Good piece Owen. Rudd certainly has damaged his credibility on climate change by dropping the CPRS.

I am wondering whether you can point to evidence that "carbon pricing is the most efficient and effective means of reducing emissions". Can you point to examples where carbon pricing is the key driver of decarbonisation in an economy. I look forward to your response if you have time to respond.

Cheers, Leigh Ewbank
(www.TheRealEwbank.com - @TheRealEwbank)

The political reality is that we are damned if we do or damned if we don't.With the current first past the post electoral system in the House of Representatives there is virtually zero chance of a third party getting enough members up to enable a balance of power situation and that is about the only way that something meaningful will be done on the climate issue.

There are probably a substantial number of deniers or sceptics in both major parties,including the leadership.There is nothing to see here,folks - move along.

Perhaps Kevin Rudd has adopted the Taoist maxim for government :'masterful inactivity.

"When most people think of addressing a great challenge, the picture of a government sitting on its hands for three years isn’t one that springs to mind."

Efficiency is only good when you're producing goods. We don't want people to be efficient at producing bads, and since Rudd seems to produce nothing else, we should be grateful the more inefficient he is.

Kevin Rudd is a classic Populist leader. This change is to be expected because people can now see through the Climate Change guff and it is no longer popular. So Kev drops it. If there was a movement against chocolate ice cream Kevin would ban it the next day.

People now realise Carbon is not an issue or even a pollutant. It is highly unlikely that man is causing any form of climate change particularly with CO2. The predicted "continuous drought" has been washed away by record rainfall, Europe has had its coldest winter in a long time and a single volcano spewed out more CO2 than the entire grounded airline industry. This has all had an effect on the public view. Not to mention the sleight of hand of the CRU and the ridiculous errors in the IPCC report.

There are LOTS of other real pollutants which seem not to concern anyone. Why? Because you can't tax everyone for them and no industry of proselytizers can be built around them.

There are too many vested interests promoting the whole Climate Change belief system. Billions invested, hundreds of thousands of jobs around the world placed in a false belief system. So they hang for dear life, hoping to push people into paying thousands of dollars a year which will have no effect anyway. Thank God people aren't that stupid.

Kevin Rudd has shown that he has no morals, no backbone; he is interested only in his own political survival. He has spent far too much money on gimmicky schemes which have all failed and have been dropped. He has done more against Australia than he has done for it in his first term. Even his own underlings are worried about his lack of performance.

But, let’s not pretend that we should be mourning the loss of his ratbag ETS scheme – the price of electricity is still going up by 35% according to the media, whether we have the scheme or not: think ahead, as Comrade Rudd is, to the next election and beyond.

If this extreme socialist PM is re-elected - and it appears that he is still conning enough Australians to put him well ahead of the alternative – the ETS will again raise its ugly head (an election win and no double dissolution on that policy is needed). What price electricity then? The Left will again be in his ear with a Bill of Rights, which Rudd has recently rejected – but only because it would lessen his control on everything; unlike his predecessor, he cannot control illegal immigration, so he ignores that altogether; doesn’t want to know. And, if he doesn’t know what to do about illegal immigration, he will continue to do nothing to cover up his incompetence.

The ETS and climate-change, which was the biggest ‘moral dilemma’ ever, and Rudd’s government ‘chose to act’ on it, was the jewel in his crown of ‘leading’ the rest of the world. He has now dumped it, blaming the Opposition of course. There is not very much left of the already thin Rudd veneer.

Good riddance to the ETS. Get over it, and spend some thought on all of the other things this political gangster has lead us up the garden part to becoming a slave state to China and foreigners in general.

Thanks Leigh E.

On the virtues of carbon pricing I’d point you to the conclusions of the PM’s (Howard’s) Task Group on Emissions Trading or the Garnaut Review. One of the first full econometric analyses of the EU ETS found it did significantly reduced emissions in its first few years, despite its many design flaws. MIT researchers have written the book ‘Pricing Carbon’ on this: http://globalchange.mit.edu/pubs/abstract.php?publication_id=2022

Of course carbon pricing isn’t a silver bullet and needs to coupled with strong policy to boost renewable energy and energy efficiency. We have a report that will add to this debate coming out in May.

For those interested in the science of climate change, I’ll point you to two recent compilations of the science.

The CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology’s climate snapshot: http://www.csiro.au/resources/State-of-the-Climate.html

The US EPA’s climate change indicators: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/indicators.html

Cheers,
Owen

Rudd's problem was that the CPRS was a costly ideological exercise in which the Australian electorate had lost interest. It is little wonder he killed it off. The only ETS worthy of the name, the European ETS, has not been known to have any actual effect on emissions even in Europe let along globally - and it costs billions. The only excuse activists have been able to think of for keeping this nonsense going is so that Australia can show leadership. The sad fact is that no country is going to follow where Australia leads. If you are seriously worried about emissions then adaption is the only policy. Deal with it.

The Government proposed an ETS trading scheme
which the Opposition rejected. The Opposition
and the Greens proposed Amendments under
Malcolm Turnbull's Leadership and eventually
the Government reached a reasonably amicable
agreement. The ETS proposal was squashed by
the Opposition in the Senate and as long as the
Opposition had a majority in the Senate the
Proposal would have never passed, especially
with Mr Tony Abbott as the current Opposition
Leader.

The Greens were willing to negotiate further,
unfortunately their requirements were not
realistic in the present Australian economic
environment.

Even then, the Govrnment took their scheme to
Copenhagen and attempted to convince major
players such as the US and China to reach an
agreement. Unfortunately, Copenhagen made minor
progress and everything was deferred until the
next Climate Change gathering.

With the current Opposition Party mentality and
their control in the Senate passing the Climate
Change Bill has as much chance as a snowball in hell,
so logically the Government has no other choice until
it has control in the Senate. It would be a senseless
waste of time and finance to pursue the matter as long
as Mr Tony Abbott is Leader of the Opposition.

With another Leader of the Opposition similar to the
progressive thinking of Malcolm Turnbull and Hockey,
the ETS Scheme might have a chance.

At the present time the Government has to push and
finalize the Health and Hospital Scheme and concentrate
on winning the next election.

On the other hand the Opposition in its usual and established
manner has never offered anything positive and chooses
to deflect their incompetence by attacking the Government.
And unfortunately as seen from the comments here, an ignorant
support base amongst some voters.

I would like to point out the Opposition's sincerity on
Health care, not only by looking at -
Tony Abbott's past record as
Health Minister, but also by
looking at their Party's -
receiving substantial donations from the
Tobacco Industry as reported recently in the media.

This raises another question whether their Opposition
to the ETS could be the result of possible donations
from the polluting companies.

"One of the first full econometric analyses of the EU ETS found it did significantly reduced emissions in its first few years, despite its many design flaws."

And I suppose that's what's responsible for the global cooling over the last 12 years? Thank god for all those government-funded econometric analyses of government-funded confiscations on the basis of government-funded computer models presuming governmental omnipotence, commanding the winds that blow.

A very good article Owen, your posted links add to it.

______

Atman

"People now realise Carbon is not an issue or even a pollutant." Which people are that Atman, care to provide evidence for your assertion?

"It is highly unlikely that man is causing any form of climate change particularly with CO2." Care to provide evidence, or is this too just an assertion?

"The predicted "continuous drought" has been washed away by record rainfall ..." Atman, who said "continuous drought", can you cite the source please?

"Europe has had its coldest winter in a long time" - yeah, and Canada had a very warm Winter Olympics. And on it goes.

_______

Leigh on his usual left, socialist, invective.

_______

Mark/Curmudgeon

"If you are seriously worried about emissions then adaption is the only policy. Deal with it."

If you are seriously worried about climate change, adapt.

If you are seriously worried about emissions, mitigate.

_______

Foxy

I agree, there is no way the government could have got this legislation through the senate.

_______

Peter Hume

At least 30 years is required to validate this climate trend - separating the signal (human induced forcing) from the noise (natural variability).

Cynics want to trash HadCrut - which data set should we use?

Who do you think should "fund" research into 'climate science'?
Indeed, do you think it should be researched at all, and if so, by whom?

"At least 30 years is required to validate this climate trend - separating the signal (human induced forcing) from the noise (natural variability)."

And so?

"Cynics want to trash HadCrut - which data set should we use?"

Who's "we"?

> Who do you think should "fund" research into 'climate science'?

Anyone who wants to.

> Indeed, do you think it should be researched at all, and if so, by whom?

By those who want to; and not by those who don't.

Peter Hume .. Touche! .. well said, don't let the idiots grind you down.

"At least 30 years is required to validate this climate trend - separating the signal (human induced forcing) from the noise (natural variability)."

Qanda, doesn't that mean it'll be another 18 years before you satisfy your own standard of proof?

A scaremongering industry shill all worried about where those contributions are going to come from.

I'm sure something will come up.

Will the same dupes vote Labor at the next election, of course, because they didn't vote Labor because of a proposed ETS at the last election, it was Workchoices remember, they had a "mandate" with 51.9% of the vote. (sarcasm of course)

"To regain credibility" oh good luck mate, the ALP knows that's gone, and you guys hitched your wagon to it and now find yourselves a laughing stock and will lose some contributors - suck it up, no clever eco spin is going to get you out of this for a while.

It was a bubble in the best tradition of bubbles over the last few hundred years, and it burst, people eventually do wake up.

Go chase whalers or something, I'm sure you'll come up with something to shake the shekels out of people's pockets, sheesh you're a salesman, you'll work it out.

Peter Hume and Amicus

Your responses typify those of arm chair pseudo-experts, without confidence or conviction - no doubt gleaned from the 'denialosphere'.

_______

Jefferson

No. We will have a statistically valid indication of any change in the warming trend by 2015. Unfortunately, it is is already starting to trend up again.

Your post reflects the misinterpretation or deliberate distortions that many of the cynics have attributed to Phil Jones' comments about the trend since "1995".

You should really be going back to about 1985 - but most like to incorporate the series since satellite measurements began.

And it's not my "standard of proof" - it's what you learn when you have to apply time series analysis.

_____

That's the best odo can do - attack the author and what he represents.
As I said, odo - a waste of space and a waste of time.

The current Government is nothing short of gutless and incompetent. If they really believed in the biggest moral challenge of the century they would of called a double disillusion election. Unfortunately the winner from this will be their bedfellows (the Greens). Most of the electorate are still blinded from spin, hypocrisy and incompetence. The marxist media will ensure Labour will be re elected. We will continue to reap what we sow.

Australia does NOT use a first past the post electoral system ! The UK does, causing makes their current election interesting, with calls to introduce preferential voting similar to Australia.

"The Australian electoral system has evolved over nearly 150 years of continuous democratic government, and has a number of distinctive features including compulsory voting, preferential voting (known elsewhere as instant-runoff voting) and the use of proportional voting to elect the upper house, the Australian Senate. "

Extract from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_electoral_system


"The conservative government of Billy Hughes introduced preferential voting as a means of allowing competition between the two conservative parties without putting seats at risk."

Extract from above document section: Preferential voting

Back to Carbon Tax, now Kevin Rudd dropped another/THE core policy rather than attempt to achieve some resolution...

This failure to pass legislation addressing issues likely shall result in our coming elections with many allocating first preference votes to GREEN candidates, then follow their usual orientation.

As this only clear way they can demonstrate their frustration at lack of progress in Australia.

The challenge for Tony Abbott is to present a policy with Green support which can resolve the deadlock

"The challenge for Tony Abbott is to present a policy with Green support which can resolve the deadlock"

This assumes anyone still cares beyond the fringe eco alarmists.

hey look, oil leak!

Wow, ad hominem argument and appeal to absent authority from a global warmist - how amazingly persuasive - and how unusual.

The fact of the matter is, the entire belief system that we face catastrophic man-made global warming rests on the underlying belief that the globe is in fact warming. It isn't, and it is common ground that it hasn't been since 1998.

So the warmists fall back to an assertion that the general trend is warming, and that the argument still holds good, notwithstanding the suppression of data, fraud, vested interests, etc.

However this argument in turn depends on what time is taken as the starting point of the analysis. You'll get a different general trend depending whether you take as your starting point 40 years, or or 400 years, or 4,000 years, or 400,000 years, or 4,000,000 years or 40,000,000 years, or 4000 million years. The choice of starting times is not supplied by the science. The significance is a matter of interpretation. It is arbitrary.

However the abysmal defects of the climatological argument are the least of the warmists' problems. As I have pointed out repeatedly, and no warmist has dared to reply to - except with ad hominem argument - the climate science does not and cannot supply value judgments. Even if we assume - very much in the warmists' favour - that there is no issue with their shamanistic gizzard-lore, they still will not have got to square one in establishing an argument in favour of any policy measure whatsoever. The fact that they don't even seem to understand this point is the most frightening aspect of their born-again sack-cloth and ashes totalitarianism.

Well Kevin Rudd certainly could do with being more positive and clear on the issue, he seems to have slipped into an election based focus and for some reason is behaving like he is fighting for his life. I would have to call this article the biggest load of ignorant rubbish i have read in years.
Why has this all slipped away? Because we the Australian public have lost momentum on the subject. We have made it clear that we are not prepared to pay the price for fixing the problem we created. We are against rising power bills, we are sucked in by Toni Abbott and the "big new tax" CON.
The general public are like smokers, we are polluting the lungs of the world but we want someone else to pay the health bill.
The delay is non existent really. Three years when the truth is even if the government pushed on now the earliest it would probably pass would be June 2011. This is probably a delay of about 6 months in real terms a delay that would not be needed if the country were not so in love with the sceptics that are holding back the process.
In the future when the world is ecologically on its knees and we live in artificially sustained environments, the climate change sceptics and the battle to save the environment will be remembered with the feeling of tragic failure that the allies have over the holocaust. "we knew but we didn't know it was that bad", rubbish the world knows how bad the situation is they are just lost in a selfish society of have it all now and tuff for the future.
If you want to see change for the better, stop being entertained by the Neanderthal that calls himself the opposition leader and take responsibility for the future, say you are happy to pay double for power and fuel. Accept the cost of saving the environment and think about your great grandchildren not the new 3D plasma screen that you have to have.

qanda

You oddly requested "proof" of something AGW people like yourself have been saying for a long time, but have been proven wrong and are now acting as if you now never believed it; That is that much of Australia was in drought and this would continue to worsen. I'm not sure now why you are pretending never to have believed this?! Probably because the largest amount of water in a long time has flooded inland Australia and you are embarrassed by it.

Its cold weather that ties up water in glaciers not warming! The world is driest during cold periods not warm periods. Antarctica is the worlds driest continent.Warming releases water,isn't that basic to the whole AGW hypothesis?

But anyway, seeing you have suddenly "forgotten" and you want proof that people in your camp believed this here is a link below. I know how sensitive you are links which are not to pro-AGW people or organisations and how you are prone to dismiss them without reading them so I guess I better link to your own people. This quote in particular is quite telling.

http://www.climatechange.com.au/tag/drought/

"If you ask Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, about climate change, the outlook is bleak. By 2030 rainfall on the major capitals (except Hobart) could drop by 15 per cent. According to the 2001 report, Climate Change Projections for Australia, Perth could loose up to 20 per cent of rainfall. At the same time, rising temperatures will increase evaporation, further reducing water supplies in dams, rivers and reservoirs."

Also

http://weatherforecasting.suite101.com/article.cfm/indian_ocean_controls_climate

"Southeastern Australia has experienced almost continuous drought conditions"

And Peter Hume

Do you really know who funds climate change research? Here is a list which might be of interest to you.

http://www.iigcc.org/membership.aspx

Also Peter, the question is not about throwing away the Hadley data its about why Jones failed to supply it even to non skeptics then suddenly "lost it" when put under pressure to produce. His explanation of this is at a the level of a schoolchild who hadn't done his homework yet you seem to believe him.

Peter Hume

Apologies, my latter comments were accidentally directed to you but should have also been directed to qanda

qanda
Do you really know who funds climate change research? Here is a list which might be of interest to you.

http://www.iigcc.org/membership.aspx

Also the question is not about throwing away the Hadley data its about why Jones failed to supply it even to non skeptics then suddenly "lost it" when put under pressure to produce. His explanation of this is at a the level of a schoolchild who hadn't done his homework yet you seem to believe him.

A good post Atman and its reference to the investors in CC,which of course includes the Nobel prize winning shonks such as Gore and Pachauri..which are not looking too good, after all.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/al_gore_is_lying_low_for_good.html

It would be delightfully poetic for Gore and his shonky mates to lose the lot.

Pity the heaterist scientific fraternity that have remained silent for so long in regard to Gore etc, were not also called to account.

Kevin promises much but delivers little. He has become a joke.

I wonder if he's anything more than a human talking machine.

Atman

Where in your link to http://www.climatechange.com.au/tag/drought/ is the evidence for your assertions that;

1. "People now realise Carbon is not an issue or even a pollutant" and,

2. "It is highly unlikely that man is causing any form of climate change particularly with CO2"?

As to your other assertion, my apologies (of course I know the drought has eased, and to the reason) - I wanted to focus on your:

3. "continuous drought" quote


You link to http://weatherforecasting.suite101.com/article.cfm/indian_ocean_controls_climate

and quote "Southeastern Australia has experienced almost continuous drought conditions"

The person you lifted this quote from is Sue Cartledge (http://www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/portiafaceslife )

Now, she's probably a very nice woman who is very passionate in her mission. But I doubt very much most people (apart from bigmal, and you, obviously) would consider her “continuous drought” statement valid. Not even the CSIRO or BOM are suggesting that – perhaps you (and Sue Cartledge) need to understand shifting climatic regions a little more.

Thanks for your instruction in climate dynamics; you must be an expert too, Atman. Not required though – that’s my day time job, particularly things to do with water. You know; hydrogeology, clouds, evaporation/precipitation, land/ocean/atmosphere coupling, and other stuff associated with water catchment management, agricultural practices, recycling, and other stuff.

That other link, http://www.iigcc.org/membership.aspx , interesting indeed - not a very big list is it? If you really would think about it, you will realise there are far more businesses and institutions funding climate change research, even governments. What I find strange though is that some people don’t want any funding, let alone research, at all to be done on “climate change” – isn’t that stupid?

Not too sure about bigmal’s link to American Thinker. Typically driving a wedge between Right and Left. Unfortunate given the significance AGW has attracted world-wide, across the spectrum of ideologies. I for one would like to think a global problem is sorted by a global response, however difficult that may seem. I have to admit, I'm somewhat disillusioned by some people's implied memes about; 'us' vs 'them' or 'right' vs 'left', or add your own.

By the way - there is a difference between (weight of) evidence and proof.

It seems some people equate the so called 'debate' on climate change with a finding in a Court of Law - guilt or innocence. It's not.

Also, statements like "prove" is fine in math, but has no meaning with probabilities.

I think Rudd is being much smarter than we give him credit for. Some of us may have missed, or ignored the “blinding glimpse of the obvious”.

The ETS looked a safe bet for Rudd when “Malcolm was in the middle”. The $10 billion a year looked good to cover the debts being accrued. Not only has he “spent” the $20 billion he inherited in surplus, he has run up a $94 billion national debt and whoops! No ETS revenue to cover the debt or a return to surplus.

So now he grabs 30% of GST (for health reform of course), and imposes a tax on mining to try to cover the deficit. The mining tax is also a tax on energy, coal and coal seam gas. So now we have our carbon tax by stealth. Rudd is happy to have the revenue to cover our national debt and he doesn’t even have to give any of it away to provide rebates for the inevitable increases in energy costs or to subsidize MRET initiatives. He gets to keep it all. This is one very smart cookie.

Sure there will be reduced corporation tax income from the mining sector, so what? That will be much less than he would have had to give back as rebates and RET's under the ETS and it will, unlike rebates, be totally uncontested.

What a bunch of “bunnies” we are.

Rudd had duded everyone. Our political journalists have gone into analysis paralysis on content and completely missed the main game.

We are all running around like headless chucks squawking about ETS vs. no ETS whilst Rudd laughs up his sleeve.

Doh!

spindoc, totally agree - the PM is clearing the decks, grabbing all he can, setting up wedges and generally plotting and planning - the question is how much BS will the public stand?

Regardless of his awesome media team, eventually people smell a trickster, but will it be in time to save the country from yet another term of no infrastructure spending and continual spin.

Although you see NSW with the ALP still in control and probably for ever, as they spin in each time with such fresh BS.

I suspect the ALP has a lot of dirt in store on the coalition and a bunch of spare money for those who show they are easily bought.

It will be a dirty election campaign, with a huge fear overhead from the unions and others who will play their roles for fear of loss of power or ego.

We'll get the government we deserve .. and if its the ALP, they'll piss it all away to stay in power, and do nothing else, like NSW, nothing to show for all those years of ALP rule.

Yes Doc, & he looks like getting another of his go broke quick schemes in place too. He may have failed to use the ETS to get our cash to give to the third world, so he is going to send us broke, with his 20% alternative energy plan.

That's the slippery slope Spain jumped on, to speed them into bankruptcy. The way they are going, they may just overtake Greece in the race to be the first EU country to actually go broke.

A recent studdy has shown that, not only has every "green" job in their new world economy cost then 2 jobs in the old one, but has cost over $200,000 in subsidies. Expensive unreliable power is no route to success.

We probably should try to manufacture a success for our village idiot, Rudd, so we could get him to paues & enjoy the moment, for a few months. His habit of leaping from each sinking failure to the next catastrophe is just too expensive for our kids future.

Without smart neighbours we won't even be able to work the Danish wind power model.

They found all their wind power stuffs up their grid. They have overcome this. When the wind doesn't blow, they buy Nuclear generated power from France. Expensive, but it works.

When it blows, & all that wind power starts to destabilise their grid, they sell the wind power to Sweden, who can manage it by turning some hydro power on, or off, quickly. They then buy their power from nuclear France, again.

The only problem is they have to pay 5 times as much for the nice stable French Nuclear power, as Sweden will pay them for their unstable wind stuff.

If it had been England, whatever bureaucrat came up with this scheme for throwing money away, would have got a knighthood. I wonder what we will give ours.

I sometimes wonder if Ruddy does a lot of research to come up with these schemes, or if they come to him, in a flash of blinding light, in the middle of the night.

Sheesh ... and some people call me an 'alarmist'.

qanda

I'm afraid I can only see your outright rejection of certain internet information and blind acceptance of other as simple bias. Now you are even rejecting a fellow pro-AGW person's viewpoint.

I don't know why you need more and more evidence for you own ideas but anyway here is a quote from Greenpeace Australia. Its even more extreme and uses the words "endless Drought"

"Australia is the world's driest inhabited continent. Every day we suffer the worsening effects of climate change, like endless drought and weather extremes"

https://www.greenpeace.org.au/secure/appeal/climate.php

I can hardly believe that you are now saying that pro-AGW lobby never believed that Australia was in a worsening drought. The hypocrisy is mind-blowing. You don't remember pro-AGW politicians using AGW as a reason to build desalination plants and restrict water usage? A very convenient amnesia for sure.

I also noticed you assert yourself to be an expert yet you avoided refuting the argument that a cooling earth leads to drier planet than a warming earth. This is one of the areas where the Global Warming hypothesis falls down and your evasion suggests you know this.

In relation to the list http://www.iigcc.org/membership.aspx which you claim to be a "small" list, they are just the members of ONE group in one part of the world. I guess you may not have noticed many of them are pension funds and Churches and govt organisations who are investing peoples money without investors consent?

Carbon is NOT a pollutant. Carbon Dioxide is NOT a pollutant. Prior to this lunacy, Carbon was called "the building block of life". If carbon itself were a pollutant, all life would be pollution as would every breath you exhale. Some forms of carbon compounds can contribute to pollution as can some forms of sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen and numerous other gases. The reason AGW proponents single out carbon only is that it is easier to tax the developed world as some carbon compounds are the common byproduct of industrialisation and the march of the developed world can be halted.

(Chinese and Arab carbon is apparently OK for the environment!).

qanda

Yet more information:

Ecosanity, a pro AGW lobby talking about the "permanent drought".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ5FmLX-zvo

Has your amnesia lifted yet?

Atman, sorry mate, but according to philosophical reasoning man truly began to destroy the earth with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Just as our young ones prefer to tamper with exhaust sytems mainly to heaer and feel the thrill of engine power, so future motorisation will eventually denude the earth enough to ruin its future.

Though appreciating the natural gift of fingers, young people should appreciate more the gift of the cupped hand, not like the monkey whose hands are nowhere near so cupped, which shows that as we become more advanced the cupped hand must remind us that whether from God or the Great Architect, the Cupped Hand must mean that we are here mostly to give not to happily destroy.

Certainly one does not have to be a Christian to realise that the Sermon on the Mount, does also truly
denote the goodness and generosity of the Cupped Hand.

Maybe Nelson Mandela could explain the above better than myself.

Atman

I reject AGW ‘alarmism’ – always have, always will. That's not to say AGW isn't alarming, it is.

>> I can hardly believe that you are now saying that pro-AGW lobby never believed that Australia was in a worsening drought. The hypocrisy is mind-blowing. <<

Your hypocrisy is mind-blowing, show me where I said the "pro-AGW lobby never believed that Australia was in a worsening drought.” You want to keep putting your words in my mouth (as others are wont to do) - deceptive at best, mendacious at worst.

Btw, when someone prefaces a statement with ‘like’ – as in “like endless drought” – the statement becomes a metaphor.

>> I also noticed you assert yourself to be an expert yet you avoided refuting the argument that a cooling earth leads to drier planet than a warming earth. This is one of the areas where the Global Warming hypothesis falls down and your evasion suggests you know this. <<

Um, Atman ... nothing to refute, a cooling Earth does lead to a drier planet.

The corollary: a warming Earth leads to a wetter planet. I have said this numerous times in numerous posts.

If you add energy to a system at a rate more than it can absorb or release, it heats up. The Earth System is as complex as it is dynamic - some regions will be better off, some worse. One thing is certain, at the current rate of adding energy into the system; it will react accordingly, it is. The Re-Insurance companies are suffering gastro as a result.

Pension fund stuff – yes, I noticed.

Your chemistry lecture, thanks. Carbon is “the building block of life” – and we should treat it with respect.

No CO2, the planet would be like a snow-ball.
Too much, it would be like hell on Earth.

Scientists single out ‘carbon’ because of the problems associated with releasing too much energy into the atmosphere at a rate greater than the oceans, atmosphere and terrestrial biosphere can absorb. What political ideologues do is another matter.

Cont’d Atman

Cont’d Atman

And to your last bracketed snarky remark about Arab and Chinese carbon – no, it’s not ok for the environment. A GHG molecule is not bigoted or rascist, the troposphere covers the whole globe.

Betcha didn’t know China is doing far more than the US in terms of mitigation measures. Why? They have most to lose, both literally and figuratively.

Ecosanity youtube link, thanks. As I’ve said, alarming messages. Perhaps you can proffer a plan on tackling ‘water’ issues, be they in our ‘food bowl’, in a high density population center, or in a region where average yearly rainfall is reducing. Have you seen satellite data and images on water loss in Australia?

qanda

So you do agree that a warming planet should not necessarily lead to drought in Australia. Or do you? It is difficult to pin you down on this one.

Sorry but I can't buy your metaphor explanation. In fact I think its quite lame. "Like" in this context means 'such as' not 'similar to'. Here is the complete quote.

Greenpeace>>"Australia is the world's driest inhabited continent. Every day we suffer the worsening effects of climate change, like endless drought and weather extremes."

If "endless drought" was a metaphor (which it clearly isn't) you seem to be suggesting its a metaphor for an non-endless drought?!

So by denying you are part of the pro-AGW lobby, that you are not an alarmist, where exactly do you stand? You apparently disagree with Greenpeace and EcoSanity.

In response to your suggestion I "proffer an plan on tackling water issues" I'll leave the solution to the water 'experts'.I believe you put yourself in this category.

However, in relation to Australian water problems; they are not new. Drought has existed in Australia for thousands of years so why is it a new problem or a problem of latter times? It is clearly unrelated to Global Warming even if such a thing existed.

Australia's drought prone "food bowl" is a geographic and climatic fact. We are dependent upon many areas which have only ever been marginal farming areas. You would be aware there has been record rainfall recently in the central part of the continent. Australia has a highly variable pattern. The above Greenpeace quote stupidly links droughts to 'climate change' as if the climate had been static before man intervened. Do you support his concept?

In relation to your praise for China's emissions control policy, do you support the IPCC recommendation not to restrict China's emissions?

Atman. The the planet is warming (some regions more so than others), human activity has significantly (but certainly not entirely) contributed to that warming, and we should make an effort to do something about it – not so much for the present (albeit that itself is important) but more so for the future. If that makes me a ‘warmer’, so be it. I do not think that makes me an ‘alarmist’.

Australian droughts: There is mounting evidence to suggest that some recent droughts have been exacerbated by human induced 'climate change' (AGW). One thing is certain; ever since we have been collecting and recording climate data here in Australia, the climate (and climatic regions) has changed .Please, don’t accept my word – go and have a look at the latest report by the CSIRO and BOM. If you don’t believe them, there is nothing I can say to alter your view.

Greenpeace has an alarming message, we should at least listen, preferably with an open mind. Nevertheless, I don’t believe in their hard-line or ‘dark green’ (as opposed to ‘light green’) strategies to address some of the issues. Sometimes, more can be achieved by negotiating a common response – otherwise there will only be winners and losers.

Forget the semantics and metaphors; I see it’s confusing and distracting.

I have tried to explain elsewhere: the climate changes – by natural processes, it always has and always will. However, in the spate of 150 years or so, humanity has released vast amounts of energy into the Earth System creating an ‘energy imbalance’, this is not natural. The Earth System, in response, is trying to equilibrate. In doing so, we witness and observe some rather disturbing, if not, more frequent ‘extreme weather events’, amongst other things.

As I understand, the IPCC did not make such a recommendation. Perhaps you mean the UNFCCC? If so, I did not think that was their recommendation anyway. Don't forget, the UNFCCC is made up of so many member states, they have to all agree on the make-up and the wording of any final 'recommendation'.

I cannot accept 'nothing to see here - move along' as the only way forward (past) this issue.

It is simply crushing to me that our commonwealth government suffers from the same inertia as our US buddies... How delightful to be in bed with them, again!

K Rudd was correct when he said the “great moral challenge” ... he was just wrong when he failed to deliver any change whatsoever.

If the pollsters rang me i'd be completely unable to decide between the incompetence of either major party.