Apparently Turnbull has been kept out because he was inclined to believe in Rudd's early message of global warming.

Once again a message is necessary that modern man associated with the capabilities of massive modern motorisation gives proof that the Industrial Revolution portended what many of us oldies are concerned about now that our great great grandkids will join the young madcaps, turning their minds away from the future and enjoying themselves while there is time.

Ah what a feeble attempt to divert the electorate away from what matters....

the Liberals were in power for a decade and left office with an economy in healthy and whole

The Labor party has raped the economy, wasting their inherited the budget surplus in an orgy of dimulous, insulation and BER excesses

and THAT IS WHAT MATTERS --

Liberal "Economic Prudence" versus Labor "Economic Incompetence"

Regarding "Malcolm Turnbull would be advised to not let down his guard. One suspects he may need to invest in some garlic, holy water and a silver stake if he ever wants to become the leader of the Liberal Party again."

that advise should have been given to Rudd before he copped the silver bullet from Gizzards.

as for suggesting the Liberal party is as factionally riddled as the labor mob...

never has been, never will be

the Liberal party does represent a "broad church", where not everyone will hold the same view of everything

but that said, the Liberal Party has nothing to compare to the dog-eat-dog, rabidity of the Labor factions.

Two usages raised my eyebrows. One is the word 'believer' with respect to anthropogenic global warming' (AGW) - 'human-induced climate change'. This ought to be a matter for argument and evidence, not for belief — though plainly that AGW exists is a matter of passionate belief for many — including, according to the author, Malcolm Turnbull.

The second is the notion of 'climate change' itself. The world's climate does change, and has changed, and will change, for reasons that have nothing to do with human activity. It is possible that human activities contribute to such change at a global level, but that is a matter for argument and evidence, and the arguments and evidence for such a contribution are not powerful at all.

The lack of clarity here, and the use of such terms as 'carbon footprint' as though they have real meaning, bedevil so much of the discussion of this area.

The latest evidence that the climate is warming is very strong.
The evidence that CO2 is a 'greenhouse gas' is unarguable. It is very likely that variations in the solar cycle contribute to climate .
But the current sun cycle is actually cooling rather than warming.
The Biosphere is effectively a closed system. The increased levels of CO2 in the biosphere are the result of the digging up and burning of Fossil Carbon- carbon that has been out of the system for 100s of Millions of years.
Just how worrying all this should be is a fair Question. But-If the frequency of massive crop failures in China , on the Steppes or on the American mid west grain bowls was to change from being very rare to say a one in ten year event the effects could be not so good.

On passive smoking- New Scientist editorialized (about a year ago)
that evidence for long term harm caused by passive smoking in the outdoors was exaggerated , it had with little scientific basis. New Scientist warned that making very questionable claims for a good cause was likely to back fire.

The more extreme claims about the greenhouse are based on calculations about methane, in particular fossil methane in the arctic , Methane levels are not so far, rising.
If they did it would be all over red rover for us.
On balance negative feed back loops such as starvation , social chaos and war will provably reduce human economic activity enough to prevent a runaway positive feed back loop happening.

for pedestrian:

the planet is warming... (1) Over what period? (it hasn't warmed since 1998, and the long-term trend in the Holocene is down, not up. (2) What is the evidence that x% of the warming, whatever it is, is due to human activity?

Don't quite get what you mean by what matters, Stern.

Certainly what matters with too many success stories, is making personal fortunes only to be used in raping the earth rather than tending it.

Most old Aussie farmers have learnt about when they over-cleared the fertile gullies before they turned salt, only left to remember the smell of the little rainbow creepers in the spring-time with mallee hens and mouse-like kangaroos for company.

Fortunes, however, so much hungered for in today's world are mostly only made from ruining such beauty with quarry economies, such investors not daring to believe that such money-making might run out.

Yes, we owe so much to this world, but we could well ask in what way could we pay this amazing wonderful world back?

bushbred "Certainly what matters with too many success stories, is making personal fortunes only to be used in raping the earth rather than tending it"

Who appointed you an authority to judge the actions of others?

"Fortunes, however, so much hungered for in today's world are mostly only made from ruining such beauty with quarry economies, such investors not daring to believe that such money-making might run out."

Yes, lithium is a resource... darn lucky our forefathers did not have a use for it... ah well.. at least there is still a bit of lapis lazuli left too.

Of course, the smart money is in recycling these days....Smorgens seem to be surviving off "scraps"

Mr Aitkin
The most recent study reported on this week ,and thus very post climate gate (i.e very meticulous in methodology) is that the climate is warming.
The long term oscillation between warmer /wetter and cooler/dry periods is real enough and might to some degree ameliorate the effects of increased CO2.
We do seem to be at the end of a few thousand years of a relatively warm and wet period in Australia's history. Whilst Australia 20 thousand years ago was mostly desert it was also cold/dry -there were glaciers in the Australian alps.

Personally I doubt that effective action is possible , and thus we perhaps should be building 'life boats'. Food supplies in a world as populous as is projected could become a very real problem even if the effects are relatively mild.
As to percentages I would have to look that up- I have no claim to be an 'data base'.

“Fatefully, as it would turn out, Minchin does not believe in human induced climate change.”

If that is supposed to mean that Minchin has been proved wrong, it doesn’t work; the global warming hysterics haven’t managed to prove that climate-change is human induced – they just say it is.

I am very sorry that Minchin is leaving politics; there are far too few genuine conservatives like him in the Liberal party to provide a healthy alternative to the ALP/union Red Flag. I am even sorrier that Turnbull changed his mind and is staying on: the man is in the wrong party, as shown by his approval of Rudd’s silly sorry business, and his total sell-out on the Rudd carbon tax that now has been dropped by Rudd’s successor. Getting kicked out by one vote has the same effect as being unanimously dumped, and the Liberals now have a leader with some backbone – something they didn’t have with Turnbull, and would not have had with the other weak wet who thought he would get the job eventually, Joe Hockey.

David Donovan needs to get a hobby or something to fill in his time. It’s hard to know why he would write 3 pages commentating on a totally uninteresting fight between two politicians; unless, of course, he is getting in on the very tail end of the pathetic attempts by so many commentators to excuse the Gillard/Union coup against Rudd by saying “the others (the Liberals) do it too, nah nah na nah nah!”

Bumph like this is taking our minds off what we should really contemplating - the horrendous situation we will face over the next 3 years if Liberal or Labor voters give their second preferences to the Greens. Irrespective of who forms a government, they will be stymied by the Greens if they get the balance of power in the Senate. And, given that many voters are now talking about venting their rage against both major parties, we could be in for some nasty suprises in the lower house as well.

Pedestrian,

"The most recent study reported on this week...", eh? All of the old reports said the same thing, and the actual climatic events proved them wrong.

Food supplies are already a problem, but not because of climate change. There are simply too many people on the planet.

And, in Australia, we have people talking about climate change, as you are, but they are still plumping for larger populations.

Climate change is the least of our worries. Population increase is the 'big one' that will see huge numbers of people starving to death well before this century is over.

Leigh -
It Is supposed to be a Liberal/conservative party ; Nick was too clever by half. Whilst the leadership of the Greens are truly awful airheads; Conrads phrase: 'the exasperated vanity of ignorance' sums them up perfectly.
A lot of the growth in the green vote is coming from disaffected liberals.
If John Howard had won the last election we would by now have a carbon scheme in place.

Mr Atkin - 'go for it'. The actual events don't, to my eye, look too promising, time will tell.

Humans are often little more than very clever and very destructive monkeys

Stern, could say that going on ninety, I am old enough to figure out that like Leigh, you are among the best or worst of the right-wing smart arses.

Might pay you both to be more middle-road, meaning you both could do with a good study of world history right up to the present date.

from BB, Buntine.

Oh stern you are a piece of fascist work! fuehrer Howard left a surplus because, thanks to China, he pocketed what was left of the tax riches from mining after filling the pockets of the greedy middle class with handouts they didnt deserve or need.
He tried to screw the working men and women with Work Choices, deprived the Universities of funds and left hospitals and infrastructure out to dry.Oh yes he did spend on the Pacific Solution some $450 millions and $650 millions on the illegal escapade in Iraq.
Recall that though he stated he would go when the party asked him , he stubbonly refused after seeking counsel from Janet and the family.
The electorate showed you what they thought of the great Howard and his era and not only chucked out the party but his own electorate dumped him. Get over it stern, he was overall a failure not the god from the right you worship. That era is gone.

for pedestrian again:

My first question was about the time over which you think the earth is warming. This is a sensible and central question, because much depends on the period. The evidence is quite clear: no change much since 1998, warming from about 1975 to 1998, cooling from about 1950 to 1975, warming before that, cooling before that, and so on. The geological (ice-core) data over the time since humans started living in settled communities (about 10,000 years) is that the planet is slowly cooling.

There are many measures of all this, and reasonable people can disagree about the inference we should draw from this or that data set. But it is very hard indeed to show either that the planet is warming in an unprecedented way, or that human activity is responsible for whatever has been happening in the last fifty years.

Minchin was the bagman for the Libs - arranging shady sponsorship deals.

My favorite was the one with Big Tobacco and as a sign of his solidarity he used to insist that passive smoking was "harmless" on his personal web site.

No doubt the Coal industry is getting the same deal with his Climate Change views.

Some trivia for Stern -

When it comes to factions, the Libs also have their "Wets" and "Dries" as well as lots of smaller sub-groups plus their own (faceless) power brokers. It's just that theirs are kept away from the public gaze.

The last time a bunch of angry "Wets" got together, they split off and became the Australian Democrats. Otherwise they're busy knifing each other in the back and changing leaders too.

When Howard was in his first 2 terms, he was safe because Costello and Reith were kept busy eyeing each other off for the top job.

When Reith quit, Howard then deliberately stacked his cabinet with Abbott supporters, much to the annoyance of Costello.

Not so warm and cuddly after all?

In the end, the only real difference between Parties and how they operate - like Religions - is marketing.

Only 12 more sleeps until Turnbull is leader of the Liberal party again people, get used to it, this whole Abbott charade is a sick joke on the gullible by the completely corrupted!

Bushbred “Stern, could say that going on ninety, I am old enough to figure out that like Leigh, you are among the best or worst of the right-wing smart arses.”

Well thanks for the advise ol’ timer but myself, having left the tender years of my fifties behind, am not inclined to stir to the views of someone who has not realised yet that
1 I do not sit in judgment over you and you do not sit in judgment over me.
2 as “smart arses” go, it is the right wing is where you are more likely to find them, than among left who err more to being “retards” and “dullards”, still needing a nanny to wipe their bums

Which reminds me of the great joke

Why are slip-on shoes more “egalitarian”?

So the leftwing politicians are not humiliated when their mummies come on the campaign trail to tie up the laces

Gazzaboy “Oh stern you are a piece of fascist work!”

Really gazzaboy – fascist eh?

Must admit my wife thinks I look good in a black shirt but “fascist” not really

As to your own dribbling inadequacies...

I suppose you wear regulation plaid and worn-out jeans, the uniform of the socialist bland, anti-individualism

But I thought the hardest thing for socialists was to find a leader – them all being so uniformly mediocre

but hey, dirty job, so just the like scum, something always manages to float to the top.

John Howard (Liberal) is the second longest serving prime minister of Australia
After Bob Menzies (Liberal)

Like you said the “Howard Era”

Well Kevin Rudd had his “moment”... so short it does not qualify as an “era” at all,
more like a momentary indiscretion, by the electorate and

Julia is not looking like an “era” either... more just a “flash in the pan”

Socialism... the politics of the expendable leader....
its power that the left is after

Howard lead this nation, Rudd and Gizzards just want to rule it.

And that, when you come done to it, is the real difference gazzaboy....

Liberal “Leadership” versus Socialist “Rule"

Stern,
You are not a "smart arse", you are a arrogant Moron, capital M.
You should concentrate on saying something meaningful, instead of dumping your rubbish wherever you feel like it.

If you cannot contribute to the discussion in a humane manner, then just shut your trap and piss off.

With no regards

Stan

Let's not forget that the glorious "Howard Golden Age" finished in a spectacular failure, with a proverbial wooden stake driven into the lying rodent's electoral heart.

stan-nesta "You are not a "smart arse", you are a arrogant Moron, capital M.
You should concentrate on saying something meaningful, instead of dumping your rubbish wherever you feel like it."

thankyou for your myopic observations stan, I am sure such "eloquence" and command of English reflects more on you than on me.

I am challenged to find anything "meaningful" in what you write..

and can only conclude yours must be one of those

"do as I say, not as I do" posts

Stan, I would point out that I am "dumping my rubbish" in the same place you are, although I would observe, mine is a better 'class' of rubbish than yours.

But I am sure you know that already.

Might I suggest you have a future, writing the funny asides for funeral directors to regale their captured audiences with.

"....shut your trap and piss off."

Ah, rhetoric coming from the same gutter as the originating mind which has never risen above it.

I am brimming with anticipation, to your next insightful contribution to the advancement of political debate, in particular and human evolution in general.

regarding "with no regards",

Oh, now I am mortified by such cruelty and I thought we were getting on so well,

See, I cry tears of blood from the wound...

a poster who does not regard me....

I must add such cutting repartee to my list of "venal slights and unquotable quotes from beyond the rubbish tip".

Do have a nice day... and I do suggest - try sniffing the roses (instead of the garbage tips).

We must do this again sometime

rache "Let's not forget that the glorious "Howard Golden Age" finished in a spectacular failure, with a proverbial wooden stake driven into the lying rodent's electoral heart."

Lets us not forget, John Howard won previous elections which saw him remain Prime Minsiter for 10 years....

But poor old Kevin was shafted (by hiw own side) before he got to try to retain the PM'ship even once

one wonders the security of tenure which Julia has on the "throne of power"