But Neutral, if it will have no effect, then WHY DO IT?

At the very least it will require hundreds more public servants leeching off the taxpayer. Why should we put up with that for NO BENEFIT?

Neutral it's the Loony left who taught the rational libs about hate.

In fact the libs don't have to bother with wasting the effort of hating. Much easier to hold up a mirror, & let all that loony left hate bounce back at them.

Have you been a bit appalled at the amount of hate your receiving? Now you know it is just that reflection of yours you are feeling, perhaps you could modify the level you emit.

No of course you can't, it's all that holds you up.

Jon J - good questions and ones that have continued to be unanswered since Howard oversaw the massive expansion of the public service under his watch. Why expect anything different under Labor?

Hasbeen - I love you!

Please excuse my vanity in quoting myself from another post: "The only thing more entertaining than watching Labor lose their way is the livid apoplexy of the hate filled self righteous Liberals"

So thankyou for my morning chuckle:-)

We love you too Neutral

We have to realise the reasoning behind the ETS.Wayne Swan says that the Carbon tax will give way to an ETS.This trading in carbon will only give more power to a few large industries.Alternate energy sources will not provide the base load power needed for industry so they will have to buy carbon credits to operate.This will mean fewer producers and less competition.In the meanwhile a new derivative market is open for abuse on the sharemarket.This is totally open to rorting like credit default swaps or collaterised debt obliglations etc.How do we know someone has buried carbon via a forest in some remote country? What happens of the carbon credits if the forest burns down? What happens if you buy heeps of carbon credits and find that AGW is a lie? Who is going to keep tabs on it all?

Then there is the issue of funding the UN which Bob Brown endorse via World Governance.Gillard has dedicated 10% of our carbon taxes there already.You won't be able to vote and they'll be telling us what to do with our country and our assets.The UN already has too much influence over our Govt.It will be our worst nightmare.

So Alex, I take it we are putting a giant bubble around Australia and calculating how much carbon that crosses that bubble. We are then claiming Australian's per capita contribution to the problem equals whatever crosses that boundary, divided by the people here. I thought csteele illustrated the ethical problems with this, but let's put those aside and run with it.

You say we net import 4.5 tons/capita/year of carbon as CO2. In other words that amount CO2 being absorbed by our bubble from the rest of the world. It seems like your figures are a decent attempt at a back of the envelope calculation, but I have a problem with you claiming that is the end of our story.

We dig up and export coal at the rate of 250 million tons/year (2008-2009 figures from: http://www.australiancoal.com.au/the-australian-coal-industry_coal-exports.aspx ) to help support our affluent life style. That equates to 11 ton/capita/year . Almost all of that finds it's way into the atmosphere. That coal crosses the bubble boundary in the wrong direction for your argument. In fact it turns us into a net exporter of the carbon to the tune of 6.5 tones/capita/year. To be fair I tried to account for petroleum imports and what not which do work in your favour, but in the scheme of things they seem to be negligible - roughly 0.01 kg/capita/year if I got my figures right.

To put it another way, if the earth somehow found a way to excise the bubble that contains Australia and put it on another planet, it would be much better off CO2 wise. And contrary to what you say, this makes us one of worst mobs on the planet, not one of the best.

One of favourite sayings: if you torture the data sufficiently, if will confess to almost anything.