I agree with much of the article.. the bit about not forcing emission cuts until the rest of the world shows real progress is a welcome acknowledgement of reality, and is basically now the agreed position. Almost all the initiatives activists love to point to - ETSs in China and the US, green power in China - are little more than ineffective window dressing. There is no point in Aus moving ahead of the pack.

One point on which I thoroughly disagree, however, is the acceptance of the IPCC as the sole authoritative source. Where has the author been? The IPCC has been caught several times using activist material for its reports. Or has it been several? Does someone have a count? I seem to recollect that the chairman has even declared that the panel will continue to use grey material as policy.

The IPCC constructs the agreed case for the global warming industry. From that point of view it is authoritative, but not in any other sense.

Likewise, most of the article makes sense, but why eschew questioning of the IPCC? And why suggest ignoring people who say that "the climate has always been changing"?

The climate has indeed always been changing, and always will be changing. How else did Tasmania get cut off from the mainland a scant 10,000 to 20,000 years ago as sea levels rose over 100 metres?

The only questions should be:

1. How much (if at all) has human activity altered THE RATE OF climate change?
2. What impact will this have on human civilisation in coming centuries?
3. What (if anything) can human civilisation do to ameliorate, minimize or reverse and human induced climate change?

Yes there is some sense here, but unfortunately Tom misses one thing.

Most grown-ups withy a good education can tell when they are being had. This goes double for those who should have enough math to understand at least some of the science.

Could it be that Tom knows global warming is a con job, but is playing it smart? Is he trying to defuse the greenies by singing the old "I will if you [they] will so will I" song, promising to do something sometime? Or is this just another application for taxpayer funding of some research grants?

I am probably being too generous. Any mention of taking anything from the IPCC seriously does rather render the whole piece a fairy tale. They are yet to produce a report which is not a purely political animal, designed to cement the UN as our world government.

* "any" instead of "and" in the last line of my previous comment.

Tom Biegler,

The first thing I’d suggest is making comments that appear to be barracking for Labor-Green ideology and oppose an economically rational approach turn-off for more than half the electorate before you even start. Your second and third paragraphs should have been addressed to the Labor-Green government. It’s a pity their supporters weren't saying this to them when they were in government.

You ask “what would a climate policy for grown ups look like.”

Now, to answer your question, the first thing that should be done is to state the real-world constraints. For example it would state:

1. Carbon pricing cannot succeed unless it is part of a global carbon pricing system;

2. Global carbon pricing is unlikely to succeed for the reasons explained here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/2013/08/why-the-ets-will-not-succeed-peter-lang/

3. In the absence of global carbon pricing, single country or regional schemes, like the Australian and European ETSs, are unlikely to make any difference to the climate so will not deliver any benefits.

4. Treasury estimated the net cost of the ETS at $1,345 billion cumulative to 2050. That’s about $50,000 per person in today’s dollars!

5. The assumptions used in the Treasury analysis are highly optimistic, so the costs will inevitably be higher and the benefits less than assumed (probably none).

Together with the other Labor-Green carbon restrain legislation, the total annual cost is $19 billion this year and estimated to be $22 billion in 2019. That is a huge cost for little or no benefit.

So, the first thing to recognise is that the ETS and direct action policies imposed by the Labor-Greens government will cost a fortune and deliver next to no benefits.

Once we recognise this, the first thing we should do is to dismantle all of them as fast as we can to stop the waste.

Then we can take a ‘grown up’ (i.e. economically rational) approach to policy analysis – i.e. to develop policy that has a high probability of delivering benefits that exceed the costs. I’ll make suggestions in another comment.

Further to my last comment:

I doubt international agreements and stringent international ‘abatement policies’ will be successful, ever, and I think it is the wrong approach.

It seems to me there is an alternative approach. It is well proven over millennia and requires no top down, international policy or international legally binding agreements.

The alternative I am suggesting is to allow and facilitate freer markets to do what they do: foster competition to bring costs down and provide services that are fit for purpose.

To free up energy markets all we have to do is to remove the unnecessary impediments that we’ve imposed that are blocking them from working effectively. We can achieve this by facilitating freer trade and freer energy markets.

Especially, we need to remove the impediments we’ve imposed over the past 50 years that are blocking nuclear energy from becoming cheaper than fossil fuel energy.

Once we remove the impediments, the cost of nuclear will come down and nuclear energy will replace fossil fuels, over time. No international legally binding agreements will be needed.

International legally binding agreements are exactly the wrong policy. They will not succeed. Nor will policies that increase the cost of energy such as carbon pricing, and direct action like renewable energy targets and the many other direct action policies that have already been implemented.

Phil S Let me enlighten you about sea level rising 15,000 years ago. For some hundreds of thousands of years there was an ice age. This was ice over the Northern hemisphere. That ice was about 5 kilometres thick just North of London in a ring around the planet. This ice sucked up all of water of Bass strait, the North Sea, Channel etc. 15,000 years ago it melted in under 50 years and sea levels rose to where they are now.
The real question is why this is not even a start point for the IPCC? Answer because it is all a great big swindle lead by crooks. Same as Y2000 bug and ozone layer fiasco. You also will not be told that there are more flouro-carbons being made now than 15 years ago.
The smartie NGO's where people get tax free dollars and plenty of them disgust me! Mainly because it comes from our taxes.

Tom Biegler,

>"Start and hold Australia on a path that keeps a nuclear option alive. Invest in understanding and addressing the peculiarly Australian aversion to nuclear power. Help the world develop solutions to the real and perceived issues associated with nuclear energy, especially via new nuclear technologies."

Yes to all that, but change the emphasis. Australia cannot consider implementing nuclear power until there is a persuasive case that the cost of electricity will be less than alternative fossil fuel plants - i.e. coal without carbon price or CCS.

Therefore, while working on reducing the nuclear paranoia, we must also work on reducing the cost of nuclear generated electricity. Mostly, we have to wait until the OECD countries, especially USA, reduces the impediments that are making nuclear power much more expensive than it could and should be. But we also need to focus on what Australia could do to reduce the construction and operating costs. That means tackling IR and the union stranglehold on construction and operations. The Coalition intends to try to tackle those issues. Those who want to cut emissions need to support what the Coalition is intending to do in that area (read up on how our productivity is 30% lower and labour rates 30% higher than in USA for similar projects: schools, hospitals, airports, etc).

Nuclear can, eventually, be much cheaper than it is now. The development of nuclear has been slowed by costly regulatory restrictions:
>"Negative [learning rate] estimates have even been reported for technologies when they have been subject to costly regulatory restrictions over time (e.g. nuclear, …)"
http://www.eprg.group.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/eprg0723.pdf

Professor Bernard Cohen showed in 1990 that regulatory ratcheting had increased the cost of nuclear by a factor of four up to that time [1]. Regultory ratcheting since then has probably double the cost of nuclear energy, for a total cost increase of a factor of eight.
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html

The problem with this article is point 1. The IPCC has lost all credibility as a reliable, impartial source of information on the climate. Far too many of its authors are Greenpeace and/or WWF activists. When the undergraduates and recent graduates who do most of its work are added to the activists, its claims to be the voice of science are discredited.

Far better to be what Matt Ridley advocates: "we're all luke warmists now". The late 20th century warming has done a lot of good, promoting the greening of places like sub saharan Africa and Western Australia. These benefits are predicted to endure until 2080 or therebouts. In other words, we have about 70 years to monitor, research, develop reliable technology and respond.

I might add that it's pretty galling to see the ALP, the workers party, supporting energy policies which are responsible for a substantial transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Curtin and Chifley must be turning in their graves.

Tom, you are tendering an unacceptable suggestion in putting forward the IPCC as an authority on Climate.

It acknowledges that there is no scientific proof of human emissions having any significant effect on climate, by its ludicrous assertion that it is “95% certain”. If it is able to reference no science to support an effect by human emissions, it would be more acceptable to state a 99% certainty that there is no such effect.

The function of the IPCC is to examine the effect of human activity on climate. To date there has been no basis established for the existence of the IPCC, since no such effect has been scientifically demonstrated.

So whether by ignorance or ill intent Tom is a Climate Fraud supporter. Pending any clarification he might offer, we might give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that his stance stems from ignorance
Leo Lane

Well here we are again with the usual bunch of characters who frankly haven't a clue about climate change.
The article itself has not reached the teenage years let alone adulthood.

The first 2 propositions are obviously are correct but from there on it is all down hill.

3. Ensure that Australia plays its part in advancing the technology solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Australians did some very good work on solar panels but that all ended up in China. The present government is hell bent on removing the carbon tax. How a supposedly intelligent group of people decided that a tax on pollution was a bad idea is beyond me. This lot now want to load up future generations with debt just because they don't want tax anything.

4. Don't start pricing carbon until the technology to reduce emissions in line with a planned emissions reduction trajectory is actually available.

Nonsense we have heaps of ways of reducing emissions now, and are rapidly closing in on the price of fossil fuels and some cases are already cheaper.

5. Don't start forcing emissions cuts until you are certain that the world's main emitters, and preferably the whole world, are doing the equivalent.

Frankly I find this proposition offensive.We are the worst emitters per capita except for a few minor exceptions.
It is only fair and reasonable that the worst emitters and richest be the first to take action.

6. Finally, and perhaps contrary to the technology-neutral spirit of the above, take one small punt on future low-carbon technology; bet on nuclear energy as the leading contender.

There is no need to bet on anything we know nuclear is economically extremely risky, it is a fact that to date half of the nuclear plants ever started did not make it to completion, and if we look at the past cost of nuclear power it has in the vast majority of cases, been a very expensive way to generate power. At some $15 billion a pop it is no small punt its a huge gamble.

a grown up person would simply look at the failed predictions of the alarmist and use their brains to reach a conclusion other that those of the IPCC. True believers in the gw religion is diminishing although they grow more desperate by the day blaming every storm, rain, drought, fire on gw. The funding is at risk. Teachers use to brainwash on global cooling, the ozone layer, the YK2 bug and now it is the 'evil 'polluters. It is laughable that the author speaks of environmentalist and delayed gratification in one breath. Many of them like the likes of Gore roam the planet burning up carbon like few others and warning others not to do the same. Thankfully most grown ups have woken up,

Tim Biegler's article basically tells us that the world's handful of climate scientists are infallible, even though this same group of scientists were woefully wrong in the 1970's when they predicted that the Earth was returning to a new Ice Age.

Climate scientists are vastly outnumbered by geologists, who are also trained to understand the physics of climate change and as I understand the scientific debate, the majority of geologists totally disagree with their colleagues on this premise.

The scientific debate is not over and nobody is going to run panic stricken around the place crying "the sky is falling" and thereby destroy their own economies until it is.

When did 'grown-ups' come to mean the same as 'credulous hysterics'? I must have missed that announcement.

United Nations climate policy focused on CO2 emissions is leading world policy that can not be sustained.
It is not possible for incomplete science to continue.
Science is science.

Perhaps the UN should urgently grow up.

UN, Kyoto and IPCC science at present includes impact of plant matter in animal cud but not algae plant matter that is now inundating ocean waters and ecosystems.

UN, AGW, Kyoto and IPCC science has not measured and assessed photosynthesis-linked warmth in ocean algae plant matter proliferated by human sewage and land use nutrient pollution.

United Nations and other reports that refer to pollution, while not mentioning sewage nutrient pollution, are not stating the actual problem.

Consequently most politicians and government agencies remain uninformed and without due focus and action on relevant solutions.

Solutions involving proper sanitation and sewage treatment could develop significant business and millions of jobs worldwide. Nutrient pollution is occurring worldwide, impacting world oceans.

There is need for sensible and viable sustainable policy to manage oceans of this planet.

Supply of affordable food and fertilizer and protein for feedmeal for animals can not be sustained with present UN policy

"Keep climate science and climate action separate. One is science, the other is politics and economics."

Climate action does involve politics and economics, but it also involves science and engineering too, and we shouldn't forget that.

Choosing the best technologies for scalable, reliable, high-capacity, high-availability energy generation on the scale required for coal replacement with the smallest environmental footprint at the lowest price does involve consideration of the realities of science and engineering, not just the political and economical considerations (which are also real).

For example, some people might think that solar power is "good" politically, and fission energy is "bad" politically - but remember, as Dick Feynman put it, that for a successful technology reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

I obviously did not make myself clear enough but there are too many misunderstandings of what I was trying to say to respond here.

The one recurring theme of criticism is my proposal that the government declare the IPCC as its ‘voice of authority’. Of course I am aware of the controversies involving the IPCC. I didn’t say the IPCC was always right. Indeed, how would I know? I am a humble physical chemist with the ability, I think, to read critically scientific literature from many disciplines. Years ago I realised that for me to contradict climate scientists on the basis of my reading vs. their reading of the data would be plain silly.

But that’s not the point here. I am proposing that a government should have a strategic climate policy instead of the present ad hoc approach (cut emissions a bit here, support a bit of new technology there, etc.) and that it should start with the scientific basis of its strategy. It could say that it didn’t believe in global warming, or that it did, or that it didn’t know. For the ‘believing’ option it could say that its source of science was for example the CSIRO, or our Bureau of Meteorology, or the UK Met Office, or one of the numerous US climate agencies – or the IPCC. The choice makes no practical difference to the policy. It simply eliminates ‘don’t believe’, or ‘don’t know’, or worst of all, the personal opinions around the Cabinet table, as the strategic driver of Australian policy. To me that’s a necessary first step for long term credibility of any policy. From a global perspective, I think there are advantages to plumping for the IPCC. It’s not that critical. Please don’t get hung up on it.

Tom Biegler,

I suggest you are focusing too much of your efforts on pushing for something that is politically unachievable. I suggest it is a wrong approach to be advocating for the government to endorse the IPCC’s ‘science’. Here are some of my reasons:

1. The government needs to deal with policy. It does not need to accept the IPCC reports to do this. The best approach is to implement ‘Robust Decision making’: http://judithcurry.com/2012/10/18/coping-with-deep-climate-uncertainty/ . Robust policies are policies that have a high probability of success under all likely scenarios.

2. Many people have lost confidence in the IPCC, so for the government to endorse it would antagonise those people and for no gain. It would not be helpful or politically smart for the government to do what you are wanting.

3. The information coming out of climate science that is needed for policy analysis is so uncertain it is near useless. The economic analyses needed for policy analysis are dependent on many inputs, including and especially climate sensitivity and the ‘damage function’. Both are so poorly known they make the outputs from the economic analyses little better than guesswork: http://www.globalwarming.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Pindyk-Climate-Change-Policy-What-Do-the-Models-Tell-Us.pdf

4. You are asking the government to endorse the IPCC’s ‘consensus’ position. But “Confidence levels inside and outside an argument” provides some insight as to why that might be unwise. It also shows why many intelligent and wise people outside the climate orthodoxy are cautious about accepting their position: http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/06/confidence-levels-inside-and-outside-an-argument/ >” [G]iving a very high level of confidence requires a check that you’re not confusing the probability inside one argument with the probability of the question as a whole.”

I suggest it would be far more valuable for those who lean towards the ‘progressive’ side of politics to put their efforts into trying to persuade Labor and the environmental NGO’s to change their position to support policies that are economically rational, ‘No Regrets’, based on ‘Robust Decision Making’ and to change from being anti-nuclear to pro-nuclear.

There is much to do. Let’s not waste our energies in futile advocacy that will achieve nothing and just continue the old divisions.

There is an excellent opinion piece in today's Australian by Bjorn Lomborg. He must have been listening to me :)

Take-away points:

THE past 20 years of international climate negotiations have essentially achieved nothing.

Japan could - incredible as it sounds - end up showing the world how to tackle global warming effectively.

Only the Europeans and a few others remain devoted to significant expenses for tiny outcomes.

By the end of the century (after a total cost [to the EU] of more than $20 trillion), [the EU policies] will reduce the projected temperature increase by a mere 0.05C.

[Renewable energy is expensive and ineffective.]

[I]nnovation would push down the costs for future generations of wind, solar and other amazing possibilities [read 'nuclear', but not yet ready to say to his audience the hated 'N' word.] If green technology could be cheaper than fossil fuels, everyone would switch, not just a token number of well-meaning rich people. We would not need to convene yet more climate summits that eventually come to nothing.

- See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/a-green-future-for-all/story-fni1hfs5-1226765589148#sthash.mzEtlTji.dpu