I think acceptance of sacrifice (eg expensive electricity) will occur when a majority are affected. The middle class see their peers lose homes to firestorms, floods and mortgage defaults but enough survive to uphold the status quo. I think the Brits call this attitude 'I'm alright Jack'. As I said in an OLO comment yesterday there may be escaping some effects of AGW but there will be no escaping Peak Oil. A double whammy could occur when water shortages and farm energy shortages (diesel, urea) occur in sync. The middle class will be faced with barely affordable food and fuel bills. They will demand action and will give little time to those promoting business as usual.

The good/bad news is that I think this BAU revolt will occur in the next five years. For example prevailing anti-nuclear attitudes may fade to the background. Anti-immigration views may harden. Whether it is too late to maintain basic living standards is not yet clear but there must be some least worst path out of this dilemma. Now wait for the usual suspects to tell us it's-gunna-be-OK.

I note that this article was written before the release of the UEA CRU emails and data files.
It appears that one of the main temperature reconstructions that the IPCC relies on has been a mishmash of bad programming and fudging.
With the release of the inside info I think that it will be harder for the alarmists to convince the general public that there is a urgent need for action.
In fact it is the rush to Copenhagen that is sending warning signals to the BS detectors of the general public.
Cant wait for the rest of the CRU data to hit the public blogsphere.
Maybe it will have GISS data files as well.
Thank God for little whistleblowers!

What's the collective noun for catastrophists?

We need one to describe the collection of fatal types all flying to Copenhagen next week, hopefully doing something there so we can get on with life knowing the world is "saved". I know I know, they are all FLYING to Copenhagen .. what hypocracy, and our Kevin will fly his private jet with a planeful of worshippers, the Canberra Press gallery as they are also known.

If they don't get an agreement, does this mean we have to endure more doom stories and fudging of data till the next UN opportunity to get money in a year's time?

Even though most all the alarmists are screaming that if we don't get agreement, the world will burn, reefs will dissappear etc, they all seem prepared to do it again next year - won't it be too late?

If it's not too late - why not? Does that mean all the extremism now is just more exagerations.

Yes, exageration overload is what we have from the fatalists. So much BS, so much of you money, so little time to get it.

let's hear a solid round of applause for the hackers outing the global warming hoax and for the whistle blowers now coming to the fore.
Al Gore has made his hundreds of millions of dollars on jetting all around the world telling all the non-scientists and easily persuaded that we need to pour billions into his (unrevealed) investments to save the planet.

now Crudd and his collective sillies are demanding to go to Copenhagan with a plan to cost Australians billions so he can strut the world stage and show everyone the dills they really are.

The biggest hoax this world has seen is religion.
So any hoax about global warming will have to stand in line.
Instead of saying what it's not, how about telling us what it is.
There is deffinate change going on, so what is it.

What will it take to rally people behind the need to take strong action on cutting carbon emissions?

Well, that's a very simple question to answer:

Apocalypse!