A good article. It is true that the communitarians (i.e. the Left) are the strongest proponents of strong climate change mitigation actions.

But why do they focus on just one risk - climate change - rather than looking at all risks in proper balance? Climate change is just one risk that confronts us at the global scale, and it is nowhere near the highest, according to World Economic Forum “Global Risks 2012” http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-risks-2012-seventh-edition .

I believe the answer to this question is that what the communitarians really want is an issue they can use to achieve their real agendas which are, IMO: World Government, world taxation, more regulation and more control by bureaucrats. What the communitarians really want is control over other people’s lives.

They advocae distributed electricity generation rather than the large power stations run by evil big business. However, they are not interested in the cost difference. They are not interested in the consequences (the human consequences) of imposing this enormous cost difference on society.

When it comes to analysing the costs and benefits of their proposed climate action policies they are not interested in the benefit/cost results, nor in the consequences of what the tax or ETS will do to the economy (i.e. to human wellbeing). If they were interested in the benefit/cost analyses, they would not be advocating Australia implementing a CO2 tax and ETS. The benefit/cost of Australia’s CO2 tax and ETS, to 2050, is just 0.11 (that is the costs are nine times greater than the benefits). http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#80580

But it’s even worse than this. The 0.11 number assumes that Australia’s CO2 tax and ETS is part of an economically efficient, optimal, world CO2 price that all countries implement in unison and maintain as optimal.

If these assumptions are not fulfilled, the benefit to Australia is zero. But we’ll still pay the costs.

By the way, the costs are probably underestimated. It sees the compliance cost for the system that will ultimately be required, has not been estimated and not included in Treasury’s projections: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578&page=

Can you run that past me again? A bunch of psychologists, lawyers et al have discovered that people's views on a scientific issue are or are not determined by the scientific facts presented to them, depending on their cultural and social world view? What a surprise! I shall now spend the rest of my day pondering on which of my or my friends' views, or the views I read every day in the media, on just about anything are NOT connected with their cultural and social world view, because in the first 10 minutes of such reflection I have been unable to think of one.

Here is a random sample. Just yesterday I debated with two friends whether or not the mining industry in Australia should be regarded as valuable. Two for, one against. I would have thought the facts are clear. But world views over-rode all else.

The only issue here is why a refereed journal would publish such a statement of the bleeding obvious.

Pericles

Much of what you say is true but unless we tackle population growth, the underlying cause of all our environmental problems, its all meaningless. Without a policy to tackle population growth everything else is a just so much hot air.

"...to finally end the expensive and highly divisive climate debate in favor of rational population and energy policy"

The author maybe doesn't realise that these findings don't support either case for Global Warming. In fact it shows that Alarmists are just as influenced by socio-political views as their opponents.

Nobody is that interested anymore, anyway. It was always simply a way to get our money as the carbon tax shows. If it wasn't, the world would be trying to stifle the growth of China and India who will spew billions of tonnes of CO2 into the air yet apparently it is deemed OK by the IPCC.

Tom. You say: "These findings will dishearten traditional science educators who for years have focused on disseminating clear and well-supported descriptions of the way nature works in the hopes that the public will come to more rational conclusions on issues such as global warming."

This shows that you really have no idea about the so-called 'science' of climate change. For a start, while most sceptics accept that there is some warming from a doubling of CO2 (according to the physics perhaps 1 deg C warming), the real issue is whether the feedbacks are positive, neutral or negative. The IPCC ASSUMES that the feedbacks are strongly positive, but with very little evidence for that from either historic records, or from anything other than computer models. There are numerous credible climate scientists that argue that the feedbacks are actually neutral or even negative, meaning that the temperature change from a doubling of CO2 is likely to be 1 deg C or even less. At the very least, the science is not settled.

The IPCC effectively ignores natural cycles which history shows are a major contributor to climate change. They also ignore the strong evidence that human land-use factors affect local and regional climate in many areas (think US dustbowl of the 30s) which many confuse with global warming.

The fact is that the climate scientists have NOT conveyed clear and well-supported descriptions. Examine the issues and you will see that their work has been shown to be illogical, poorly done, and not credible.

Why indeed? Perhaps we should wait until the facts are entirely irrefutable? Say when enough of the ice sheets have melted to increase sea levels by as much as 10 metres? 10 metres would inundate most of our coastal plains, which by the way contain most of our population, capital cities and around 70% of our economy.
Its a great plan, that would simply end all the contentious debate?
Maybe not, given there is an entirely self serving extremely influential element, that will swear blind that humans have nothing whatsoever to do with climate change, even if and when it becomes abundantly clear we have passed a tipping point that virtually condemns all remaining life.
The best solutions will be ones that walk out the door.
Those interested in resuscitating our manufacturing base, will entirely agree and argue for localised generation/cheaper power provision, that can be trucked onto industrial estates.
Thorium reactors are the best bet; given, thorium can't be weaponised, and we have heaps of the stuff.
Algae farming shows similar low cost benefits that allow coal fired power to continue, with virtual impunity; given algae are a first class mop crop that absorb 2.5 times their bodyweight in Co2 emission and under optimised conditions double that bodyweight every 24 hours!
It would hurt nothing except the balance sheets of extremely powerful international oil cartels, if in so doing, we also became entirely independent in endlessly sustainable very low cost transport fuel!
And saved the Murray/Darling, by providing an alternative very low water use bio-diesel production outcome, that could be entirely serviced with effluent currently flowing out to sea, carrying millions of annual tons of plant nutrient, that simply creates quite massive environmental problems, which would end, if we but used it up on land!
Climate change? Who gives a dam? Lets just do it because the proffered solutions make perfect endlessly sustainable economic sense; and will advantage us and our economy enormously! Rhrosty.