MichaelK: You prefer payroll tax? That as useful as taxing companies for employing people.

Another thing:
GrahameY tried to slip one past us. He suggested I had "problems with the concept of joint authorship."

This is an astonishing slight of hand. Here I am, complaining that Andrew Bolt tells us that Revelle wrote something in that paper. (Bolt uses a singular pronoun.) GrahamY tries to turn it around, by accusing me of the same thing.

It is Bolt who has attached this words to a single author. My theory is that Bolt deliberately mentioned one name, deliberately used the singluar pronoun to mislead the reader. I assume that GrahamY has editing skills. An editor would know that for a jointly written paper, one can only say "they wrote ...". If you are going to attach an individual writer, then it should be the person who wrote it. Fred Singer, recounting his version of this story wrote: "I undertook to write a first draft". Later he says "I agreed to prepare an expanded draft, and in the following weeks I sent three successive versions to my coauthors and to other scientists, receiving comments and completing a near-final draft in late 1990." http://media.hoover.org/documents/0817939326_283.pdf

If it is good enough for Fred Singer to say that he wrote something, then its good enough for me too. Furthermore, Singer published a version with the same quoted words in an earlier 1990 article. http://home.att.net/~espi/Singer_article_solo.pdf

Which all leads to the idea that Andrew Bolt mislead. Because either those words are jointly written (using the word "they") or they are individually written in which case Fred Singer is the writer, by virtue of his earlier article and/or by his own account of the drafting.

No, Grahame. I am not misleading. Just laying out the full story. Andrew Bolt misled, and Tim Lambert was correct to point that out.

David Latimer,

I am hardly surprised with Mr. A.Bold's very general approach to both this more technical and many other socio-political issues he writes of: publicist is not obliged to scientifically sustain a path to the reality but just drawing attention to an issue. To my understanding, this is a major writers' tribe task.

A money-suckers of consulting mob is a different story.

And trading the licensed volumes of pollution exhausted differs from playing any form of taxes, where GST as usual benefits government for a money turnover with no product produced physically at all.

Unique situation: the higher price-the more beneficial a particular service to GST collectors only is.

Such a perverted mentality -a sure part of "Australian values" eventually- does not allow the simplest solution: unified Australian standards of which non-compliance should be punishable not at corporate but managerial levels, protecting customers from accustomedly meeting a financial burden of companies' fines and "representative expenses" growing dramatically.

David Latimer Stated “Carbon Trading? Energy Conservation? . . . . . Wind Farms? Agriculture in the Australia's North? Clean Coal? Emission Caps? Ice-free Artic? International Co-operation?

Hey OLO! Lets move this debate forward.
We got some BIG decisions to make!”

I responsed to “Carbon Trading” (your first cab off the rank)

David’s response to my concerns regarding a carbon trading system and its fiduciary responsibility to those effected -

“Obviously, a carbon trading scheme requires thorough accountability and that is difficult to achieve, especially internationally.”

Some observations

Your response is one of the most lamentable understatements I have ever read.

It is not the sort of response which accompanies an expressed desire to “Lets move this debate forward.”

It is a response which is inconsistent with the expectation “We got some BIG decisions to make!”

So having backed away from “carbon trading” you suggest a “pollution tax” instead of a “employment tax”.

I would observe GST, as a consumption tax, effectively taxes the end users of products which create pollution in accordance with their desire to consume/pollute.

Personally, I would rather see even a half –assed attempt to answer the issues surrounding “carbon trading” which you are deflecting from, than a non-response as you have offered here.

Why?

Because the world is on the cusp of following the irrational, illogical, immeasurable lunacy of creating a carbon trading system and I know, as a consumer, one way or another, I am going to get screwed with higher prices for the right to peacefully cohabit with a bunch of scientists and bureaucrats who want to tell me what I am allowed to do with my life and how many taxes I am duty bound to pay.

Want to give “International Cooperation” a try (last cab in your list)? Assuming your responses to the other “big decisions” are as small and limp as your response to “carbon trading”.

Footnote: Michaelk is a moronic troll. I, like many others, make a point of never responding to any of his posts (it only encourages him). My considered advise, a similar strategy might suit yourself.

"...the world is on the cusp of following the irrational, illogical, immeasurable lunacy of creating a carbon trading system and I know, as a consumer, one way or another, I am going to get screwed with higher prices..."

Regardless of whether we impose a carbon tax or not the price of energy is going to increase. It might be next year, or the year after, or the one after that, but no way can we expect to get away without acknowledging there's a price to pay for cleaner power.

The paucity of debate among our federal politicians has led to people thinking Australia is an island in the environmental as well as physical sense. Listen to parliament and you'll realise the government's attitude is so one-dimensional - how it will affect the government's record on employment - it's little wonder we get our pants in a twist about how this will affect the economy. Whatever we do the effect will be profound. Unless we take a more wholistic approach there will be little upside.

Meanwhile, existing technologies that might help us adapt are being forced offshore for want of investment or government endorsement, or scuttled in parliament on behalf of localised opposition.

One thing is certain about the comments on Bolt's article-that is that there is no certainty either way about the effect on global warming of human activity. What is certain is that if the measures proposed by the activists are implemented the result would be the complete collapse of our socio-economic system. One point-Greenland is mentioned in connection with the effects of the ice melting. Why is an ice covered island called Greenland and not Whiteland? Because in the 12th century it was verdant and colonised by Scandinadians.

Hemstitch

Response to Col:

I am trying to encourage OLO to get on with the debate. Our political leaders accept the scientific consensus and I would prefer us to not be left behind in the debate.

As for the rest of your comments, I cannot see what you are getting at. I have not backed away from the suggested topics of debate - topics of important public policy. But, I remind you we've achieved a double-century for this thread. It not practical to discuss five or ten major policy ideas here.

Response to Hemstitch:
Actually, the comments show that Bolt systematically misprepresented the evidence and used every debating trick in the book. If you are envoking rainforests and woodlands, your comment about Greenland is just another one of them