Every little bit of co2 does matter. Unless you are a hasbeen of course.
No good getting left behind, the transition will not be as cheap as it is today.
Every time the price of oil rises it never comes back to where it started from.
Gas is a far better option than coal or oil. The quicker oil becomes unbyable the better.

*China will find it cheaper to buy & transport our gas, than to harvest & transport their own. *

I don't think so, Hasbeen. US shale gas is selling for around
$2.50, which is half the price of our gas. Given that the Chinese
can do things cheaper, mining their own will be the way to go for
them. Our gas is very expensive to harvest. Our gas industry
workers apparently earn double what they would, in the US.

So if the Chinese crank up their shale gas, watch our gas prices
drop to the point where companies here are doing dough.

This is a timely and important article and deserves wider readership. A lot of us were lulled into a false sense of complacency thinking that, as oil declined, gas would tide us over until we moved a low carbon economy based on renewable technology. Now we find it is unacceptable in climate terms. Nevertheless, it may be necessary to stop economic collapse as oil starts its inevitable decline. Whether or not China goes down this path of producing its own gas from shale oil, we would be wise to limit our exports for the sake of intergenerational equity if nothing else. We Australians will need some kind of fuel until we can get the renewables in place.

The article's analysis has huge problems. Although the IEA report has some relevence world wide, and in the US, it has none in Australia.

I dunno if the authors have noticed but we have no nuclear power plants in Australia, and the proportion of renewables is set by legislation, so prices don't really enter into it. Cheaper gas should not make any difference to renewables and none at all to nuclear power, as there isn't any in Aus.

Here the question is whether gas will supplant coal for base load plants (gas is now used for peaking plants that can be switched on and off quickly).

The autors contend that switching to gas does not save much in emissions. I have no comment to make on that point, but it is still difficult to see what harm it could do for gas to take more of coal's market share.

There is no carbon particles in gas. besides co2 what ever else it contains is invisible. Got to be far better than oil or coal.
Some old timers that can not get their head around, the need for renewable forms of energy.
Abbott has reneged on a low carbon future. He is taking orders from Palmer, and he is sticking by it.

I agree Curmudgeon, it sure makes sense to harvest much of the energy from this coal, without the disruption of having to dig up vast swaths of the country.

Still it is annoying to read that some fools expect to run a modern society, any time seen on what can be harvested from renewables, with any existing technology. The promotion of much of this stuff is approaching criminal, in the harm it is causing, & will cause to so many.