Only a sad sack would give a damn about what the idiot Latham thinks about anything.

At least both leaders had the common sense to refrain from commenting on what the buffoon had to say.

Howard's "less comfortable for some" comments should be sufficient for any reasonable person to vote against him. We, collectively, cannot afford to have a Prime Minister with this lack of awareness.

For those who don't know the effects, degree by degree, of climate change the following is an excellent summary.

http://www.marklynas.org/2007/4/23/six-steps-to-hell-summary-of-six-degrees-as-published-in-the-guardian

Oh, and check the full page ads that will appear in the Sydney papers tomorrow...

The level of paternalism displayed by both major parties mean that reasonable people could not possibly vote for them.

Latham was right on that one.

Sorry David but Latham has got it exactly right.

Labor are so desperate to get back in power that they have happily punted virtually all the traditional values that differentiated them from the Libs. It has got so weird that yesterday we had the bizzare sight of a room full of Labor "true believers" cheering wildly as their fearless leader put the knife through social spending. This morning the shadow minister for ageing told the ABC that she was "deeply concerned" about the inadequacy of the single pension. "Will you be increasing it if you get into power"? ... "No - you must understand that we have to be fiscally conservative"

This is the party which has just offered up 31 billion in tax cuts and will give every school child a laptop. How many school kids don't have access to a computer these days? How many people would not pass up some or all of their tax cuts to raise pensioners living standards? WorkChoices is evil and Labor will get rid of it ... by 2012!! We'll sign Kyoto and global warming will stop!!

Vote for whoever you like, nothings going to be different this time next year.

Except, JA, that the Kyoto Protocol will be signed, the troops will be home from Iraq and we won't have to put up with AWAs.

So there's three big differences at least..

You contend that “The key economic and moral issue of today is climate change.” The climate issue is far from settled. For example, the IPCC “consensus” is challenged by John R Christy, Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama. It’s hard to discount his view, as he has contributed to all four major IPCC assessments, including acting as a Lead Author in 2001 and a Contributing Author in 2007.

Christy notes in an article on BBC News Online, 13/11, that the IPCC is a political rather than scientific process, which affects both the choice of and conduct of the scientists involved. He says that this politicisation fosters a herd mentality in which it is difficult for opposing evidence and views to be heard, leading to an overstatement of confidence in the published findings and to a ready acceptance of the views of anointed authorities. Scepticism, a hallmark of science, is frowned upon.

Christy says that “the signature statement of the 2007 IPCC report may be paraphrased as this: ‘We are 90% confident that most of the warming in the past 50 years is due to humans.’ We are not told here that this assertion is based on computer model output, not direct observation. The simple fact is we don't have thermometers marked with ‘this much is human-caused’ and ‘this much is natural’.

“So, I would have written this conclusion as ’Our climate models are incapable of reproducing the last 50 years of surface temperatures without a push from how we think greenhouse gases influence the climate. Other processes may also account for much of this change.’"

Christy contends that the IPCC has erred in treating climate models as definitive tools for prediction, and that the results owe more to clever software engineering than deep understanding of the climatic processes at work. They do not adopt the proper and objective experiment of testing model output against quantities not known ahead of time. By contrast, Christy’s group builds a variety of climate datasets from scratch for tests just like this. (more)

(continued) In these model versus data comparisons, the group find gross inconsistencies – hence Christy is sceptical of our ability to claim cause and effect about both past and future climate states. He says that “Mother Nature is incredibly complex, and to think we mortals are so clever and so perceptive that we can create computer code that accurately reproduces the millions of processes that determine climate is hubris (think of predicting the complexities of clouds).”

Christy argues that fundamental knowledge is meagre, and that the IPCC should acknowledge research and evidence which conflicts with its consensus. He suggests that, rather than being definitive, the IPCC’s statements should begin with a line favoured by his physics teacher: “At our present level of ignorance, we think we know …”

There is also evidence that the impact of increased concentrations atmospheric carbon dioxide on global temperature is very strong at low concentrations, but negligible at current and projected levels.

Separately, the International Energy Agency forecasts that world demand for coal will increase by 73% from 2005-2030, primarily through the growth of China and India (The Australian, 15/11/07). Any drastic action within Australia, including the mandated renewable energy targets put forward in the election campaign, would impose large domestic costs but have negligible effects on global warming. In my view it would be absurd for Australia to adopt self-righteous hairshirt policies without (a) more convincing evidence that accelerated global warming is in train, is caused by humans, will impose severe costs and can be contained by human action; and (b) concerted action by present and prospective major polluters to contain emissions.

Christy (and to a lesser extent Pielke Sr) are about the only two consensus-objectors who have made any sort of intelligent comments regarding climate science. Notably, both of them agree that anthropogenic climate change is a real phenomenon - they either believe that the CO2-temperature link has been overstated, or that the net effect of the CO2 and temperature increase is just as likely to be positive as it is negative.

They may well prove to be right.

Ultimately however, there are plenty of good reasons to reduce the carbon-intensive nature of our energy usage*, and plenty of good alternatives. The cost of doing may well be substantial, but far far less than the cost of doing nothing should the worst-case predictions have any truth to them at all, which, no matter how much you, Christy or Pielke personally feel about the probability of such a thing, remains a real possibility.

* Coal is a major source of particulate pollution for a start, responsible for many thousands of deaths every year. The mining process also creates high concentrations of toxic and radioactive substances, which often end up in waterways.

Faustino,

Why have you not included the “other view” by Professor Martin Parry in the BBC “viewpoint” article (13/11) you cited?

Why do you paraphrase when people can read it for themselves?

If anyone else is interested, if not off-topic - the link to the article Faustino cites is,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7081331.stm

And here is the other that he conveniently doesn’t cite,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7082088.stm

Professor Christy’s views should be considered, as should Professor Parry’s (for balance).

The IPCC’s final report this year is to be published this week end.

I think what will be even more important will be the 180 country representation in Bali next month.

Let’s see what US, China, India, Europe, Australia, etc. does then.

Maybe then Faustino can call all the world’s leaders fools, big-businesses fools, and every body wanting to tackle climate change fools.

Lev, signing Kyoto will have exactly nil effect on global warming (not a single signatory is on track to meet their emmissions reduction targets, most have actually gone up), Labor has committed to bring "some" of the troops home but has not set a timeline and all the currently existing AWA's will still be in force for several years.

Doesn't matter who you vote for you won't notice the difference in a year.

One wonders why we continue to debate the urgent requirement for renewable energies or climate change. It's a non-event for Mr Howard who has no intention of altering the status quo. His interests lie clearly in protecting the big polluters:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21841497-5000117,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/16/pollution?gusrc=rss&feed=environment

One need only access the shonky reports by industry to the National Pollution Inventory (www.npi.gov.au) to realise Australia's self-regulated, self-reporting pollutant industries are out of control and running amok.

Furthermore, the "big" Australians continue to plunder the lands of other nations, destroying their eco systems, health and environment. They must also take considerable responsibility for the following abomination:

http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=2951

Could this be the motive for Australia's generous donations to the Philippines?

Perusing current "Letters to the Editor," on the forthcoming elections, reveals that renewable energy or climate change is not foremost on the minds of the majority of voters, who suffer from the "what's in it for me" syndrome.

Therefore, I suspect that this nation will return the government they deserve - those moral pygmies who also suffer from the same endemic contagion.

Latham is a good reminder of what a closet KRudd might actually become, if Garrett’s comments are an indicator or be run-over by, if socialist behind-closed-doors factional infighting is any clue.

Remember the socialists elected Latham (the arrogant face of socialism), as well as Krudd (the acceptable face of socialism) to leadership. It is quite likely they could, as they did with Hawke (over Hayden) and Keating (over Hawke) change leader with some faction deal behind closed doors and we end up with the entryist face of socialism. Either way, should the elections deliver a socialist majority, end up with a meddlesome bunch of incompetents who try develop policy on a white board (where they can wipe off the evidence or their mistakes) or run the country on an intellectual shoestring of two, as happened under the arrogance of Whitlam.

Certainties of labor will be

Meddling in private ownership rights
Lax attitudes to individual public responsibility
A public infrastructure boom (for their union masters to exploit) to develop dysfunctional emotion crutches which do not deliver real benefit, encourage inflation (through government funded extra competition for labor skills) and ultimately turn economy from the fiscal responsibility of the coalition into a waste land – like Kirner did to Victoria (when she produced the “rust bucket state”, only on a national scale).
Collapse of the private sector (the real wealth producers)
Pretending they know how to run broadband
Pointless investment in computers (we need plumbers as much, if not more than programmers).
A pretense that universities are the only educational institutions worth educating people in.
Undue political indoctrination through defended unionists in education.

All in all, an economic and moral charnel house of bungling incompetence, arrogance and bullying.

I vote for smaller government. But I have never found it on offer from the socialists.

JA,

Signing Kyoto may very well have significant effect on global warming as it will put political pressure on the US to sign. As it stands only the US and Australia are being stubborn about this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kyoto_Protocol_participation_map_2005.png

(Participation in the Kyoto Protocol: green indicates countries that have signed and ratified the treaty, yellow indicates those that have signed and hope to ratify it, and red indicates those that have signed but not ratified it.)

Sometimes showing leadership is sufficient even if the gross effect is not great. For example, New Zealand's decision to give women the vote in national elections. Not many women worldwide were given the vote as a result of this decision; but the net effect was great.

Lev, signing Kyoto will have exactly nil effect on global warming (not a single signatory is on track to meet their emmissions reduction targets, most have actually gone up), Labor has committed to bring "some" of the troops home but has not set a timeline and all the currently existing AWA's will still be in force for several years.

Doesn't matter who you vote for you won't notice the difference in a year.
Posted by JA

Hi Lev,

Of the 172 countries that have signed and ratified Kyoto only 34 actually committed to reduce their emmissions (Russia, NZ and the Ukraine committed to no increase - but no reduction either).

Notable signatories who committed to do absolutely nothing include - Mexico, Brasil, China, India, Malaysia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Chile, Peru, Pakistan and Indonesia. Taiwan did not even get that far, they are described as having ("no position as yet"). I haven't done the math but I suspect that this list probably represents about 3 to 4 billion people, roughly half or two thirds of the earth's population.

Kyoto is not a panacea for global warming. By any reasonable measure it has been a crashing failure. Less than 20% of the counties who have signed and ratified have committed to anything and most of those still have rising emissions levels. Kyoto has been around since 1998 and now almost ten years on, what has it actually achieved? Bugger all. "Decisive action on climate change" means we actually need to physically do something!!

Signing dismally flawed Protocols has not produced any results in nearly a decade. Time to forget about signing documents and start pressuring our pollies of all persausions to physically do something.

Hi JA,

I realise the figures you cite, but the thing is that's the best we can get out the international community thus far. If we can't get them to commit to Kyoto, we certainly can't get them to commit to something stronger.

Essentially the Protocol calls upon wealthy nations to reduce emissions, and allows for developing nations to continue development with a second assessment (in 2012).

It doesn't help that the US and Australia refuse to ratify. This does not provide much-needed international leadership.

Sure, it's no panacea - I don't think anyone suggests that. If the (non-binding) Washington Agreement can improve things that's fine as well.

"Anything that helps" at this stage would be a sound motto; and signing Kyoto certainly isn't going to increase the problem of AGW.

Climate sceptics have grown very quiet recently. I believe they've come to their senses and realised they're flogging a dead horse.

The majority of Australians must surely realise that Howard, despite his spin, remains a climate sceptic and has no intention of making any difference to the massive emissions in Australia from pollutant industries. No doubt he would respond to my objection by declaring: "It's the economy stupid."

Projections from the resource industry indicate that the boom will continue until around 2021. With the ignominious lack of enforcement to mitigate GHG's, the degradation to our environment will be irreversible.

Where does the nickel go? Or the gold, iron ore, alumina etc? Up the stack of course. Australia's atmosphere is now heavy in particulate matter (PM), coating clouds and inhibiting precipitation, thereby exacerbating drought conditions.

And last year the Iron and Steel industry alone released some 570,000,000 kgs of CO to our atmosphere. That's some 500 million in excess of the CO released from the supply of electricity.

Livestock and feed crops now occupy 58% of Australia's land mass.

I too have a dislike of unions, however, voters must realise that the return of a Liberal government, exploiting our fragile environment, will tip us into the sea.

Tomorrow's political aspirants had this to say about the serious issue of anthropogenic emissions:

Climate Change

Moved by NSW
Passed at Federal Council 2007, Melbourne

The Young Liberal Movement of Australia: Policy Platform on the Environment: 2007

"Supports the introduction of nuclear power as a clean alternative energy source

"Recognises the lack of scientific consensus regarding both the existence and impact of man-made global warming

"Recognises the problems inherent in the politicisation of scientific research

"Calls upon the Federal Government to not take any drastic action to address alleged man made global warming until there is conclusive scientific evidence of its existence.

"Supports the Federal Government's current stance to not ratify the Kyoto Protocol."

The environment and the economy make odd bedfellows. Considerations to both must be in equitable proportions. Unfortunately it is not and we all know which fellows share Mr Howard's bed.

Very briefly:

My own article in response to Mark Latham's second article in the Financial Review of Satarday 17 November may be of interest. It's called "Mark Latham's political Gift to John Howard" and it can be found on Margo Kingston's Web Diary at http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/2195