly was not having a go at you, you're possibly the sanest poster on OLO, always on message - I appreciate your posts very much.

Please reread my post - it was possibly more sarcastic than needed, but I do not seriously believe the doom scenarios (mass extinction). Particularly the ones relating to tipping points, it will be a long time before we see any real effects.

i am also constantly amazed by this current generation, I work with many of them, and see them in other areas and find them the least disciplined of any generation so far - maybe that's just how it goes, but I've not ever seen such a bunch of people with a such an overblown sense of entitlement - are we doing this, are we bringing them up to expect they can have whatever they want, just because they want it?

Other people in my industry comment that the average useful life of this generation on the workforce is 8 years tops, after that they just lose interest. Probably because no one has made them CEO in that time.

The message is clear, if the climate change means sea level rises or anything else, than we have to adapt, whatever that cost since this fallacy that we can change things, because we want to, is just that, fantasy.