"We do NOT have to finance renewable energy projects with savings or taxes. We can finance them with interest free credit paid off over the lifetime of the asset."

It's like saying "We do NOT need to finance renewable energy in ways that cost more natural resources. We can just use machines of perpetual motion, powered by magic pudding."

This displays the positively infantile level of thought running through the entire argument for policy action on global warming

Low percentages of something does not signify its importance to a things form. Saying that small increases in atmospheric CO2 shouldn’t matter is kind of like saying that your body won’t be affected by a 10% increase in salt content in your blood. Or one can use DNA to show that even a 1% change can make a markedly different result – chimps DNA is are about 1% different to humans, but if that were to be 2% difference, the chimp would no longer be a chimp. It’s the same with the atmosphere.

Still, I agree. An ETS is not the way to go. An ETS concentrating on carbon would certainly be a placebo. Any such system needs to cover all forms of business generated pollution.

A PTS (pollution trading scheme) 20 years down the track will be fine, once we have found out what pollution is really not avoidable.

Any money governments spend should go straight into large scale energy farms NEVER into household products – to date that’s where the biggest waste of taxpayer funding has gone. You can tell there is some skulduggery going on simply due to the sort of propaganda governments use with things like Solar Panel grants.

Groan, the Economic Luddites strike back!

This is a poor argument on so many grounds it defies reason.

Curmudgeon, Raycom, Peter Hume 90%+ of your costs of renewable energy are in finance charges of taxation, repayments, interest and profits or what I call TRIP costs. The other 10% is in repairs, operations and ongoing maintenance. The capital cost to build a wind farm to produce the equivalent of 1 kw continuously is of the order of $6,000. Spread over 20 years that is repayments of 3.4 cents per kwh. The average price of energy at the gate of a coal fired power station is currently about 6 cents per kwh. The maintenance costs of a windfarm is about 1 cent per kwh. This means each kwh will produce a profit of 1.6 cents.

The interest cost on $6,000 is 4.7 cents per kwh at 7%. Remove this imposition of 4.7 cents per kwh and renewables are very very profitable at existing energy prices. Geothermal capital costs are today $4,000 per continuous kw and expected to drop rapidly.

Interest free credit for infrastructure is economically sensible and used to be the way we built things. Read the history of the Commonwealth Bank and see how it helped build Australia in the years between 1907 and the mid 1920's. We can do the same today.

Interestingly, the title of this article is "The moral debate of our time", so all those who argue the properties of CO2, true or false, simply miss the point by miles, for the underlying issue is moral, not scientific.

The aim of [good-]scientists is to seek the truth. The aim of politicians is to control, to dictate, to enforce their will on people, from which they derive the greatest pleasure. For most politicians, climate-change was never a source of worry, but rather a golden opportunity to justify more control. They count their blessings for this sudden fortune and for being able to hide behind "the scientists said".

Should the choice be between living under dictatorship or the sea rising by a few metres (and all the other geographical implications), there is no doubt in my mind that it is better to be punished in the hands of God/Nature than in the hands of men.

However, neither is necessary: before the government took over the issue of climate-change, people and households already took so many energy-saving measures, even painful ones, voluntarily and with enthusiasm. It is in our nature to care and we are willing to go a long way to help the environment - so long as it is by choice, so long as we have a chance to express our inherent goodness. Once the government takes over, once it is compulsary, once we are the denied the choice to show that we care for the planet, then why bother? then it is no longer OUR planet, but THEIR planet, in which case let it go to hell. We would then sit and watch with satisfaction how this world drowns along with its politicians.

Fickle Pickle - actually the main costs of a wind farm is in depreciation which is tax deductable now that I think about it, so its depreciation plus interest on the capital plus operating costs. The green case is that wind farms are "only" 50 per cent more costly than conventional but there is evidence from overseas that its three times more expensive.. see Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German Experience, ( http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/economic-impacts-from-the-promotion-of-renewable-energies-the-german-experience/
And that does not seem to count the cost of additional generator reserves required and having to remake the entire network to accommodate wind.
So even if you somehow shift the cost of capital elsewhere, or halve it by waiving tax on the income received by the lender (I guess that's what you're talking about when mention taxation) you are still left with a substantial cost burden indeed.
If you want wind farms they have to be heavioy subsidised indeed, or favoured by mandatory targets, and we will have to put up with the subsequent job losses due to the extra burden on the economy.
Trying to pretend that the costs are light or can be waved away with a change in the tax laws is patently ridiculous..