John, the people of Australia recently had an opportunity to express their feelings on AGW .. and I'm not sure if you noticed, did NOT overwhelmingly vote in the Greens in a landslide of all landslides.

They got 11% of the overall vote, that's not a signal that many people care about AGW - it certainly is not top of mind when voting as much as some people want to talk it up - it just no longer matters.

Many voted Green, not for AGW reasons, but because they were protest voting against the ALP and coalition.

The world is not ending, and the MAJORITY of Australians believe this, you need to accept that and not continue to believe people can be beaten verbally until they agree - they just don't agree with you and that's that.

"If government wants to see appropriate legislation passed by Parliament it should start again from scratch." if the ALP wanted to do this, they would have addressed it more strongly in their election pitch - the best they did was to defer to a panel of people who would be "educated" until they agreed, then it would be put out to the other side of 2013 for a decision to implement .. hardly a commitment is it.

Basically, the ALP do not believe it matters to their position.

get over it.

John, despite the efforts of people like you, and the lies told by the IPCC, in support of the greatest attempted fraud in history, the majority of Australians do not regard global warming as an important issue.

Unfortunately, they are still confused by the nonsense put out by the alarmists, and misrepresentations by people like yourself, that there is any scientific basis for the assertion that human emissions play any measureable part in global warming.

There is peer reviewed science which shows that warming is caused by natural cycles.

There is no scientific study which shows any input, to global warming, by human emissions.

The IPCC have put out an unscientific opinion that it is “very likely”. This is backed by five unconflicted scientists. It used to be 7, but two withdrew their backing. There are 55 conflicted scientists who back this opinion, all with some connection to the IPCC.

There are over 31,000 scientists who have signed a petition asking that no action be taken until a scientific basis is established.

I have never seen a constructive criticism of Ian Plimer’s book, which sets out clearly why the global warming scam has no scientific base.

Face proven facts, please, John.

If you have any scientific basis for your assertions, let us have it. The IPCC do not know of it, or they would not have to resort to an opinion which has no scientific base at all.

John - the electorate has spoken and they were far from overwhelmingly in favour of the ETS or any strong action on curtailing carbon. Strong policies are not going to come out of a hung Parliament.

As for the scientific opposition to greenhouse doctrine you cite, in fact they are not the leading dissenters. they are just the most vocal recently seen in Aus.
I quote from my recently published book: "The more prominent critics of the IPCC line include Richard Lindzen, a professor of Meteorology at Massachusetts in the US; William Gray, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Colorado State University; and Roger Pielke Jr, a professor in the environmental studies program at the University of Colorado. Roy W. Spencer, principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a formerly a senior scientist for climate studies at NASA recently wrote a book Climate Confusion (Encounter Books, 2008; available on Amazon.)
In Australia prominent critics include Stewart Franks, an associate professor at the University of Newcastle school of engineering specialising in the environment; David Evans who helped build the carbon accounting models for the Australian government to track carbon in plants, debris, solids and agricultural products; and William Kininmonth, former head of the National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology, and a former Australian delegate to the World Meteorological Organisation’s Commission for Climatology. Garth W. Paltridge, an atmospheric physicist and former director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies, among other posts, has also written a book The Climate Caper (Connor Court, 2009). On the policy side, and cataloguing some bizarre behaviour on the part of environmental scientists a professor and head of the school of government at the University of Tasmania, Aynsley Kellow, has written Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science (Edward Elgar, 2007).

As you can see, its not nearly as straightforward as you would have us believe. This comparing of list of scientists is, in any case, almost entirely irrelevent.

Good summary John.

And not everyone here belongs to this nest of deniers who descend on everything that disagrees with their dying crusade.

Geoff, still backing AGW nonsense, and still no scientific basis for it?

You would let us know if you found any science which backs AGW, wouldn't you, Geoff?

You even let us know when the Climategate miscreants were able to have their mutually peer reviewed study published, purporting to refute the study showing that global warming is all attributable to natural causes.

It did not last long, and it was merely an attempt to divert us from the scientific explanation for global warming, which excludes any basis for AGW.

It was amusing to read the Climategate email which showed their anxiety to have their study published, and having to "tone down the rhetoric" to make it fit for publication, which they had been "trying to do".

You are two steps removed now, Geoff, from the objective of establishing any assertion of AGW.

1. Global warming is all accounted for without AGW.

2. There is not, and never has been, any scientific basis for assertion of AGW.

Good luck, Geoff, you really need it, since you have no merits.

There are question marks over the politics, economics and science of man-made climate change. Finally, there are question marks over the data used by the scientists and advocates of man-made climate change. Google "satellite-gate". US Government now admits faulty NOAA satellites have been grossly overestimating temperatures for a decade.

If the data was faulty, this would have lead to faulty science, which would have lead to a faulty economic analysis, which has apparently now contributed to a hung parliament. On the bright side, humanity may be saved from squandering further billions on a non-problem, which will free up billions to address real life problems.

The AGW case depends, inter alia, on there being recent global warming out of line with longer term trends (e.g. temperatures recovering from the Little Ice Age), being abnormal, and being inexplicable by any cause other than increased emissions of greenhouse gases by human activity; and on projections of future rises in temperature.

Al warmists often say that only climate scientists are qualified to comment on these issues. In fact, many of the issues are statistical, and the projections depend on economic modelling. Not only are the main protagonists (e.g. Mann, Jones etc) neither statisticians nor economic modellers, their own work has been shown to be incredibly sloppy - it wouldn't pass muster at the ABS or Productivity Commission - and they have not sought expert opinion on their techniques and results. Steve McIntyre has shown many statistical flaws, which are constantly evaded rather than being properly addressed, and the Cstles-Henderson critique demolished the economic modelling several years ago.

The global warming hypothesis depends critically on recent temperatures being abnormally high and rising rapidly by historical standards. This claim is based on statistical reconstruction of past temperatures from limited proxy data. US statisticians Blakeley McShane and Abraham Wyner, who have advised congressional inquiries in this matter, have recently noted that the climate scientists have rarely collaborated with professional statisticians, several of whom have challenged the validity of the climate modelling.

A new analysis by M&W casts serious doubt on the global warming models. They state that the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than random series generated independently of temperature. M&W use the climate groups’ own data (while making it clear that they think poorly of it), and state that “The major difference between our model and those of climate scientists … can be seen in the large width of our uncertainty bands (which are) much larger than those provided by climate scientists. In fact, our uncertainty bands are so wide that they envelop all of the other backcasts in the literature. (more)

(cont) “Given their ample width, it is difficult to say that recent warming is an extraordinary event compared to the last 1,000 years. … it is possible that it was as warm in the year 1200 AD as it is today.”

M&W conclude unequivocally that the evidence for the infamous “long-handled” hockey stick charts showing recent warming is lacking in the data. They state that “climate scientists have greatly underestimated the uncertainty of proxy-based reconstructions and hence have been overconfident in their models. … Natural climate variability is not well understood and is probably quite large. It is not clear that the proxies currently used to predict temperature are even predictive of it at the scale of several decades let alone over many centuries.”

It is hard to argue with the statisticians’ conclusion that “There still remains a considerable number of outstanding questions that can only be answered with a free and open inquiry and a great deal of replication.”

[Blakeley B McShane and Abraham J Wyner, “A statistical analysis of multiple temperature proxies: are reconstructions of surface temperatures over the last 1000 years reliable?” Submitted to the Annals of Applied Statistics. Accepted for publication, draft posted online 16/8/2010.]

Re the earlier work by Ian Castles (former Australian Statistician) and David Henderson (former OECD economics head), the IPCC' projections depend on modelling economic growth and then applying assumption on emissions intensity. Some of the results were bizarre, e.g. South Africa's income in 2100 being greater than world income in 1990. C&H showed that the techniques used are not accepted by national income modellers, and greatly exaggerated growth and emissions. At the time, I estimated that correcting the IPCC's main scenario would show temperature change by 2100 not significantly different from zero. The IPCC have stuck with this discredited work.

Until such issues are resolved, there are no grounds for costly counter-measures.

Who's in denial now, John?

The overwhelming public support for Tony Abbott's rejection of the "great big new tax on everything" last year and now the election result, are irrefutable evidence that nobody buys the CPRS/ETS/carbon tax crap any more. Nobody but the rump who wallow in cheap sentiment, that is.

But go ahead, tell us how a tax will "stop climate change".

You are also still pushing the pathetic line that you've read "scientists and sceptics" as though the appellations are mutually exclusive.

1. For years the IPCC has refused to validate the surface record. Now we know why - it has been buggered beyond repair by the "scientists" involved in Climate Gate and their toadies.

2. No causal relationship between human CO2 emissions and climate change has every been demonstrated.

3. Labor has never costed any of its massive tax proposals relating to climate change nor conducted a cost-benefit analysis or a regulatory impact assessment.

4. In practical terms, it is impossible to sustain modern cities without CO2 emissions from coal-fired electricity generation and road transport, which, from memory, together make up more than 50 per cent of all emissions. So where are you going to cut? And coal-fired power stations will be needed even if we continue to squander billions on fantasy renewable energy targets, wind farms and solar arrays, for the simple reason that wind farms and solar just don't work.

Then there's this little revelation by Lenore Taylor in he Sydney Morning Herald on 21 April 2010:

'THE federal government could provide ''no documentation'' on how it assessed the $4.45 billion ''clean energy initiative'' announced in last year's budget, according to an audit report detailing a litany of failures in both Howard and Rudd government greenhouse programs.

''There was no documentation held by the department relating to … advice on the costs and benefits of the proposal and the management of risks associated with implementing the program,'' the audit found.

And, by the way, emissions grew in every year of the Rudd/Gillard government.

Only idiots remain in the global warming cult now.

And to put the icing on the cake, the IPCC has just been criticised by its own tame review committee for sloppy work. Given the normal defensiveness and paranoia of the AGW community, this is comparable to Joe Hockey calling Tony Abbott 'a bit of a thug'. Maybe the review committee have decided they still want to have jobs in a few years' time when the public catches on to how much they have been misled. Read the NYT report at:

http://tinyurl.com/25xxe8p

"not everyone here belongs to this nest of deniers"

not yet .. but they all seem to be coming over this way .. where's that big landslide of AGW votes.

Those terrible evil deniers, should be stopped (!), their solitary unorganized efforts are somehow canceling out the concerted and well funded efforts of the government, the BOM, the CSIRO, the ABC (as well as the ALPBC, oh, same thing) the Fairfax press, 99% of the Australian media apart from what around 5 conservative journos .. all with no funding that's able to be proved beyond scurrilous innuendo.

We skeptics are most amused at all this ..

Start again from scratch?

Absolutely..but do the scratching around the places of Climate Science corruption, political and economic opportunism, graft and intrigue.

Look especially closely at what I consider the corrupt deceitful activities of the IPPC and Gore, Blood, Zoi, Strong and their ilk.

Don't forget the 'reds' also.. cloaked in green these days but still the old "Income re-distribution by force" .

John

You state "Cap and Trade is undoubtedly the most cost effective way of reducing CO2-e emissions "

Unfortunately, much as I would like to believe it, the evidence does not support that statement.

Please view http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2010/2977448.htm for the European experience of putting a price on carbon. This approach ONLY works and even then it is limited in its impact if the money raised from the price increase is invested directly into ways of reducing ghg.

Putting a price on carbon and spending it on renewables is politic suicide as it would be seen as "A great big tax".

Fortunately there is an alternative to encouraging investment in renewables and that is to reduce the cost of investment in renewables. This can be easily done by Rewarding those who consume the least amount of energy with interest free credit. This interest free credit can only be used on new investments to reduce greenhouse gases.

This does not cost the government anything, leaves the price of energy the same or lower and the only disadvantage is that it may cause an opportunity cost loss because we have invested in producing clean energy when we could have directed investment to some other area with greater benefit.

Dear John,
Sorry to have to tell you this but it matters not in the
least whether the IPCC has it right or the "deniers" have it right.
Oil consumption, and coal not far behind, will start depleting in the
next very few years.

When that starts, no one will give a damn about global warming.
Everyone will be worrying about being able to keep their job going and
whether the food supply will hold up.
We are in for a massive change. Some say it will be gradual and some
believe it will be catastrophic. Problem is the experts all agree that
each could be wrong. There is great uncertainty. The only certaintly
is that we are in for big changes and global warming will not be a
concern for anybody.