Isn't it ironic that as the so-called scientific consensus on global warming collapses, we are still urged to act to prevent it? These facts are established: rising atmospheric carbon levels follow rather than cause periods of warming (acknowledged by the UK government in a recent court case); atmospheric carbon levels have been rising over the last decade with no increase in global temperatures; the current solar cycle looks weak and similarly weak cycles have been seen at the start of periods of cooling. Nothing is certain but if we want to worry about something, we should think about the danger to human beings that a prolonged period of cooling would represent.

You did not mention the need to stop population growth, without which all other actions to reduce (per capita) carbon output become meaningless. Once population grows you wind up back where you started in terms of total emissions - but with a reduced ability to subsequently reduce emissions further.

It's not surprising that Minister Wong didn't see eye to eye with the Garnaut report. Obviously the Federal government is not going to raise electricity prices when interest, food and fuel prices are all going up at the same time. It's going to require thinking outside the box, like extra incentives to cut back on electricity or fuel use. For example I suggest throwing the problem back to electricity and gas retailers to take a 'Carbon Cops' approach to customers. What they lose in reduced kilowatt hours sold they can make up in bonuses. Several kinds of micro-management may add up. I'm not impressed by lame copouts such as paying PNG not to cut down forest.

However Garnaut's main point remains valid that if we decide to postpone emissions cuts now the pain will be worse later, if not for this generation then those ahead. We have to decarbonise in any case since world oil production has peaked and even supposedly limitless coal is getting expensive. No doubt the loonie fringe will tell us there is no problem.

What a light weight piece of guff. Garnaut was ignored because his report was so far below expected professional standards that he would be doing a stretch in Long Bay if he had made such mistakes in a prospectus.

Garnaut neatly side stepped the most important issue that blows his fantasy right out of the water. All he gave us was a load of weasel words to justify leaving out consideration of all the CO2 reduction measures that are already in plan. It was the only way to justify his moronic call to limit emissions by 90%.

China has 86 nuclear power plants set down for the 2011-2015 five year plan alone. That is one new 1000mW plant every three weeks. And they all include the capacity to boost output to 1400mW if needed.

And it has recently been revealed that the two new coal fired plants each week claim, that the greens have been scaring the kids with, are actually replacing old inefficient ones. Last year they closed 553 such high emission stations (10 each week) and replaced them with new ones with much better emission outcomes.

So there was absolutely no justification for Garnaut to adopt the thoroughly discredited A1F1 emission scenario. This is the particular piece of IPCC cretinism that assumes that the average Chinese, Indian, Indonesian and Pakistani will adopt the USA urban sprawl emission footprint (19.5t CO2/capita) instead of the Swedish/Swiss/French (5.4t-6.0t CO2/capita) development model.

Garnaut was old news before he even started.

It was an interim report.

The Garnaut Report indicates that we will need to reduce our emissions of carbon by 90% by 2050. I’ve advocated that for a decade, so to take Professor Ross Garnaut’s report seriously, the Prof himself has to be serious and consistent with his report. 90% carbon emission reduction can’t be achieved without fundamental change in the attitudes of some intellectuals who hold onto their economic theories regardless of the physical reality. As well, Prof Garnaut doesn’t realise that there’s no time left because the level of carbon in the atmosphere is already too high so those reductions must be achieved much sooner.
It’s obvious that people the world over have managed, with incredibly clever science and technology, to use most of the ecological and mineral assets of the earth leaving too little for our children to live in the future in the style they have been accustomed to. But worse still, we may leave a world unfit for human life.
Our strong adherence to a culture of economic growth combined with an expectation that something will “turn up” to save the day is a danger. A danger so strong that these false beliefs may prevail and prevent the imperative actions needed.
Since the industrial revolution, changes have accelerated but in the same direction, that is more affluence, disregard of the environment and an increasing belief in an independence from the constraints imposed by nature.
Today affluence is at its peak, it has grown for two centuries powered by fossil fuels and intellectually supported by a belief based on perpetual growth. Affluence is at its peak because oil, the irreplaceable fuel that every activity requires, has peaked and inevitably, the global market economy will collapse into a permanent depression once fuel supplies deplete - unless we educate towards sustainability and survival.
Economics, the dismal science has an impossible goal of permanent growth, which is irrational and unscientific. It also contradicts science’s fundamental law of thermodynamics. The present attempts to bypass nature’s constraints are failing. We need to evaluate our activities worldwide holistically