Absolutely right Jon J. Unravelling an ETS would be a nightmare.
The investment banks who would be "managing" the market with options and futures contracts would be in court suing any government which tried to remove an ETS.

Hey Trashcanman

Phil Watsons published and peer reviewed historical data shows what is actually happening. He details actual recorded sea levels.

Here is how the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water attacked reports on Watsons research.

'Watson's research looked only at measurements of historical data. It specifically did not consider predicted linkages between sea level rise and global warming predicted by climate models.'
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/07/the_australians_war_on_science_67.php

You'll note they didn't say the data was wrong, all they said was their 'Modelling' re future levels wasn't in dispute. ie that past measurements and records have no bearing on their predictions of future rising sea levels.

Correction there was once dispute, in 1998, by climate change advocates about Henrik Svensmark's theory. Then they ignored it.

But now that the emperical evidence from the scientific experiments with the Hadron Collider lends support to the hypothesis ... well ... that somewhat changes things.

But if you want to deny science, that is totally up to you but the results of the scientific experiments does undermine the view the science is settled.

'In fact there was more support in the sciences then for global warming than the ice age theory. It was quickly debunked by further research.'

Which is exactly what the science is doing to global warming theory now. ie providing debunking.

There Bonmot goes off again. lol

oops. correction the second last sentence should read

Which is exactly what the science is doing to Anthropogenic Global Warming theory now. ie providing debunking.

A nice argument, Matt ... but I’m not convinced. Good policy isn’t necessarily the one with the most ‘friends’.

Sure, centre-right EU governments have adopted an ETS. They’re also dealing with major rorts in their sophisticated permit system; success is not a given. Being contiguous, it’s straightforward for EU members to buy nuclear-generated power from France, hydroelectricity from Norway, excess capacity wherever it’s available, etc. It’s a costly system ... and their capacity to pay for it is presently under a nasty financial cloud. If we had an Asian Union, maybe ... but we still couldn’t buy electricity from PNG, or sell it to NZ. It’s not a viable model for Australia.

Both Howard and Rudd backed an ETS ... until Copenhagen. The ‘inevitable’ international consensus never eventuated, putting paid to everybody's best laid plans. Without a stable, well-policed global permitting system, it’s simply not possible to establish a viable trading system. Gillard’s been deviously vague on this point: if the ‘market’ includes permits offered by Burma, Ivory Coast, Laos ... who vets them? China’s big enough to buy up so many permits that no one else could afford to compete ... if they wanted to. Australia’s not well situated to generate our own carbon credits; as Abbott correctly asserts, Gillard’s system commits Australia to sending billions overseas for other countries’ carbon offsets, in perpetuity. These aren’t problems Gillard’s ‘market-based system’ can leave until later -- they have potential to drive carbon permit prices sky-high, or make them worthless.

Australia depends on coal for energy. There are no other base-load options ... yet. If we seriously want to do this, we need a setup to support mega-billion-dollar investment in plants with a 40-year lifetime, stable ROI over that period, and a trustworthy market-based mechanism to create, sustain, and drive evolution of new technologies. I can’t see how this will happen without both Direct Action AND market-based approaches.

One thing I'm very sure of: viable solution(s) won’t self-assemble simply because we declare a ‘carbon market’ open for business. Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ isn’t attached to a magician.

You are indeed, as you claim, a nutter.

You were using watson's paper to claim sea level rises were slowing, although Watson's own department emphatically insists that is a complete misrepresenatipn of the report.

Then you provide evidence that "lends support" to the theory of Sun's effect on global warming (despite the fact the sun itself is cooling).

Sure, it lends support to the theory, but it does not debunk over 100 years of climate science theory and thousands of other pieces of evidence that point the other way. You say it "somewhat changes things". "somewhat" is a gross overstatement in the overall scheme of things.

When the overwhelming majority of the worlds relevant scientists are saying something, I think it is the responsibility of everyone to take seriously. The tide is not turning on this in scientific world, only in the make-believe world of mainstream "journalism" and the blogosphere.

Lazy and/or commercially driven journalism is undermining the quality of democracy in this country and I think globally. This could come at a great cost.

Donkeygod asserts….”Australia depends on coal for energy. There are no other base-load options ... yet”.

No longer true.

Solar-thermal with heat storage is a developed technology used in Spain and available in Australia. The 3 solar power stations now being built in Australia do not use the Spanish technology, though I understand that investment in this technology will be made as soon as the governments’ carbon tax becomes law.

More importantly, Australia is endowed with some of the hottest, most accessible hot rock deposits in the world. Over 30 companies are now engaged in heat mining these deposits with a view to using it to generate electricity. Geodynamics Ltd expects to be generating electricity from hot rocks within 6 months.

Both of these systems produce base load electricity – that is they are able to generate electricity 24/7. Both are in use in other parts of the world and both can generate electricity at a price which is competitive with the price charged for electricity generated from coal.