Came across a new very sobering website recently - its titled Nature Bats Last.

Lyn, humans, faced with a choice between grabbing a bucket of money and saving their planet from global warming, will opt for the money every time.

They ignore the increasingly destructive weather events and the melting of the ice caps and, instead, watch television soapies and their share portfolios.

Dumb, dumb, dumb!

>"Whatever happened to climate change? It seems to have disappeared in a puff of smoke. "

Climate change is dying as an issue because it was taken over by ideologues to promote their agendas. There has been massive exaggeration and misinformation by all concerned including IPCC, the research establishments, CSIRO, BOM, AAS, Royal Society, NAS and the leading, high profile climate scientists and leftist think tanks in Australia.

The policies advocated by these organisations, the NGOs, and our Leftist government are economically irrational. If allowed to continue, Labor's climate policies would cost Australians $22 billion per year in 2019 (according to Treasury figures). That's $1000 per year for every man woman and child - $4000 per year for a family of four. It's more than we spend on Defence and much more than the governments recent commitments to Disability Care and Gonski.

What do we want? Do we want programs that can improve our productivity so we can sustain the programs we want in the future, or do we want to waste our money on programs like ETS and renewable energy which will provide zero benefits.

I refer reader to this article to understand what an enormous mistake is the ETS: http://jennifermarohasy.com/2013/08/why-the-ets-will-not-succeed-peter-lang/

In another article I explain the per capital cost of ETS, renewable energy targets and other climate policies the government has committed us to:http://joannenova.com.au/2013/08/in-the-next-37-years-labor-will-spend-60000-per-australian-to-change-the-weather/

Lyn, you are dead on target but unfortunately you are trying to get through to closed minds.
It is all going to end in tears one day because we are able to shut our minds to what we do not want to know.
We are well down the path to unfixable AGW in fact past the point of no return now and no political movement is going to be able to make people see what is approaching rapidly.
It is interesting that one of the two replies has come from a denier, with a link to a denial website. With people like this able to input their head in the sand attitude there is no chance that the real message will ever get out.
So we are heading for extinction at full speed and we are going to enjoy life while we can.

Lyn - you cite a figure of 12 per cent of people rating climate as an issue of concern.. sorry, that was from a 2010 poll. As reported in today's Aus Financial Review (page 8) the figure is now down to 6 per cent. And that's the reason it doesn't figure much in the election. Public interest in the issue has slipped badly.

One problem is that the issue was badly over-sold during the mega-drought in South-East Aus with promises that dams would never be full again and rains would never come, just before they had two years of floods. There have been other reasons such as a lengthy pause in temperature increases (more than a decade) which even the activists have grumpily acknowledged, and even the general public have now become vaguely aware.

Best be thankful its still on the agenda..

Curmudgeon,

You said "Public interest in the issue has slipped badly."

I'd suggest that rational analysis and commonsense is prevailing. Climate sensitivity is coming down. We have virtually no understanding of the damage function (i.e. the damages per degree climate change) and there is little credible evidence to support the doomsayers beliefs. They've gone from talking about the oceans boiling off (James Hansen) and Manhattan and London being inundated, to now arguing there may be more bad weather in the future. What a joke.

Returning to your comment about "public interest in the issue has slipped", the 'Activity Chart' here demonstrates it: http://climatechange.carboncapturereport.org/cgi-bin/topic?. This chart shows the level of activity in the English speaking media, world wide. It includes news articles, news stories, blogs, Youtube videos and twitter.

At the current rate of decline in interest, the climate change scare will be all over in 2014.

That's the facts. The doomsayers who stick to their religious like beliefs are the same types of people who have been falling for the doomsayers' stories since humans first began to communicate. All they have left in their arsenal now is to repeat mantras, pejorative comments and name calling like "Deniers". My retort is to refer to them as "doomsayers". I'd suggest they drop the ad hom attacks, open their minds and read more than just what supports their beliefs.

For example, the commenter who made the ad hom comment about "Deniers" above could start by pointing out any serious errors in the two links I posted above, rather than just dismissing them on the basis of they are posted on sites he doesn't like. What an ignorant argument that is.