So why is there no serious consideration being given to very fast trains on the Brisbane - Sydney - Melbourne runs?

Oh that's right - we still haven't gotten over that pesky rail gauge thingy.

Queensland introduced the Tilt Train but it seems to be a bit of a disaster with the train reaching serious speeds over only a comparatively very short distance of track.

Rosenthal's article underscores the immense difficulties any one country has in reducing emissions. People will listen attentively when you tell them to buy a hybrid car but go completely deaf when you tell them that they have to give up their overseas holiday. The only real solution is to put travellers back into cruise ships and trains, but is that going to happen? Doubt it. In any case, neither China or India has shown any real interest, beyond grandstanding on solar energy and the occasional vague promise, that they will do anything about emissions. Time to face facts. Efforts to curtail emissions are a waste of time and effort.

Interesting isn't it, that in the thumbnail sketch on Liz it says, "traveling extensively to report on environmental projects". What do you know, another green do as I say rant. I wonder how many IPCC extravaganzxs she's flown too?

Why is it that these twits always love public transport? Every realistic report I have read all say that the cost in money, & fuel is between 20, & 45% greater per passenger mile for public than private transport.

If it's green house gas they are worried about, they can now stop. We know it was a rort. However, if they are, they should think of how much of the stuff that would be emitted in the building of things like high speed rail. The running costs after the building, are minor.

Finally she has the hide to tell us that the thousands who flew to Copenhagen last year were because, "they cared passionately about climate". Pull the other one love, that one yodels. Your 6 years in Beijing sounds much more like career building that greenie passion.

Interesting post.
Here are my thoughts on the matter after I draw your attention to a
couple of things;

Note that the British Government has cancelled the proposed third
runway at Heathrow.

Note that the second airport for Sydney has gone to sleep.

Note that the completion of the Dual highway from Sydney to Brisbane
is now back in the 2020s and some major projects are now back to the 2030s.

In an era of little or no growth there will be no money for major projects.
Airlines are merging and going out of business at quite a rapid rate.
Frankly their time is limited.

High speed trains between Brisbane, Sydney & Melbourne would be really
good, but unfortunately most people who suggest them really are
unaware of the difficulties involved.
To construct such a line you have to assume the present line is not there.
You cannot follow the present permway, you have to build a straight
line and flat permway and the present one is anything but that.
In the days that the present track was built the earth moving was done
with horses and scoops, no massive bulldozers then.

The best that can be hoped for that route is to electrify it.
This would enable somewhat higher speeds but very significant
upgrading of the track would be needed.
However even this minor work may well be out of our reach from now on.
Hirsch warned us that 20 years was needed for the energy transition
but he has been ignored.

Do as I say, not do as I do.

This kind of rampant hypocrisy, so typical of the Green Elites, is exactly why they trip my B@llsh!t Alert, big-time.

When people of privilege and wealth try to deny a benefit that they already enjoy to others, it's ten-to-one they're selling you a pup.

if people must fly, why not on blimps (airships)?

Oh, that's a bit like the slow-food style of eating out, way too long.

But what's the rush? Slow down and live longer.

Well at least you are consistent with most of the other hypocrites who claim gw is our greatest moral challenge as they rack up frequent flyer points. Thankfully there is an election coming up in Australia so the 'true believers' have gone into hiding as most States have had far more rainfall than the doomsdayers predicted they ever would.

“Flying dwarfs ---.” Yes, that is the trouble, too many of them; and of flying giants, too – and of all those other people in between; even now.

What will it be like if all those others - from the back-blocks of Ethiopia, Nigeria, India, China ever get the opportunity? Or is the world going to persist forever with the present apartheid of developed/undeveloped, increasingly-festering, disparity between world citizens? And can the future generation (maybe an extra 3 billion of them by 2050), get a fair crack at elevated express travel, equitably?

It is all pie-in-the sky, especially at the present rate of human breeding.

Cutting down on waste-production, be it via air travel or otherwise, will only prolong the inevitable in the absence of stabilizing human numbers. It is necessary to do both – urgently. We have already dug ourselves into a hole of trouble via ponzi-scheme economics which require us to grow forever – in consumption/waste, and breeding. It is this economics paradigm which underlies excess CO2 & equivalent emissions, and air transport is but a component of that. There are viable alternatives, but the economists promoting them do not win Nobel Prizes.

Dear Elizabeth, for people like yourself who cannot admit you were had by the “carbon emissions” phenomena, life must be quite a challenge. Like so many, your personal credibility went out the window when Professor Phil Jones declared “there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995”

The panel that extracted this admission was appointed by The Royal Society who recently made this statement in The Times;

“Britain’s premier scientific institution is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by 43 members who question mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures”. It said: “Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect”.

This is significant for a number of reasons; academia is developing the “embarrassment gene” over the scientific shambles of the IPCC and CRU assessments, which they have now reviewed and seriously questioned for the first time. It also acknowledges that there is no reliable scientific data to support global warming, that there is no link to carbon emissions and that science has been hijacked by politics.

Politicians attending Copenhagen were well aware of the absence of science for a treaty and baulked. They likewise cannot admit they were “had” and are more inclined to let the whole thing fade away as their exit strategy to save face.

This phenomenon has been a colossal waste of money, HSBC estimates $74bn dollars globally over ten years and it has driven western governments into wasteful and ineffective “green energy” initiatives. These have inhibited political decisions to invest in carbon based energy production; as a result we face reduced production capacity against rising demand and higher costs.

You seek to perpetuate the false premise of carbon pollution in order to avoid acknowledging you were wrong. Increasingly the commentariat will have to accept its culpability in this scam as basis for it crumbles.

I would like to see the “warming lobby” held accountable for the incalculable damage inflicted upon our social and economic prospects. Fortunately for people sharing your ideological obsessions, the best we can hope for is public humiliation for your lack of common sense.

I cannot see how "flying dwarfs any other individual activity in terms of carbon emissions" when "according to various estimates, emissions from aviation currently represent 2 to 3 per cent of CO2 emissions." Even if they do "double or triple by 2050", it still doesn't seem like all that much.

Since when is a paperless office more environmentally friendly than a "paper" one? Paper made from wood fibre is environmentally positive using a much under rated source.

Imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, accrues solar energy as fuel, makes complex sugars and food, creates microclimates, changes colors with the seasons and self-replicates. Well, why don't we knock that down and write on it? Of course I am talking about trees - the fibre of which is used to make products such as paper. We should be promoting more use of products made from trees because of its environmental value.

I advocate that all businesses place at the bottom of their outgoing e-mails the following to promote the use of paper:

"Please consider our environment... as paper is a permanent store of atmospheric carbon print multiple copies, single sided, doubled spaced ... and save the planet."

"Please don't feel bad about printing this email as the pulp and paper industry is an important sector in making plantation forestry viable. This allows the forestry and wood products industry to provide sustainable building materials (with much less CO2 emissions than competing materials such as concrete and steel), carbon sequestration and carbon-neutral wood fuel. Go ahead - press print"

spindoc, you said;

>> ... The Royal Society (who) recently made this statement in The Times;

“Britain’s premier scientific institution is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by 43 members who question mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures”.

The Royal Society said nothing of the sort.

What they said was this;

http://royalsociety.org/Royal-Society-to-publish-new-guide-to-the-science-of-climate-change/

You say that The Royal Society (or any institution in academia for that matter) acknowledges

>> that there is no reliable scientific data to support global warming, that there is no link to carbon emissions <<

Is that spin, a lie, or your own deliberate distortion of the truth? If none of the above, can you clarify by providing a link to where this has been acknowledged.

We ALL know science has been hijacked by politics, where have you been? No need to answer, this power point presentation puts the politics of 'denial' into perspective:

http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/

As to the "science is settled" crap - you know as well as any science undergraduate that science is never settled. It's spindoctors like yourself that have taken that statement out of context and spun it for their own agenda.

Perhaps media shock-jocks and the 'denialosphere' are spinning this?

http://royalsociety.org/Climate-Change/

An extensive rail system once mooted by both Liberal and Labor governments has benefits for better urban planning not only carbon emission reduction. The latest Budget provides money for upgrades to some rail networks but national rail network is off the drawing board.

If we want to reduce congestion and burgeoning growth in our larger cities, a national rail system (freight and passenger) including a speed train network would benefit decentralisation projects and boost services to regional areas. Business may be incentivised to move to smaller cities if transport issues were resolved.

It will also benefit the agricultural sector and provide faster access to ports.

What happened to these best laid plans. What a better nation building project this would have been instead of school halls and faulty insulation.

This author has a Carbon footprint the size of a small country while she berates the world for excessive air travel. Geez give us a break.
Similarly, Kev took 114 people on a plane with him to Copenhagen because he cares so passionately about his carbon footprint.

I don't get it. She suddenly becomes aware of her massive carbon footprint (in 2010!) and then begins preaching to everyone else to stay home. Its such a Greenie thing to do to justify your own excessive behaviour while berating Mr and Mrs Average.

At COP-15 the IPCC actually proposed that air travel be excluded from a country's Carbon emissions calculations because it was "too hard to calculate" What a laugh! (it was actually because they feared travel restrictions would interfere with the UNs hundreds of sub-organisations and committees and their extensive international flight schedules!)

The fact is that the UN itself is one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions through its extensive use of air travel. This means it will make no effort to restrict participants using travel to Cancun by air. I bet she's there too. That's how Greenies operate. Make everyone else feel guilty and justify your own apparent 'sins' as necessary for the good of mankind.

qanda, I did say clearly “The Times”. Instead you went of “link hunting” to avoid having to face more reality.

When are you going to start reading and comprehending posts? When are you going to start responding to issues in the debate? When are you going to challenge the comments from Phil Jones? When are you going to look the AGW debate in the eye and admit you have been “had”, when are you going to get angry with those who conned you?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7139407.ece

spindoctor, spin it all you like. The fact remains, you clearly said;

>> The Royal Society (who) recently made this statement in The Times;

“Britain’s premier scientific institution is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by 43 members who question mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures”. <<

The Royal Society did NOT make THAT statement in the Times - as your link clearly shows.

As to your inferred derision about me "link hunting to avoid facing reality".

Some would call it "fact checking", or going to the primary source. You know - the thing that real scientists and sceptics do. Real journalists do it as well, but pseudo-sceptics like yourself - apparently not.

Indeed, it's people with blinkers on and hands clasped tightly to their ears, that twist, spin and distort the facts. Some spindoctor, even make up their own "facts" ... make up their own reality - as you demonstrate time and time again.

Btw, I am not surprised you won't comment on Professor Abraham's presentation telling it like it is, the reality is too confronting for you.

qanda, It said: (The Royal Society) “Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect”. Professor Phil Jones declared “there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995”

If you don’t like what they said take it up with the Royal Society and Phil Jones. Your last two posts go round and round the topics but you won’t pick them up. When you’ve finished playing semantic silly burgers, you can start addressing the issues or refute what their “eminences” have said.

Your call.

Ah, I see spindoctor - you can't admit to misquoting The Royal Society.

No spindoctor, I do not have a problem with "Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect".

See my comment, last paragraph http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10494#172294

It's what you said (and continue to say) that is a problem.

For example, in your link:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7139407.ece

no mention is made whatsoever of;

>> Professor Phil Jones declared “there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995” <<

You are just changing goal posts, again.

Besides, this has been addressed ad nauseam in previous threads. I know you just don't understand but really, it is not that difficult, spindoctor.

Apologies everyone, OT I know.

_______

Just to be clear spindoctor:

You falsely attribute something you yourself assert, to the Royal Society.

Then you ‘lift’ a sentence from a Times’ journalist and misrepresent what The Royal Society did (and did not) say – plain and simple.

I gave you the links to what The Royal Society actually did say – in entirety. Here it is again:

http://royalsociety.org/Climate-Change/

Note this paragraph:

“There is a wide variety of views across the Fellowship on any active area of science, not just climate science, and this diversity is an essential component of the testing that scientific knowledge must always undergo. Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect – there is always room for new observations, theories, measurements, etc. However, the existence of some uncertainty does not mean that scientific results have no significance or consequences, or should not be acted upon. The enormous beneficial impact of science over the last 350 years is testament to the success of this balancing of uncertainty with action in the application of science.”

Putting your one ‘lifted’ sentence in context:

“The existence of some uncertainty does not mean that scientific results have no significance or consequences, or should not be acted upon.”

Following your logic (I use the term lightly), you and your pseudo-sceptic brethren want 100% absolute scientific proof before you will take action on anything, global warming for example.

It's great to see more and more articles on this topic. I've been passionate about flightless travel for several years and recently set up a website called http://www.flightlesstravel.com. Our aim is simple - to try and help people share their own travel experiences and hopefully encourage others to travel overland and sea! Hope this does not come across as spam, just want to spread the word on my website and hopefully be part of the solution to reducing air travel!