Carbon is one of the commonest elements. There is already a price for carbon in all our coal, steel, trucking, manufacturing, service industries, and in all our goods and services.

Let's at least be honest in our use of terms. The subject of policy debate is a carbon *tax*. And trying to re-jig production by imposing a tax on carbon is not a market-based solution, it's a national socialism central-planning based solution. What we've got now is a market based solution and that's exactly what the fascists don't like!

But it just isn't true. Carbon is basically harmless,let alone the building block of life as we know it. And now there are some very eminent physicists (including Nobel Prize winners) saying the same thing.

http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/07/eminent-physicists-skeptical-of-agw.html

In a similar post yesterday I made a plea for an objective analysis of the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming. To-day there is a report in the media that The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) in conjunction with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association compiled a report claiming that we are overheating.
I downloaded a critic of the BOM surface temperature record and a couple of quotes show that the BOM methodology may not stand up to critical scrutiny. The following reference is some 98 pages long.
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

“In a commendable effort to improve the state of the data, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has created the Australian High-Quality Climate Site Network. However, the effect of doing so has been to introduce into the temperature record a warming bias of over 40%. And their climate analyses on which this is based appear to increase this even further to around 66%.”

“This study shows a number of problems with the Australian High Quality Temperature Sites network, on which the official temperature analyses are based. Problems with the High Quality data include:
• It has been subjectively and manually adjusted.
• The methodology used is not uniformly followed, or else is not as described.
• Urban sites, sites with poor comparative data, and sites with short records have been included.
• Large quantities of data are not available, and have been filled in with estimates.
• The adjustments are not equally positive and negative, and have produced a major impact on the Australian temperature record.
• The adjustments produce a trend in mean temperatures that is roughly a quarter of a degree Celsius greater than the raw data does.
• The warming bias in the temperature trend is over 40%, and in the anomaly trend is 50%.
• The trend published by BOM is 66.67% greater than that of the raw data.”

Atman
You state:

"But it just isn't true. Carbon is basically harmless,let alone the building block of life as we know it. And now there are some very eminent physicists (including Nobel Prize winners) saying the same thing.http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/07/eminent-physicists-skeptical-of-agw.html"

Although I don't doubt the quotes by the 7 eminent scientists, I do note that 4 of them are dead- Edward Teller died aged 95 in 2003, Frederick Seitz died aged 96 in 2008, Robert Jastrow died aged 83 in 2008, William Nierenberg died aged 81 in 2000.

Freeman Dyson is alive aged 87, Ivar Giaever is alive 81, Robert Laughlin is 59.

I also note that although they are or were physicists, none of them researched climatology.

Although age is not necessarily a barrier to clear and deep thinking, I suspect that death is.

And speaking of death and carbon dioxide- try breathing it by itself. You will join the ranks of the aforementioned deceased gentlemen within several minutes.

There is no need to put a price on carbon.All we need to do is to reward solar energy users via tax incentives,rather than punishing carbon users.There is no proof of AGW caused by CO2.The science is not settled.

As I've posted recently on OLO; 90,000 of the world ships produces 260 times more sulphur pollution than do 760 million cars on the planet.The shipping industry uses the rubbish oil left over by the oil refinery process.It is very high in toxic pollutants.Why is there not a tax also on sulphur dioxide,one of the most toxic gases on the planet? Well the Global corporates cannot have big profits without cheap transport.We have all these goods moving around the planet creating billions of tonnes of CO2 and SO2,when they can be produced at home with far less pollution.

Is there a disconnect here with logic and reality?

The shipping industry is all about free trade without confronting the real perpetrators of pollution? There is an agenda here that has very little to do with the environment.They want tax on carbon, the basis of life,you breathe out CO2,animals & humans fart methane CH4.Tax carbon and you can tax life and the basis of our present energy.

When they have their carbon tax enslavement in place,they then create a derivative share market that sucks the very essence of productivity from the tax payer.It will mean more economic slavery.

John, you list a whole lot of ominous things that are likely to happen this century if CO2 emissions are not brought under control.

This list SHOULD be well and truly sufficient to galvanise national populations and their governments into strong action. Alas, it isn’t.

But wait…. there IS another motivation that should definitely lead to strong action……

This is the consequences of the rising price of oil. Western cultures are so dependent on oil and the price of the stuff is so critical to their economic functionality that MAJOR upheavals will occur if the price rises significantly.

And the likelihood of this is very high, in the very near future.

Massive economic corruption and hence civil corruption could very easily result, to the extent of widespread unemployment, severed supply lines for essential goods and breakdown in law and order. Societies like ours are very precariously positioned and could basically collapse if the price of oil rose sharply to a considerably higher level.

So, what should we do? We should, as a matter of great urgency, relieve ourselves of our dependence on oil.

Now, if our government in Australia, and others around the world, would just strive to sell this concept with great urgency, we would have a motivation that is much more tangible and significant than the current one, in terms of dealing with fossil fuel usage and CO2 emissions.

We’d bypass the constant wrangling about whether AGW is real or not and step straight into a scenario where there would surely be a much greater level of agreement and willingness to act.

We need to address the imperative to develop a sustainable society and economy that is not critically dependent on oil. THIS is the all-important thing. Climate change is very secondary.

If we addressed this primary objective in a meaningful manner, we’d definitely be much more successful in addressing climate change than if we addressed it in isolation.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3836