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,