Mike Pope, an attempt to impose a tax, based on fraud, will generate quite a lot of inconsistency and untruth.

Your article, in the face of the reality that there has been no warming for almost 15 years, despite the dire predictions of the mendacious IPCC, puts forward a lot of baseless nonsense.

You say: “If we pursue 'business as usual', average global temperatures are likely to exceed 3°C by 2100. Consequently tipping points will be passed with respect to slow feedbacks such as melting of polar ice caps, ocean acidification and release of methane in the Arctic.”

If we pursue business as usual, the contribution of Australia to CO2 emissions is negligible and will make no difference, even if the assertions about the effect of CO2 as a greenhouse gas had not been shown to bear no relation to the real world.

The contribution by human emissions to the natural CO2 cycle are 3% of the total. The natural variation is 10%, which is the reason that human emissions have not been shown to have any significant effect on climate.

The whole assertion of CAGW is based on the pathetic guess by the IPCC that it is “very likely”. The predicted “hot spot” announced at the time they asserted “very likely” has not been shown to exist, for the simple reason that the IPCC was wrong.

There is no scientific basis to assert that human emissions have any but a negligible effect on climate, Mike, so the basis for action on Australia’s emissions is non existent.

Mike Pope makes Very good point. However the Chinese are now blending cleaner Oz black and coal for making electricity which is cleaner. By how much I do not know.

What I do know, is the Chinese have tightened their environmental regulations. Also most Chinese coal is very old and is tightly compressed which means it releases a lot of heat , when burned and has little moister left. Indeed, blending did not make economic sense prior to 2003. Because coal prices have doubled in the last five years. More new and more efficient coal blending facilites are being built in China. (Source Petrocom Energy, Bus age p10, 18-6-2011).

Another reason for reduced emission is that the blended coal is burnt in large number of new power stations being built in China that use best practice provided by foreign companies as China the closes down their own old and inneficient power stations.

The author is obviously a willing and mindless follower of the one true religion. Does he understand the implications of increasing costs on the coal mining industry? It seems not. We can be wiped out of competitiveness overnight by excessive costs. Without a mining industry our export income would slip to a level similar to Angola or Iraq (50bn)

You missed two important questions: 1) Even if the AGW alarmists are correct, what effect will our $2000-a-year carbon tax have on average global temperatures in the next, say, 100 years? .002 degrees, anyone? And 2) How can anyone in their right minds think this is anything but a vast ripoff?

"Taxpayers have an expectation that their money is spent efficiently, effectively and in as manner that achieves the outcomes stated by government, "

Not necessarily, they voted for Labor didn't they?

What looks at coming out as a carbon tax has so many exemptions, compensation and direct action, that it looks to be far from revenue neutral, and a huge impost on the taxpayer. It is bastardised beyond recognition.

"... climate scientists continue to warn us that 'business as usual' is no longer an option..."

Well not quite true;

According to Robert Kaufmann,Heikki Kauppi, Michael Mann and James Stock

'... it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008...'
and 'furthermore, global temperature declined 0.2C between 2005 and 2008.'

Now factor in this years coldest winter in the northern hemisphere in 100 years and the coldest start to winter since the 1980s in the southern hemisphere and global warming starts to look like a fizzer.