I think a couple of points need to be made
1) public opinion will change with dramatic weather events
2) there are good reasons to decarbonise anyway.

The current Pacific La Nina has brought a cool rainy spring and summer to Australia which makes steady warming seem less plausible. There will be a rebound effect and a scorcher may be only a year or two away. Suddenly AGW will become all the rage again. Even now tundra and seafloor mud in the northern hemisphere is releasing worrisome amounts of methane. On the local scene a place like Cairns could experience a mini-Katrina, a major city could have an unprecedented water crisis or coral bleaching could turn away tourists. Therefore I wouldn't be lulled into complacency by the cool summer.

On the carbon supply front while Australia will soon import most of oil (currently around 50%) world crude oil production is tipped to shrink 30% by 2015, lower prices notwithstanding. Australia has a lot of coal, coal seam methane and natural gas but will be under increasing pressure to share it with northern Asia and Europe. Therefore it is prudent to start shifting away from fossil fuels well before it becomes a crisis. The now pathetic emissions trading scheme would have created a mechanism to shift the energy mix from high carbon to low carbon sources. Under the myopic Rudd vision we will get both climate nasties and energy price shocks when we could have prepared better and helped lessen the impact.

“Uncertainty pervades the entire field of climate change. Scepticism should therefore be the natural attitude of any intelligent student of the topic.”

If the author is saying that people who are not sceptical about the popular view of climate change (man-made), then he is his right: the emission control freaks are definitely not intelligent.

“… policy-makers often have to act without knowing what is happening or what will work.” And that is just what the Rudd Government is doing to (not for) Australia. Having just about ruined Australian industry – they didn’t say anything about manufactures being driven offshore when they were in Opposition , and other Labor Governments have done some of the driving – they seem intent on finishing off whatever we have left, while India, China and other big polluters carry on as normal.

As for the “contrary evidence” referred to by the author, there is plenty of it – i.e. that CO2 is not the bogey it is claimed to be, and that climate change is a natural occurrence. We have people listing off scientists who are behind the CO2 mumbo-jumbo as if they were crickets scores, but completely overlooking those scientists who believe that climate change is a natural and unchangeable by man. The lack of recognition of the natural climate change advocates is caused by what Paul Kelly referred to as the “media agenda on climate change” which has effectively gagged people they don’t want heard.

The permits to be issued by the Rudd Government are permits to pollute anyway. The idea might be for them to lift their games so that they don’t have to pay for permits, but all they will do, in reality, is keep on polluting (which won’t matter that much) and put up their prices to cover the permits. Some permits will even be free!

Life under the Left and green ratbags has become virtual, not real, life.

Bottom line. If advocates for combating global warming are wrong the worst thing that can happen is that we end up in a cleaner world. If they are right and we do nothing we are in real trouble.

Yes! we need to be sceptical of the hardliners and political gurus who have for ever put forward snake oil solutions to real problems. While most now accept that it's not global warming we have to worry about but climate change; it is important that we keep focussed on global health. Global health is not just having enough water and appropriate energy souces it is about ensuring a continuing improvement in living standards for all. The climate has been changing ever since we have had weather and some of the changes require we are more adaptable than we are now. However we have to maintain global health in all its aspects and not allow the "Henny Penny the sky is falling" gurus to distract us from the major task of managing this planet and its resources for the benefit of all mankind.The solution put forward by the Rudd government is appropriate from a political, economic and social position but what else can you ask of government?

Taswegian writes "The current Pacific La Nina has brought a cool rainy spring and summer to Australia which makes steady warming seem less plausible."

AGW believers at the moment are having to face the fact that the HADCRUT3 moving average of global temperature is now trending downwards, following several relatively cool years. La Nina is now being invoked to save the AGW hypothesis, despite the fact that the current La Nina effect is weak according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Equally suspiciously, we are now over a year into a solar minimum which shows no sign of ending. There is a real possibility that the IPCC consensus underestimates the sensitivity of the earth's climate to solar variation while overestimating the sensitivity to CO2. Richard Mulgan is right to remind us that the science on this is not yet settled.

A great article - the best I have seen on the climate change debate.

In other news, its possible the IPCC's projections on rising CO2 levels are wrong for for another reason:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081218-coal-waning-worlds-reserves-may-be-nearly-expired.html