Jeremy, seriously, you think the greens are putting this up, with all the effort to exclude an debate or any other process coming out except the one they dictate, without any intention to then use that to justify immediate carbon taxes.

that's either the most breathtaking naivety or the most slippery spin (expected from the greens of course) I've seen on olo for some time.

You think the greens are actually putting up something where a conclusion may not be what they want .. dear god, that's something I'd expect a child to swallow, but not an adult - I understand now why the greens have a following.

As Dan Denning points out, the Greens think they are always right. What better way to practise this in Parliament, than to appoint like-minded pledged-to-the-outcome members to a committee such that the committee's outcome is guaranteed. That is the Greens' idea, or should I say ideology, of democracy.

Unfortunately, the Greens are not the only ones with that idea. One has to look no further than the IPCC, which adopted the same system of working -- ignore, or better still exclude , those experts who have an opposing view. Look at the damage that the IPCC has done by pedalling the assertion of anthropogenic global warming as science. The IPCC went so close to seducing national governments into agreeing to subject themselves to the mercy of an ill-informed immoral environmentalist world order

Yes, it's like fly fishing, throw the bait on the water, & the loonies, rather than fish, come roaring to the top.

You're right KenH, the ANU has the best academics money can buy. It would be a comedy, if it weren't so serious, watching them all dance to the required tune.

What I really would like to know is how/why all of these people who are so committed to some form of carbon tax know that man's emissions of CO2 are causing climate change?

So far as I can see, there is no proof at all. No evidence. All we have are models that assume positive feedbacks that deliver the scary warming projections. When asked for support for these feedback assumptions, the line goes dead. There is no answer. There is no evidence.

Please, can someone provide EVIDENCE and PROOF that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing global warming.

By the way, I am not interested in the basic physics that suggest around 1 deg C warming for a doubling of CO2 (if it happens). No sceptic I know challenges that. The key issue is the feedbacks, for which the evidence I have seen is for neutral or negative feedbacks.

A parliamentary committee with a brief to discuss putting a price on carbon, whilst excluding those who disagree with the basic proposition, is no different to the IPCC brief into man-made climate change, which excludes or ignores all those who disagree with the basic proposition.

And as for these supposed citizen's assemblies. I participated in a three day exercise where a "representative" group of citizens were tested on their attitudes to Climate Change, and their willingness to spend money to fix it.

They were then pummelled with what can only be called alarmist propaganda from "scientists", clearly designed to increase the level of alarm among the citizens present. The question sessions were very tightly controlled so that the few sceptics present could not challenge the 'science' presented, even though it was very shaky, and mutually contradictory between different presenters.

It was very clear to me that this was an exercise in manipulating opinion of the "citizen's" assembly.

Comparisons with a Jury process are not valid. In a court, both the prosecution and the defence have the opportunity to make their case. Searching cross examination is encourage. A Jury will only make its decision when it has heard all the evidence from both sides.