Thank you Fiona. Yes, a complete overhaul of economics is required.

Its no good bemoaning the loss of jobs in the coal industry when climate chaos causes far more economic and social distress.

The task for economists is to delineate hidden costs of all forms of energy production. All forms. That means coal, oil, gas, solar, nuclear, hydro-electric, wind, geothermal and (above all) energy saving technologies. There is no free lunch.

At present wind and solar appear to be cost prohibitive, not because they are more expensive to produce, but because the hidden costs borne by taxpayers for traditional energy forms are not calculated and put into the cost equation. They (coal and oil) are therefore being heavily subsidised.

If all costs are taken into account, the cheapest energy resource right now is smart efficiency technology that can reduce our energy demand for very low capital cost and very rapid financial returns.

Wind and solar hot water would be runners up, owing to their relatively low social and environmental impacts. Geothermal would be in there near the top too.

Nuclear costs are much harder to calculate because the combined risks (waste disposal, nuclear proliferation and reactor safety) are not totally predictable. The scene would change overnight as a result of one devastating reactor accident, for instance. But, on balance of risk, nuclear risks are presently being seen to be less harmful than those posed by carbon emissions. (A consensus on that question is a long way off).

A carbon tax protocal partly redresses this cost imbalance, but carbon taxation is just one economic tool. Every energy form has its impacts, and all of those impacts should be costed and fed into energy prices and choices. Only then will we have a system based on rational economics.

So refreshing to read an entirely sensible analysis of the situation. No talk of "eco-fascists" or of climate change "hysteria", just a cool and well-informed look at the future. Listening to the BBC in the wee small hours I heard someone claiming that by setting up hundreds of thousands of mirrors in a desert area he could provide solar power for the whole of Europe. Please someone tell me this wasn't a dream. I imagine the out-of-work coal miners could be re-employed cleaning the mirrors with Windex and wettexes. Seriously.

At least we know that the Author has a serious vested interest in the topic. That might explain why it reads like advertising copy.

But the the bit about looking at both sides of the balance sheet was the absolute doozy. It is a pity that Stern didn't bother to devote equal thought and analytical weight to both the costs and benefits of climate change. But then, no-one else in the climate mafia has bothered with such basics as recording debits and credits either.

Our own Australian Greenhouse Office has elaborate but hardly accurate calculations of how much CO2 will be released from clearing and forestry but neglect to point out that some of the tree stumps that are deemed to have emitted carbon when the tree is cut, will still be there in the paddock in 80 years time, with much of their carbon intact.

They and the rest of the industry can then run their modells to work how much extra suns heat will be absorbed by this invisible gas that occupies between a quarter and half a cubic centimetre in each square metre of air. Yet no-one appears to have bothered to calculate how much less solar energy is absorbed by the same change from forest to pasture.

They measure the global warming effect from the conversion of forest to pasture but don't bother to measure the global cooling effect through increased albedo of the same forest conversion.

If the Chief Financial Officer of a listed company pulled that sort of stunt in their financial statements he would get a long stretch at her majesties pleasure.

A level-headed summary of the issue.

Solar power Kang is unlikely to meet the needs of industry any time soon. The idea with the most traction seems to be that a range of sources are needed - including coal & oil - at least for immediate future.

The only thing we know for sure is that industry will not willingly change anything until incentives are introduced, which is where government and PPP's come in.

As a committed 'greenie' even I agree that "we cannot afford to be squeamish about nuclear energy and we cannot continue the naive cry that renewables cost too much". (I'm sure there will be a post on this topic soon enough).

I don't think Incentives and PPP's would work at all.

The solution to having Industry fund cleaner solutions may be to slug a tax on dividends payed to shareholders on un-clean industries.

That would shake up a few boardrooms.

Fiona, and most of the commentators think that we "cannot afford to be squeamish" about nuclear power. On the contrary, we cannot afford not to be "squeamish" about the nuclear industry.
Over recent years, in Australia, there have been episodes of extraordinary hype. Australia, en masse has succumbed to self-censorship on many issues. But in no area is this more apparent than in the discussion of nuclear power.
It is unaffordable, financially, environmentally, and socially. Socially, because it inevitably means such a level of security that our civil liberties must be further eroded.
We have now reached the point where the Howard government, supported by the ALP, is to launch an expensive educational hype to schoolkids, on the virtues of the nuclear industry.
This hypocrisy is compounded by the fact that Australia will probably never get nuclear power plants. The nuclear industry can make so much more money out of just LEASING our uranium, while Australia becomes the only country in the world to invite the sending of international wastes to it. Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

Whee.

Whatever happened to the whole 'hole in the ozone layer' debacle. Did we stop using CFCs and did everything shape up okay?
Last I heard, the whole was getting much bigger, and antarctica was going to be an ice cube tray by... well... soon.

Sure, we have skyrocketing levels of skin cancer, but if the modern media have taught me anything, it's that the world isn't in trouble until a tidal wave is hitting the statue of liberty.

Uh. This article is much too optimistic. It's all well and good to say 'we need to do this' but unless you back it up with specifics, you're not going to get very far.

Wain says that a complete overhaul of the economy is required and things like emissions trading won't be enough.

Well... yeah. But the only way to get started is by using things like emissions trading.

Before you can look at the big broad picture like this article, you need to introduce the minutiae. And you need to outline how to introduce them.

I realise the climate cover up revealed by Gelbspan 1995 has run its course even sceptics to stay in office must make some genuflexion to the electorate.

It happens Australia has been endowed with Uranium and coal both useful in balancing our debt ridden economy. Both useful in making some rich like squatters of old. Howard has been his usual clever self and under the scare of Greenhouse, ‘do not panic’ he said we will discuss reactors and once the public is partially weaned to view them favourably our Uranium can be sold. Coal will be as usual awaiting the years to sequestration’s proof. Business as usual.

Little mention is made of alternatives and then only that they can help but not solve.
However many have been working on alternatives both technically and on their economics resulting in many publications from many sources one of which ‘Factor Four Doubling Wealth Halving Resource Use’ Weizsacker, Lovins and Lovins 1998.This and many others have outlined how to be energy efficient. Reducing Greenhouse at costs recovered in a short period 2 to 10 years. From this and including transport for which nuclear offers little unless an extra reactor is added to the proposed 25, producing hydrogen, it would seem that we could with marginal economic cost reduce GHG by the amount needed. The value of Coal could be reduced. The profits more widely distributed, power generation much closer to its use site and perhaps/probably no need for Nuclear, lessening Uranium sales. Individuals would need to do much more depending less on being supplied.

They might even need to listen to the media critically remembering as I F Stone said, “governments lie” he should have added and so do others or politely make the best case leaving out unwanted facts.

Is all that is contained in the last paragraph just the spin from the alternative lobby counterbalancing that of the BIG FIX solutions, profitable to a small number of businesses ? After all we live in an age in which increasingly we are fed spin in place of fact

Forget Stern and his 750 pages, at least for now. He is neither a climatologist nor a palaeoclimatologist. Like Dr Rajendra Pachauri, head of IPCC, Sir Nicholas is an economist. His call to spend 1% of global GDP (US$400 billion per year) on preventing climate change has no sound basis - at least as yet. Climatologists say ours is a self-contained, stable and benign climate - disturbed only now by people burning fossil fuels; only continued warming is projected for the century ahead - WITH NO COLD PERIODS. Palaeoclimatologists like me say ours is an externally driven and ever-changing climate; and solar/planetary inertial, resonant and electromagnetic influences can be predicted. The 300-year warming trend since the desperate misery of the Maunder Minimum is at an end; and perhaps, the giant El Nino of 1997/8 has already marked the warmest year between 1650 and 2050. The next Little Ice Age cold period should be obvious by 2020, and the Landscheidt Minimum will be fully developed by 2030. Within 5 or 10 years we will have a good idea which hypothesis is correct - happily, the result cannot be a draw. There is no point in impoverishing the world until we know. HANG LOOSE. But in the interim, surely, the precautionary principle should work BOTH ways.

Ah, it is good to have a "paleoclimatologist like me" to set me right.
All that rubbish I have been reading, sourced from the simple-minded climatologists of IPCC, CSIRO, and their ignorant colleagues!
So they have been feeding me tripe all this time! Not knowing what they were doing, while they were incorporating into their models the record of oscillations in tempertures and associated gases derived from Greenland and Antarctic ice-cores; showing ignorance in evaluating data from calcium carbonate skeletons from sea-creatures locked away in coral reefs and geological deposits, etc. etc.. Wasted, their inept interpretations of that data ranging in time from hundreds of thousands of years back to the present; through the times of the Toba eruption, of Mungo Man, the Mayans, the Greenlanders, on to our benign times.
If only that numerous mob of idiots had engaged that individual, a "paleoclimatologist like me".

That abusive response demeans a vital issue - the future well-being of humanity. Will 2030 be dangerously warm, or dangerously cool? Neither IPCC, nor palaeoclimatologist like me, predict it will just be a quarter-century continuation of current climate. CSIRO is also invoked in the response above. Its "Future Cimate Change in Australia" gives a temperature range for 2030 in Darwin, Broome, Perth, Alice, Adelaide, Melbourne, Launceston, Sydney, Brisbane and Cairns. In NO case does the range for 2030 even offer a low-end which is below "Now". Obviously, CSIRO is certain that the future is only more and more warming - with no chance of another Little Ice Age minimimum. Although 2030 is still far off, we may be able to see which way things are going by about the peak of the next (24)sunspot cycle - say, 2010-2015. Save your abuse until you know whether it is justified.

Fosbob says
“Obviously, CSIRO is certain that the future is only more and more warming - with no chance of another Little Ice Age minimimum”

It’s not obvious to me that CSIRO is certain about anything. Can fosbob cite some CSIRO policy statement which includes a global warming prediction of absolute certainty? Is fosbob talking about work, publically endorsed by CSIRO, of one or more CSIRO scientists making a prediction of inevitable global warming, with no allowance for error?
I would be very surprised if CSIRO or any CSIRO scientist would thus stake their authority and reputation on the absolute inevitability of any prediction based on evidence of global warming.

I’d be delighted if anyone can provide the citations which demonstrate CSIRO certainty, so that I may read chapter and verse for myself, but I suspect the papers are there with the the gold in the pot at the end of the rainbow - I hope fosbob can outwit those wily leprechauns - - -

Warming should have changes about 9000 years ago
and now with us we have just increased something that was going slowly, no i am not a greenie

but to create a balance between the 2 isnt easy but slowly change can be made for the better but another thing this is just Australia their are other countries who coudnt care less.

So how about some ideas, i already have a few for my policy which is almost complete but lets see if we speak the same.

Polution how to we combat this well cleaning up, many ways to do this but labor and liberal are to far into the pockets of those of fossil fuel but then we dont have to phase them all out just make a better stand and choice.

email:swulrich@bigpond.net.au
Australian Peoples Party