Geoff, I have to agree; we have prospective Prime Ministers who are suited to running the world's coal mine and are more influenced by behind closed doors lobbying than by either public concerns or scientific ones for our nation and world's long term prosperity. What's most disturbing to me is that to get policy that reflects the real science on climate we have to go to a fringe party. From mainstream politics we've had 2 full decades of delay and still our future energy demands are apparently to be met by more coal fired power stations that won't have carbon capture, won't be paying any carbon price towards funding the necessary transition to low emissions technology and won't be built with any serious intention of them closing down before the end of their multidecade working life, far beyond when emissions targets suitable for avoiding catastrophic climate change are passed. Any low emissions projects offered as solutions by Labor or LibNats are to be greenwash ones for show, tinkering on the edges of an energy grid primarily based on technologies that fail to address emissions reductions in any meaningful way.

[Deleted for abuse].

Where has the author and some of the posters been the past few years? Hasn't legislation been passed mandating that 20 per cent of the nation's power has to come from renewable sources by 2020? Wasn't this legislation, which requires a massive overhaul of the network and multi-billions of dollars worth of investment, all to be paid for by consumers, passed with virtually no opposition or did I miss something? The story is even more bizarre due to recent changes so that small scale domestic systems can make up some of the 20 per cent.
Instead the author has chosen to concentrate on the CPRS which had all sorts of problems including a known, major design flaw - it allowed emitters to buy carbon credits from overseas.
Also, as has been pointed out many times, but apparently missed by the author in his exentive researchers, the CPRS was dumped because the electorate at large realised that they would have to pay for it. The major parties run focus groups all the time, and the CPRS got bad vibes in Labor Party focus groups, hence the dumping. Big energy obviously had nothing to do with it. This is well recognised by anyone who has bothered to read newsapeprs in recent months.
The author is entitled to his predjudices but why inflict them on us, particularly as they are so obviously contrary to what is know to be happening?

Hasbeen,

Truer words were never written. I don't know why you call yourself 'Hasbeen'. You have a lot of sense left in you.

Dear Geoff, it really is time this blame game stopped. The real obstacle to AGW action is the “AGW movement”.

The main three groups are the Politicians, the public and the “AGW movement”.

The AGW movement comprises mostly the UN’s IPCC, CRU, London Met Office, Pen. State University’s Michael Mann, Some NGO’s, many advocacy scientists, some in the intelligencia/academia and some in the compliant media.

The media is “compliant” because it failed to inform the public. The reason for this is that journalists no longer disseminate, analyze, interrogate and present news and current affairs, they peddle opinion. Many now realize that they don’t have the intellectual horsepower to formulate their own opinion, or they are just lazy. So they just go with the flow and have become the propaganda organ for the “movement”.

This advocacy block has, for the past 15 or 20 years, built up a head of steam within the public domain, which I agree, is still strong enough to provide a political mandate for action.

You must ask yourself this. If you’re right and the science is settled, we have scientific consensus, and the official bodies are so “exonerated”, why is this debate so contentious and divisive?

The answer is that there is a body of scientific opinion that has so far been excluded from your science, by your movement. There are many in the public domain that remains unhappy about this situation and your movement has failed to address it.

The advocacy block survives for only one reason, and it isn’t science, its political sponsorship.

The movement has “wedged” politicians. They depend upon electoral support and are threatened by the movements’ head of steam within the public domain. This is why politicians are maintaining their “sponsorship”, but only by talking the talk.

By denying all scientists getting together with all available research and all opinions, there will be no scientific conclusion which the public can trust. The movement of course will never let this happen because you well know it isn’t science, its advocacy.

Continued;

Continued;

The politicians know it is advocacy and not science, but they have a problem as we have already seen in Australia; there is still wide public support for action. There is clearly a lag between political pragmatism and public opinion.

The sting is the surveys that show that of the majority of the public support it, even more say they do not understand it and want more information.

This tells Politicians that no legislation will go through unless the public gets to scrutinize the science, or they can bypass that scrutiny. (The Citizens Assembly is a bypass mechanism).

So Politicians will maintain a sponsorship “stance” whilst ever the polls indicate strong support for action but put on hold many major new policy initiatives. The movement of course, must at all costs keep pressure on their political sponsorship. “What do we want? Action! When do we want it? Now!”

We have also seen a sharp increase in the urgency and doom from advocacy science; this is because it believes there is still hope of getting it through on the nod, without having to explain to the public.

The movement will do anything and everything to prevent any reconciliation between dissenting scientific opinions. Because you know “your” advocacy science will not survive this.

Over time the current public mandate for action will decay, at which point the politicians will no longer be wedged and your sponsorship will by withdrawn.

Geoff, in Australia we have just seen two Liberal Leaders chopped because they promoted action. Yet incredibly, we have seen Mr. Rudd get chopped, partially for shelving action and our current PM take a flogging for delaying action. What is it about these huge contradictions you are not getting?

The movement has wedged and is holding our politicians to ransom, you are asking our politicians to drink from the poisoned chalice and they are not going to do it because the public will now demand explanations to justify policy.

Your scientific community must embrace official dialogue with the contrary science.