It is a pity that Australia has just legislated a tax on carbon when the analysis from Europe is that the ETS has achieved almost nothing. And it shows that if the money had been spent on direct action there would have been far greater reductions.

As for Durban, without binding targets, the conference will be an abject failure and put the entire global action plan back to before Kyoto. Unless there is substantial agreement in Durban, Australia's tax will be a "go it alone" plan with the sole achievement of shifting emissions intensive jobs overseas with zero net emission reduction.

The current decline in CO2 omissions is of course largely due to economic recession. Countries still in growth, like India and China, have shown enormous increases in their emissions. It follows, then, that the best way to reduce CO2 emissions is to induce a huge global depression, throw millions of people out of work, and reduce health, life expectancy and living standards back to what they were in the good old days of 1850 or so.

Hopefully most people are wise enough to see that crippling the global economy is not in their interests, or their children's, or their grandchildren's. Particularly when the Climategate II emails are revealing still more of the dirty politics and deception behind what The Team like to refer to as The Cause.

Heather
No one expects the Durban conference to achieve anything at all.. as for the deadline of achieving a system of limiting emissions within five years, then we are going to miss that deadline by a century or two.. it just isn't going to happen.

If you seriously believe in the science then start supporting measures for adapation.

Bravo Heather Bruer! Keep up the good work in Durban!

The going at the moment is going to be somewhat subdued, seeing two thirds of the world is broke. But there is nothing to stop AU surging ahead with reductions. The more coal and oil we eliminate, can only be an advantage, Toni was at a dry cleaners yesterday, saying how much the carbon tax is going to cost them. On other days he says the costs will be passed on. Why the inconsistency. Makes you wonder where his costings are coming from.

'A safe climate future has yet to be secured for young people, but Australia can now play a far more constructive role towards it's nonnegotiable end in Durban. '

This article demonstrates the arrogance and naiveity of people who think they can control the weather.

Don't tell me this is another one, swanning around the world, pumping out CO2, & telling us we should give up our lives to pay for it.

They sure learn how to pull the con young these days.

Just maybe a little concerned for their own future, if nothing is done. The young people are the ones that are at the brunt of climate change. Even skeptics acknowledge there is change happening, they are skeptical as to the extent of change. We can only await more statistics from NASA. When there is no polar ice left. Who knows it could become a ski resort. Sea temperature has risen .9c mostly in the last two decades, and is now causing volatile weather conditions, instead of a ten year cycle for warm ocean currents to return, we somehow have a return in one year, so albeit not as strong as last year, but enough to cause drought and floods. So lets hope it doesn't follow the same pattern as last year. Europe is broke so can not do much about their extreme weather problems at the moment. Runner reckons it's in the lap of the gods, and there's nothing we can do about it. But that is religion for ya. Maybe god can not compensate for all the mistakes of man. May need a little help.

579: "Even skeptics acknowledge there is change happening, they are skeptical as to the extent of change."

No, you don't get it. We acknowledge there is change happening, we simply don't believe that anyone knows enough about the change to assign it to a particular cause: and if nobody can do that then nobody can predict with any certainty what will happen in two or five or ten or a hundred years.

It got warmer on several occasions in the past without the help of anthropogenic CO2, and then it got colder again. Can you give any kind of principled reason why we should assume that this time is different?

According to the provisional list of participants in the UNFCCC COP 17, there are a massive 14,570 people taking part in Durban. The list is so long that its been broken up into three parts to include the 192 Governments and their 6,164 delegates and 5,884 from non government organisations.

Just what is the carbon footprint of these people jetting around the world to conference for two weeks to attend the 17th meeting of the treaty created in 1992.

Surely if carbon pollution was such an issue the 14,570 people could have stayed at home and communicated via the world wide web, rather than jetting into this tourist resort.

One of the first actions at the conference was to decide that the next meeting will be in Qatar, yet another tourism resort.

Australia's government has a large team in Durban at taxpayer expense led by the Minister for Climate Change as well as many observers on the frontline from the Non government organisations, many of the ENGO activists trips are funded by tax deductible donations.

Just how much is this conference costing in terms of both dollars and 'carbon pollution'?

Sea level rise. Global sea level has risen 17 cm in the last century. The rate in the last decade is nearly double that of the last century. NASA. Genuine boat people in the making.