Good article.

The author: "While 2C doesn't sound like much, it is often cited by scientists as a dangerous threshold which we should not cross."

Such a change would indeed be devastating to the environment and to agriculture and would hit us with a huge economic and humanitarian cost. Forests and farm lands cant just grow legs and move to follow the climate. Alpine and coastal areas in particular have nowhere to go.

a. Garnaut is an economist giving advice to Government. He is not a leader, and does not have to “show leadership” or spout his “belief in social change” – if he has such beliefs.

b. Who says the IPCC is made up of “the world’s best scientists”? The true believers? The media?

c. How is it that scientists with qualifications and experience equal to the presumed world’s best, and who don’t hold the human cause view of climate change, are totally ignored, or sneered at, by the media and politicians?

d. The planet has cooled for the past 10 years.

e. “… preventing climate disaster…”? What arrogance! Nothing humans can do will prevent climate change, whether or not that change is ‘disastrous” to humans or beneficial.

f. “Australia must reduce greenhouse pollution as quickly as possible to the lowest levels possible…” is the typically naïve call from young lefties who have never had responsibility for anything, including themselves. What will they do if they get their way, and the Australian economy is wrecked because of the myth of human cause, and the hardship caused by mad scientists and their CO2 obsessions makes absolutely no difference to the climate ? They will, of course, do nothing and go onto their next silly cause, and let others try to clean up the social disaster brought on by panic-stricken politicians who listen to whoever talks the longest and loudest.

Climate change is real; the ‘solutions’ are absolute rubbish. The CO2 waffle is an excellent example of the well known fact that, if the same material is repeated often enough, most people come to believe it.

Mr. Right: "What will they do if they get their way, and the Australian economy is wrecked because of the myth of human cause, and the hardship caused by mad scientists and their CO2 obsessions makes absolutely no difference to the climate ?"

Mad scientists? I'm sorry, but the following top-level science institutions, which include the national science academies of the G8+5 nations, agree that the current regime of climate change is human caused:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NASA, CSIRO, InterAcademy Council (IAC), the national science academies of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, National Research Council (US), European Science Foundation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Federation of American Scientists, World Meteorological Organization, Royal Meteorological Society (UK), Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, International Union for Quaternary Research, Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, International Union of Geological Sciences, European Geosciences Union, Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences, Geological Society of America, American Geophysical Union, American Astronomical Society, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, Engineers Australia (The Institution of Engineers Australia), Federal Climate Change Science Program (US), American Statistical Association, International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences, American Association of State Climatologists, The Network of African Science Academies

So you have to ask: who is mad here?

What the business lobby (howling doom and gloom over the small impost of a new cost of doing business and scuttling any chance we might of had at some kind of measured and reasoned response) don't seem to understand is that the economic impacts of climate change within a short space of time without decisive action will rent asunder their profits as well as the planet's climate and ecosystems. Where is smart business in all of this? They need to bring to heel those voices that have their own profits in mind rather than the greater good. At times like this one can't help but think the old prophecy about the meek inheriting the earth may well come to pass and that perhaps the planet will be much better off without those who care more about profit than think carefully about loss - in all its forms. It's about perspective and relativity. And business, in the big picture and longer term with 550 ppm E + scenarios, is small fry indeed. Talk about soiling/despoiling ones own nest. Perhaps in the next age, if humans are still around, there'll be some changes to the way we do things.

The latest Garnaut Review is a closer reflection on the reality of the situation.

The 1% that Australia works on reducing will have absolutely no effect unless the rest of the world comes on board, and so the targets of 550ppm is a reflection of the futility of unilateral action.

The "small impost" on business that Angela B refers to, will have the effect of making manufacturing in Australia uncompetitive, and so will move off shore to where there is no carbon tax and have no effect on climate change.

I guess if an opinion piece was from someone funded from an oil company, you could only expect a bias.

Since you're both from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, is it fair to ask what your motives are, since you seem to be almost in a panic about Garnault's latest announcement? It was meant to be good news wasn't it? (I'm probably wrong about that, often am I'm told.) It's kind of middle of the road news, neither extremely good or extremely bad.

It sounds like you're dissappointed that the speech was not really bad news and the world's going to end and we're all going to die tomorrow. Would that be fair?

Will this speech of Garnault's take the wind out of your sails so to speak, and reduce the membership prospects and growth of your organisation? You're both founders of the AYCC is that correct?

I guess the cynical amongst us could say this(extreme?)bias is expected from your side of the AGW industry.