You might have a look at the polls, Sophie, and notice that Australians are no longer fooled by the AGW fraud. Australia’s production of carbon dioxide is infinitesimal in scale, and if we stopped all emissions it would make no difference to climate.

We have noticed that the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, over the last 12 years, has not been reflected in any rise in temperature. The globe has probably been cooling since 1998, and has certainly not warmed. The greenhouse gas theory needs some reconsideration.

The Climategate emails have shown the disgraceful conduct of the scientists associated with the IPCC, in their efforts to “hide the decline” in temperature.

Without their “adjustments” and “homogeonisation”, and fraudulent interference with data relating to temperature, before its publication, the true cooling trend would very likely be shown.

Why you think that Getup’s deadbeats hitting the streets has any significance, is no doubt a reflection on your mental processes. It is a knee jerk reaction to the Realists campaign, which has only just begun, and Getup's baseless “campaign” is of no significance. We all know that the rabid Left can raise ferals for street marches.

The campaign against Juliar’s intended tax on breathing, from which she intends to pay $10 billion a year to the international leech, the United Nations, has only just begun. Her true intention is to fund this parasitic organisation.

No one in their right mind could see this iniquitous tax having any effect on climate. The global temperature will not alter a fraction of a degree if this tax is perpetrated.

You say: "one logical, rational and economically viable response to climate change". Where do you dredge up these words, Sophie? You obviously have no idea what they mean.

Sophie,

Looking at the polls, I would say that your claim of a round one victory is a little premature. The opponents of the carbon tax might be less motivated to march, but the real issue is how they vote.

When Julia lied about a carbon tax her credibility was damaged and people now refer to her as Juliar, and take what she says with a pinch of salt.

A tax on carbon whether it is a straight tax or an ETS increases the cost of doing anything. While the cost of electricity is the most obvious and can be compensated for, the cost of groceries, manufactured goods and other services are less obvious and cannot be directly compensated.

This is a direct tax on the cost of living, and the average person in the street is not stupid enough to believe that it will not affect them.

Sophia

Your effort to help street kids is commendable. You might be a good evangelist however your faith in pseudo science is a dud. The best you can do is be the blind leading the blind. Return to something useful.

Sophie - you have made the mistake, common to activists, to equate street protests with public feeling. In fact there is academic research around, I can't cite chapter and verse here, to indicate that they are no indicator and that they do not affect public opinion.

The point of a demonstration is to make the demonstrators feel better, and express their point of view.

When Howard decided to get Aus involved in the Iraq war. the demonstrations were massive but he went ahead anyway. The polls did not change and he won the next election (he went out the election after that, after being in much longer than he should have..).

The carbon tax is a total waste of time. Its sole effect will be to hurt Gillard in the polls, which may be no bad thing.

round 1 .. hang on, I thought round 1 was Copenhagen, or the various rallys at parliament house in Canberra, over the last few years?

I didn't realise round 1, obviously you assume an adversarial system, is Australians against Australians? Yes, is that your view?

getup! thought so, their adverts see a "competition" and their boast of, we can get a bigger crowd, so was it "beating" conservatives or reducing .. what, Carbon, CO2? temperature? I suspect the motivation is more political than environmental

most conservatives don't much care what you think sophie, but care about what our government does

is this a left/right thing

this will be a rallying cry now, for the forces of left to "compete" with the evil "deniers" of the right .. correct .. so Australians against Australians ..

this is people protesting against a government, not some left wing childrens climate club or the paid rent a crowd, with pre printed signs from getup ..

are you against people demonstrating about what they believe in?

have you thought of what you will do if you "lose the fight" sophie?

what then?

leave town?

go somewhere else .. don't turn this into a fight against your countrymen and women .. it's not worth it.

if you "win", and inflict a lower standard of living on Australians .. by political trickery and lobbying ..

it might be a bitter win, particularly if you frame it as winning against other Australians, and boast about it and rub it in ..

what will that achieve?

How many degrees C will you be able to tell your children you reduced the world temperature by? Or will you tell your children you reduced people's frivolous lifestyle by using CO2 as a bait and switch trick .. is this just about socialism?

"It is this adhoc handful of individuals who are trying to convince the Australian public to hit the streets using cheap fear mongering tactics."

So an AGW alarmist is accusing the anti-carbon-tax movement of scaremongering? Pot, meet kettle!

No doubt the handful of environmentalist loonies who are trying to link the Japanese and New Zealand earthquakes to global warming are among your valued allies? Or do you think they may have gone just a leetle too far this time?

Well done Sophie,
Don't let the lurkers and right wingers on OLO get you down, they deflect facts and reality like they're swatting flys.
I would bet a fair number of them still think that smoking is good for you and CFC had nothing to do with the Hole in the Ozone.

kenny ,next you'll be saying skepics also deny the holocaust .. if you have nothing to say except insults .. your arguments must be pretty shallow

lurker indeed, since that and other insults were your entire contribution .. does it reflect your presence on blogs? I guess in most circles you would be called a troll, but I won't be that unkind.

I'm a non smoker, and the hole in the ozone layer .. oh jeez go do some research on that one, please .. it's still there! so reducing CFCs did what? Like a carbon tax .. make you feel better, without doing anything, but that's the left wing view, don't worry about substance .. it's the look that's important ..

go do some reading for goodness sake

don't be so wrong all the time ..ok (rhetorical, no reply required)

Quite right rpg.. Kenny if you have no better arguements than references to long gone issues in which we have never been involved, then you have indeed clean run out of effective arguments..

Good work, Kenny.

Always encourage people as confused and as damaging to the community, as yourself, like Sophie.

Slime and malign those that you envy most, the sensible people with clear minds.

Show your support for a tax on carbon dioxide, a clear odourless beneficial gas, never shown to be harmful except in the deranged minds which dream up lies about it.

The IPCC, and its cohorts, like Al (35 lies in 90 minutes) Gore, are the culprits, in case there is any doubt in the identification of the carbon demonisers.

Carbon is the base of all life on Earth. Carbon dioxide is the invaluable trace element in the atmosphere, without which the crops which sustain us would not grow. With increased carbon dioxide the growth is stronger and the plants need less water.

Carbon dioxide is not pollution and we should be rewarding those who increase its emission, not threatening them with an iniquitous tax, to enrich the anti Western Civilization parasite, the United Nations.

While I don't like the idea of paying more for electricity, I think that if the broader scientific community believes that climate change is happening and that it is manmade, then we must do something about it.

We need to do whatever we can to reduce carbon pollution. That means becoming more energy efficient, less wasteful and convert to renuable energy sources and move away from carbon energy sources.

We are already experiencing mass extinctions, loss of biodiversity, the sea water is becoming more acidic, we are experiencing greater extremes in weather.

We only have one planet, and I would like my chidren and grandchildren to live in a world where there is enough water, food and resources for them to live comfortably. If we refuse to make changes, we may end up in endless wars over arable land and resources - and that is the best case scenario.

Sophie, I’ve worked for disadvantaged kids too and guess what? They can’t afford energy now, let alone future rises. Nor can their parents. Please stop punishing the poor.

By the way, and according to your worldview, a bigger anti-carbon tax rally would mean that we’d win. So will you change your mind if that happens or are you an ideologue? More protests are planned.

The more representative polls are not on your side either. Just like NSW Labor, Julia’s pro-censorship global warming faith is gone. Enjoy it while you can.

Sophie is obiviously a deniar of the existance of a carbon tax protest movement.We longer believe the lies Sophie.Big business want an ETS,ie Emitions Trading Scam, to create a new derivative market and take us all to the cleaners once again.

It is time to stand up to the looney Green left and the elites in business who are feeding us lies and deception.

assuming no change to industry and growth continues we would be in excess of the copenhagen target by 130Mt/yr.
1 ha of forest plantation can provide a carbon sink of between 40-60t of co2. cost of establishment between $1500-2500/ha. Establishing 2Mha of Forestry plantation basically meets the Copenhagen targets and can be achieved with an establishment cost of between $3B-$5B.
Only 0.5% of land used for livestock grazing would be required to establish the plantation. cost of establishment could be offset from future timber sales or sale of biofuel for transport and/or electricity generation.
using dedicated new forests as a source of biofuels has the benefit of not distorting food prices like corn to ethanol.
please can people remember the war is about reducing co2 emissions, not creating an esoterical trading derivative.

Sophie,

I understand you as a left leaning youngster. That's fine and you are entitled to your opinion. Mine's a different one to yours and to the big polluters. We're all entitled to our vote too.

Now all you need is a little lesson in our parliamentary democracy.

Look up the meaning of the word mandate.

Gillard doesn't recognise it but Howard did.

Howard asked the Australian people if they wanted a GST. He did it at an election.
Julia has introduced a carbon tax after specifically ruling it out at the election she won. She hasn't a mandate to introduce one. Australians will punish her for her arrogrance.

If she had John Howards decency or any shred of decency she'd ask all Australians if they wanted a Carbon Tax at an election.

That's how democracies usually work. Julia's usurping and imposing her greenie view upon us all.

Her leadership is now terminal, the greens will go into decline and suffer the ignomany of the Democrats and labors done it's final dash, for many generations.

You are going to see Liberal National coalitions throughout your life time in Australia. They are the only parties who have kept faith with our democratic system and Australians ... and we all know it.

We all vote, the greens and labor seem to have forgotten that.

Sophie is studying Arts/Law at Sydney University.
Doesn't that explain it all ?

Gillard has now admitted, or was it boasted, that when she promised she would not have a carbon [dioxide] tax in a government she led, she was still planning to introduce a trading scheme.

Every one of course believed that "no carbon [dioxide] tax" meant no charge on CO2 emissions. Not so our Julia. She obviously thinks that it's OK to lie, if you do it sideways. In fact, I think she may be proud of practicing such cleaver deception.

I wonder if that is something they teach in Arts/Law, that if you lie, without actually saying the words, it's cleaver/smartass thing to do.

Just what you want in a PM.

BJelly, AGW trolls like you are boring.

Your first sentence is a pretence that you are sensible. You then make a statement which is vaguely reminiscent of the way the pompous clown Ross Garnaut covers his unsupported nonsense statements about AGW, by referring to non existent scientific support for his baseless assertions.

If you have any scientific basis for the assertion of AGW, BJelly, state it, and leave out the baseless nonsense.

Over the billions of years that there has been life on Earth, there have been numerous mass extinctions. Humans have not been around for them, and have nothing to do with the current one, if it is happening. The oceans are not more acidic, that is a straight out lie.There are no greater extremes of weather, rather the reverse, if you cared to check.

Acid rain was another greenie lie, promoted by that poor deranged woman Rachel Carson, and now shown to be a delusion.

At least you can count. Yes we only have one planet. If you want your grandchildren to enjoy it, stop supporting a tax based on lies, which will pay billions to a bloodsucking parasite, the United Nations, and reduce our standard of living.

You have followed standard procedure, and stated standard nonsense slogans, for an AGW troll. We have heard them all before, and wonder why you are not embarrassed at making such fools of yourselves.

Poor naiive Sophie,

You fail to realise in your unthinking, sheep-like, dogmatic pursuit of every fashionable left wing cause that the reason there were fewer people "hitting the streets" against the carbon tax is that those likely to be opposing it (read: those employed people with any income whatsoever that are of any use) have far more important, practical things to be doing than starting a meaningless, inconsequential and largely unnoticed rally for every pathetic cause under the sun. Not everyone can be a single, unemployed dole-bludging nuisance.

As I'm sure you've been told countless times, you WILL grow out of it - it is a phase all too common to students of your age across this country. Once you've calmed down a bit, gotten together something of a life for yourself, and have gained substantial employement I guarantee you all of this sad, woefully self-important and by and large completely ignored youth activism will all go out the window and you will, as most people with a life do, become more concerned with caring for your own interests and those of the people important to you.

I suppose having an overblown opinion of the importance of "youth climate change coalitions", "rallies for _____" and other little games that youngsters in university have always liked to play, as well as supporting myriad causes that give rise to the whittling away of individual liberties to the numerous "UN" bureaucracies that you have blind faith in can be excused for now, as in the not too distant future, you will find it all as irrelevant, sad, and downright amusing as the rest of us do.

Hi Leo,
I'm not a troll, nor am I a scientist - I'm an ordinary person with a point of view - no need to get nasty!

As far as I'm aware, most scientists believe global warming is happening and it is manmade. I believe in the precautionary principle - that if there is a reasonable chance our behaviour is affecting the climate, then we should do our best to modify our behaviour. I really don't want my life turned up-side-down by this - I'd much prefer it if I could keep living as I am now. But if it is happening, then let's just get on with it, and face it now rather than later! We've delayed for decades, we can't keep putting it off.

BTW I wasn't referring to acid rain, but ocean acidification, caused by oceans absorbing carbon to form carbonic acid which could threaten plankton, corals, oysters etc - these tiny creatures are an important part of the food chain. Our fisheries are already in trouble. I don't even eat fish, but I know lots of people around the world depend on seafood to survive - it would be great if we could make sure their kids can access plenty of fish.

I'm not afraid of being thought a fool, or being wrong. Can you say the same?

BJelly, thanks for your reply.

Identifying you as a troll was based on an assumption, which you tell me is wrong.

You would know, better than I, whether my assumption is correct. You tell me that it is not, so I accept that.

It is not a matter of great import, from my point of view, as I consider, that our lives, and in fact the whole of life consists of trial and error.

In fact, a great Intuitive said words to the effect: “In human progress, error is as important as Truth”.

It is a basic tenet to me now, having digested that observation. If I recognise an error, into which I have fallen, I rethink. It is the same pattern as repentance of sin. Failure to rethink, or failure to repent, is unproductive, and, often, damaging.

Error in itself is not reprehensible.

Some AGW supporters, may not have the opportunity to recognise their error, and should not be condemned for it, but people like the Climategate miscreants, trained scientists who deliberately promote error are not in that category.

I accept that you are. I would recommend Robert Carter’s book, “Climate: the Counter Consensus”, if you want a brief and honest summary of the situation.

Best wishes.

Thanks Leo!

Got this yesterday. Can't help thinking it's to do with all the drilling, bomb tests & letting of natural gas.

The volcanic eruption in
Iceland, since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS,
NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to
control CO2 emissions on our planet, all of you.

Of course you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are
trying to suppress, that vital chemical compound that every plant requires
to live and grow, and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans, and all
animal life.

I know, it's very disheartening to realize that all of the
carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the
inconvenience and expense of: driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery
bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution"
science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies,
using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet
tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home
instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing
all of your 50 cents light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs...well, all of
those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four
days

The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just
four days - yes - FOUR DAYS ONLY by that volcano in Iceland, has totally
erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon.
And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out
this crud any one time - EVERY DAY.
I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I
should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the
Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in its entire YEARS on
earth. Yes folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over one year, think
about it.
Of course I shouldn't spoil this touchy-feely tree-hugging
moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the
well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keep
happening, despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate
change.
And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud
but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western
USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce
carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens
every year

Just remember that your (Australian) government just promised
you by the middle of 2011 a whopping carbon tax on the basis of the bogus
''human-caused'' climate change scenario.
Hey, isn't it interesting how they don't mention ''Global
Warming'' any more, but just ''Climate Change'' - you know why? It's
because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these
global warming bull artists got caught with their pants
down.
And just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions
Trading Scheme (that whopping new tax)
imposed on you, that will achieve absolutely nothing except
make you poorer. It won't stop any volcanoes from erupting, that's
for sure..
But hey, relax, give the world a hug and have a nice
day!
PS: I wonder if Iceland is buying carbon
offsets?

Yep, ignorant trolls have been spreading that guff ever since:

http://members7.boardhost.com/CathPews/msg/1300017467.html

You can lead a dumb ass to water but you can't make a dumb ass drink.

http://www.factcheck.org/2010/06/eruption-corruption/

Will a dumb ass go to the embedded links, or the sources referenced? Maybe.

Will a dumb ass understand, or learn? Probably not.

it's easier to pull the wool over the eyes of academics & football fans than people with sense.

A price on carbon is for real, it,s about time you moved on. Denying is not going to change a thing.

"A price on carbon is for real" .. not yet it ain't!