Asking an AGW/climate denialist structured question like 'Why do scientists disagree about climate change?' is like asking 'Why do scholars disagree about the whether or not the Holocaust happened?'

Good article, Don, but it misses two really important points.
1. More important than whether climate change is anthropogenic or not is the question of how should humanity respond to it should current changes in climate be caused by people. In my view, moving quickly to a fossil-fuel-free world will. cause incredible economic and social hardship, especially in developing countries where there is still a billion or so people living in poverty. To go carbon free within 30 years will force significant costs on the entire planet, reversing many of the social benefits gained over the last 200 years when we used fossil fuels to lift global standards of living and quality of life. While climate change will cause some adverse impacts on the planet, they will be far less than the adverse impacts caused by a rush to become carbon free.
2. Global human population will stabilise within 40 years or so - see Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson - after which global use of natural resources including fossil fuels will also decline as standards of living rise well above poverty levels. This suggests to me that, 100 years from now, a smaller global human population, combined with technological advances, will see CO2 emissions greatly reduce and, with an end to land clearing and the planting of vast areas of forest and other natural vegetation, we will return to global atmospheric CO2 levels that are considered safe by climate scientists. In other words, we will solve the climate change problem 'naturally' without having to decarbonise the global economy.

If we still owned our coal and gas plus all the profits and tax liabilities that eschewed from them, I'd look favourably at some of the pro-coal and gas arguments. As for the jobs, resources extraction create? Thorium, lithium, beryllium, nickel, molybdenum and copper still need to be mined and refined!

Energy can be exported as raw electricity in superconductor, graphene cored cables. And for far superior returns than any of the above! Unless we sell it/them off, like everything else that earns a quid!

One could and should ask, what's climate change got to do with it?

But looming carbon tariff barriers!? Everything! Plus the fact very soon we won't be able to give away our coal, oil and gas!

Refusing to accept the new and long resisted reality, just doesn't work for us!

Time to jettison the old (turd on a blanket) arguments for coal, oil and gas and all those who spruik them! If we listen we will be caught with our pants down and looking like a turtle on its back flailing in the midday sun.

I mean it's not like we need to transition tomorrow! But have a decade to transition to what will take us into the next century and the one beyond that!

Failure to do just that will leave us with stranded assets and unpalatable sovereign risk! Moreover, the transition can create far more well-paid jobs than those we lose!

We need folks with vision at the helm, not those with vested or kowtowing to powerful conflicting interest, who will die in a ditch first, before we get some sanity back into the energy debate.

We're currently throwing billions into the economy, just to prop it up, when some of those billions could be used to kickstart much of the above and cooperative capitalism! If you can't or won't help with that, then get outta the way!
Alan B.

DD I'm sure there were a few battlers among the 3,000 homes lost in the January fires. That's when Penrith hit 48.9C. Too bad for frail people in older homes. Asbestos miners lost their jobs but somehow found other occupations. Ditto coal miners.. if they're earning $250k like the bloke who complained to Morrison they should put some money aside.

FWIW I think gas will be essential to help phase out coal. With or without carbon tax gas will be expensive by 2030 that's when small nuclear can do the load following task. Just don't let dreamers stop that happening

Exactly Mr O, exactly!
Alan B.

Having found the publication and the names of the sponsoring body, the writer of the foreword and the names of the authors I have no faith in the conclusions that the publication claimed.
Any publication supported by the Heartland Institute, with a foreword written by the leader of Citizens' Alliance for Responsible Energy and written by 3 well-known climate deniers is not a credible reference in a discussion of climate change.