I was in Safway checking out the Veggies , notable was the reduction in stock and the prices , the reduction in stock is the result of the sky rocketing prices ; this means many people have dumped veggies from their shopping list .
How long will it take for Health issues to show up in Health costs ?
Farm Carbon tax will offset these Health costs ?

I find it particularly interesting that Economists are AGW alarmists ?

Where were these Guys pre Financial Crisis ?

Surely Economists would be eminently qualified to raise the alarm long before the collapse of the entire worlds Financial System ?

Why should we allow them any credibility with AGW ?

rstuart the reasons for the complacency of the oil majors (Shell, BP, Exxon etc) is an amalgam of opinions in articles that have appeared on The Oil Drum website. I'd paraphrase leading theories as follows;
1) they don't believe oil has peaked
2) they can make big profits on less oil
3) they will buy out any new winning technology when it arrives
4) like Detroit they can't think that far ahead.

Should Rudd still be PM when the the liquid fuel crisis hits I'm sure he'll make an exemption for coal-to-liquids under the ETS, even though overall CO2 emissions (process + tailpipe) will be more than double that of petrol.

Taswegian,

Thanks.

Out of your list, (d) is the winner for me. Oil companies make money out of finding and selling oil. If they can't do that, they will die rather than change. Just like the newspapers companies that are about to suffer that same fate. The newspapers aren't going to turn into Internet companies. They are just going to die. With a few notable exceptions (Nokia, GE spring to mind), it seems companies - or rather the people that run them, can't change technologies.

That doesn't explain why it hasn't happened, however. The companies may not move between technologies - but capital does. Yet I haven't read about a single Entrepreneur working on getting a FT plant up and running. As I recall, the FT process becomes economic at about USD$50/barrel. Today Oil is trading at USG$80/barrel. Australia with its coal reserves and engineering expertise is one of the obvious places to do it.

Yet, I don't see any activity on that front. Not a peep. I don't understand.

Tom Tidler,
More reading is required.

The carbon soak (sea) has taken in so much Carbon that it has changed the PH to levels in some part where corals etc are on the bring of mass die out.

Any more CO2 uptake by the sea will exacerbate this. The consequences will mean a series of failures already observed the failing of the sea ice algea which feeds the krill which is the basis of most fish life in the sea. The consequences go from there.

Think of the sea as a bucket in the middle of your lounge CO2 as water. Water on the carpet (our environment) can ruin it.

We turn on the tap it drips into the bucket. Evaporation take water out. Providing the natural evaporation = input, no problem.
Over time the bucket has filled and is now about to spill onto the carpet.

Do we look at the bucket ans say well its 20 litres therefore we can continue to pour water into the bucket and not expect trouble with the carpet because the drops are less than 20 litres, like you are suggesting?

The truth is the change in PH is evidence that it's already spilling over and wrecking our environment.

Of course it's not that simple because we are buggering the sea in other ways too.

The ph in the oceans varies because of different temperatures depths widths and a million other conditions. It simply show up more in the shallow tropics (where the coral is).

I hope this answers your question.

Amazing, but all too familiar - a seriously good news story and everyone misses the point.

If you agree we're causing global warming, this says the price is not high. Let's get on with it. Let's really clobber the pollies with the message.

If you don't believe "AGW", there's still a good message. We can save money by cutting the most wasteful uses of energy. Why not do that?

There's a stronger reason that the article didn't mention. Our assault on the Earth is not confined to CO2 emissions. There's degradation and loss of soil, fresh water, biodiversity, forests etc., there's global chemical pollution. Even without GW, these will soon stop our mad destruction of Earth's resources. The effort to reduce emissions (for a small cost) will have multiple positive spin-offs - it will reduce our other assaults as well. We can do even better, and reduce our wastefulness of all resources, not just energy.

See my post at
http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/the-urgency-and-the-opportunity-2/

Optimism anyone?

Examinator - thanks for your comments. They miss my main point, the dangers of reducing GHG emissions below the current uptakes by the biota in the form of food for all forms of life.

Where is your evidence for your claim that "change in PH is evidence that it's already spilling over and wrecking our environment", when there is none that I'm aware of. That mob at AIMS-Townsville has yet to show any consistent decrease in pH anywhere.

I agree when you say "The pH in the oceans varies because of different temperatures depths widths and a million other conditions" but not when you claim "It simply shows up more in the shallow tropics (where the coral is)". When and where are daily records kept of pH? Certainly not at Townsville AFAIK.