Rache, when Kevin Rudd and his counterparts overseas set the political response to AGW in motion they were reacting to a widespread public fear. If that fear had remained at 2007 levels they would have been hailed as saviours, Rudd would probably have still been PM, and they would have romped home in the 2010 election.

But fear needs to be fed, and despite the enormous sums lavished on compliant researchers by government bodies (approaching $US100 billion) they simply can't come up with enough conclusive evidence of AGW and its threat to keep the fear simmering at the same level. They are left with the choice of holding an increasingly daft and unpopular policy or abandoning it, losing their main point of difference to the Libs, and being ridiculed for inconsistency. (Most unfairly, of course -- like anyone else, governments SHOULD change their policies when the available facts change). So far they have decided to tough it out.

There's no conspiracy; just one group of people in government hoping to take advantage of public fear, another group of people in the media who know that fear sells papers and boost audience figures, and a third group of scientists who want to feed themselves and their families and work in nice conditions. Everyone benefits from the AGW scare, so why wouldn't they support it? Everyone except the public, that is.

It is interesting to see poster 'rache' attempt to tar this issue with the 'conspiracy theory' brush. I see the use of this tactic as a form of pre-emptive derailment of discussion of anomalies and inconsistencies that otherwise beg for resolution. Pre-ridiculing discussion, as it were.

The article presents in its first paragraph one such seeming anomaly. It reads:

"Australia is unique. Nowhere else
in the world has climate change
featured as a major issue in national
elections in the way it has here."

Unless this observation is itself able to be disputed, it has to be asked why this should be so. The only satisfactory answer would appear to be along the lines of the Australian electorate being held to be both more environmentally aware, and more willing to act contrary to its own perceivable economic best interests in this matter, than any other electorate in the world. I doubt that such an argument could be sustained, as, if anything, apathy and cynicism seem to be more frequently applied descriptors with respect to Australian attitudes to public affairs.

Given the likely rejection of the above 'satisfactory answer' as an explanation as to Australia's uniqueness in political interest in climate change, other explanations are required. Could it be that in some way Australia's possession of relatively vast coal, thorium, helium and other resources poses a perceived threat to the mix of established world energy supply interests such that it has been seen as necessary to politically, electorally, nobble the country such that it will be difficult to develop these resources for the benefit of its own citizens at large?

Posing such a wicked question would seem to pre-suppose that it was even possible to politically, even electorally, nobble the country. As 'rache' says:

"There's no politician I can think of
that could win extra votes from imposing
these restrictions so why would they even
bother to do it?"

Leaving that pre-supposition up in the air, I observe the bipartisan acceptance of 'privatisation' of Australian electricity supply, and wonder as to who ultimately benefits.

Graham, if there is anything unique about Australia in relation to AGW and politics; it is probably just that, Politics!

Europe in general and the UK in particular, drove earlier, harder and faster into the AGW phenomena than anywhere else. As the crippling costs of the renewable energy obligations and verifiable low efficiency meets EU-wide austerity, governments are “reviewing” many of their AGW generated policies. The trend lines are unmistakable as momentum begins to drop past the top of the “Bell Curve”.

In Australia, regardless of the advocacy blocks’ determination to boost the debate and the media’s “gate keeping” activities, the Australian public interest is in decline. This could possibly be because we are late entrants at a time when the rest of the world is in retreat.

Whilst it might be just NSW polling, climate change ranked 9th out of 10 key issues in last weekends Newspoll. Perhaps the Australian electorates have better tuned “bulldustometers”? More importantly, this might also indicate just how out of touch our advocacy media and politicians really are? The volume of AGW advocacy has reached nauseating levels and seems to be directly proportional to the decline in public interest, as we would expect.

Raycom nicely itemizes the AGW dilemma; the UN’s single orthodoxy is critically flawed, the more the advocates try to sell Australians the proverbial “dead parrot”, which died of injuries sustained from Climategate, the more Australian’s are likely to disengage.

The advocacy block in general, much of our MSM and in particular our public broadcasters, have nowhere to go except more proselytizing and to crank it up.

Rather than just being unique, Australia has a unique opportunity that was never available to Europeans, and that is “look before you leap”. Rather than the endless divisive, vexatious and futile debate about “what” to do about AGW, we have the opportunity to have a public inquiry into “why” we should do anything.

We know just how wrong and flawed the advocacy is by their determination to prevent Australians having the benefit of addressing the issues highlighted by Raycom

Mark Duffet- if you read my earlier post carefully, you would have seen the statement:

"The same argument could also be applied to solar, but unlike nuclear it won't be limited by safety concerns or fuel supply limitations."

Despite 40 years of involvement in sustainable energy matters, I'm no pie-eyed optimist, and over the years I have surprised many of my sustainability colleagues with my hard-assed approach.

As I have said many times, our "carbon footprint" methodologies are inadequate, as they invariably only take into account direct process energy use. Nonetheless, the same (5 year-old) UK article lists the carbon footprint of wind as similar to nuclear. Why didn't you mention that?

As I have said many times, PVs are presently more expensive tahn nuclear, but on a steeper cost reduction curve. (See "Updated Capital Cost Estimates for Electricity Generation Plants November 2010 U. S. Energy Information Administration Office of Energy Analysis" 189 pages). Note that nuclear costs are blowing out, although if one reads "The Economics of Nuclear Power" by the World Nuclear Association (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html) one sees that the Chinese, as usual, seem to be producing nuclear power plants at half the cost of most others, due to economy of scale and labour costs.

That does not affect the basic arithmetic that I stated before- the number of nuclear power plants that were under construction, or planned pre-"3/11" cannot make a big difference to overall baseload supplies.

If you, or Mark L, or any of the data-free-bloggers, can come up with numbers to refute mine, I will adjust my view accordingly.

Dear weareunique, I have a colleague who has spent the last 40 years in the nuclear industry. We call him the “nuclear garbage man” because his job is to process and safely dispose of nuclear waste from nuclear power generation and the even more toxic waste from nuclear weapons.

He would weep buckets if I showed him your post. You are clearly very concerned about the many issues associated with nuclear power generation, and rightly so as we should all be concerned. That concern however, must also be tempered by what is “real” and what is driven by emotion and ignorance.

Emotion is something only you can deal with however; there is absolutely no excuse for ignoring 60 years of industry facts, for inventing your own facts or for misrepresenting others. Most of what you presented is utter nonsense, which could explain your highly emotive state.

All you have to do is conduct some basic research on the web and most of your fears will be eliminated. Yes there are concerns but this is the most highly regulated industry on the planet and has the highest safety record on the planet. Distressing and high profile as any nuclear incidents may be, you do need to develop a sense of proportionality to replace your irrationality.

Jedimaster - there is a real problem with your arguments. You seem to be saying the there is no way nuclear can grow fast enough to save enough carbon to make a difference - which is probably true. That its expensive - true again.

But then that would seem to imply that wind saves carbon. Sorry, wrong. Again, go and look at the articles I've written for this site. Thanks to the need to completely reorganise the grid, run the generators on its differently and change the spinning reserve backups, any supposed savings by wind should be discounted by at least 50 per cent and probably 75 per cent (a proper audit would be required to work out the right discount.)

And this is all for vast subsidies. the Spanish study I cited before say that the wholesale price for wind is three times the price for conventional power (not twice as I had in the original post). the more you look at wind, the more you realise what a total waste of time it is.