I think that those who are concerned with climate inertia will do well by expressing their concern in their politics and doing their best to support parties that put that as a concern. In Australia the Greens are the only party that has given the issue the priority I believe it should have so I have joined the Greens and will work for them.

I have to wonder how long it is since you took your last dose of medications?
I suggest you stop believing in blind faith and check up on real science.
Google NIPCC and also SEPP. Have a look at websites such as Carbon Sense Coalition or even the Climate Sceptics political party.

Phoenix94

You could add Moncktons letter to the PM to that list..

http://sppiblog.org/news/lord-monckton-replies-to-australias-canting-ranting-prime-minister

Dear phoenix94,

This is a discussion list not a slanging match. Starting off a post with "I have to wonder how long it is since you took your last dose of medications?" is not reasonable discussion. I think the Greens are quite aware of the real science. Apparently, you disagree.

Because of your insulting response I don't wish to continue.

phoenix94 - gold!

That was hilarious, thank you.

"Over the next 20-30 years, maybe sooner, Saibai and Boigu in the Torres Straits will almost certainly be the first of the permanently inhabited islands to be drowned by rising sea levels."

Well, I won't plan to go there for a holiday in 2040, then. Seriously, if two tiny islands getting waterlogged (maybe) is the most intimidating consequence of AGW you can come up with, why should we spend trillions of dollars trying to mitigate it?

But by all means get an old atlas and look at Saibai and Boigu as they were in, say, 1950; then look at them on Google Earth as they are now. If you can spot any differences due to sea levels rising, please let us know.

I suppose all the economic modeling has failed so now Mike turns his hand to the science fiction models of climate change. Unfortunately this sort of propaganda is being fed to our kids. We know you hate Tony Abbott Mike along with thousands of other Howard haters but you really don't have to make up stories to discredit him, Stick to facts and not fantasy.

“Over the next 20-30 years, maybe sooner, Saibai and Boigu in the Torres Straits will almost certainly be the first of the permanently inhabited islands to be drowned by rising sea levels.”

Obviously, nobody will take notice of a retired economist (no climate qualifications) making a comment like that. He simply doesn’t know what will happen in 20-30 years. Only a climate scientist could make a statement like that; and he would have to prove it.

Pope’s rambling about Tony Abbott being “better known” (by whom and how many?) as the “Mad Monk”, and Nick Minchin being “even madder” further highlights his bitter ignorance and extinguishes any desire to read more of his rubbish.

Mike Pope should stick to something he knows.

Ah another day, another Don Quixote –
mounting his trusty steed of scientific buffoonery and tilting his lance at the AGW windmill.

The sooner the collectivist-infiltrated environmental movement wakes up to the fact that the world has seen through their latest doom-prediction, the sooner they will be on to a new campaign of shock-horror.

Better they get off their arses, get real jobs and work for a living,

instead of suckling off the grants and other government largesse (all funded by taxes), expropriated from the real wealth creating private sector, the better.

Mike Pope is misguided in still believing in man-made climate change. He should be made aware that the arch proponent of anthropogenic global warming, namely the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based its case on falsified information. This is confirmed by the ClimateGate leaked emails exposing the fraudulent behaviour at the British University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit , which was a key contributor to the IPCC case. As realists have known all along, the IPCC does not have any irrefutable scientific evidence that increasing greenhouse gas emissions will cause global warming, droughts, rising sea levels, etc.

Mike Pope is misguided in still believing in man-made climate change. He should be made aware that the arch proponent of anthropogenic global warming, namely the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based its case on falsified information. This is confirmed by the ClimateGate leaked emails exposing the fraudulent behaviour at the British University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit , which was a key contributor to the IPCC case. As realists have known all along, the IPCC does not have any irrefutable scientific evidence that increasing greenhouse gas emissions will cause global warming, droughts, cyclones, rising sea levels, etc.

Finally someone willing to say the N word.

The reality is climate change or nukes.

I'll be voting Green for the first time in the next election, since I see both Labor and the conservatives as equally enslaved by the popular vote. The only reason the Greens have a semblance of independence is that they have no hope of winning an election. Strong support for the Greens is the only thing that will motivate the main parties to defy their constituencies, change their policies and risk electoral damage.
I suspect (like James Lovelock) it's already too late to adequately address AGW and avoid the devastating consequences that are in store. Which, however, leaves the ethical reasons to try. AGW has never just been about us. Nor has it merely been a question of whether human activity is causing climate change. Human activity is indisputably causing planetary devastation. We are decimating species diversity, polluting earth, air and water, destroying the planet's vital organs--forests, oceans, river systems--and monopolising and impoverishing food and all other resources. Even if it was true that withal this human devastation the climate could go blithely on, unaffected and impervious, what of these global obscenities that we commit against the blue planet and its miraculous, perhaps unique, living biosphere?
Of course only ignorant swine could conceive that they may make the entire planet their private sty to roll around in, with no material consequence--certainly with no comprehension of moral or ethical or humanitarian considerations!!
Unfortunately the pigs, so far, are running the farm.

Phoenix94, Leigh, Col Rouge, Raycom and others believe that climate change is not happening or, if it is, it is certainly not down to human activity. But rather than state and support their position, they resort to personal abuse. At least Bigmal offers some additional info – even if it is spurious.

David f is right in complaining that this is hardly debate or good argument.
Shadow Minister succinctly agues the stark choice “climate change or nukes?” But is that the only choice? Could we/should we convert existing coal fired power stations to gas, which has much lower greenhouse emissions, until we can produce our energy needs from clean sources such as geothermal and solar?

Squeers suggests that the only alternative to an inactive government and an impractical opposition is to vote green. If enough people take that advice, the Greens could win enough seats in the Senate to hold the balance of power which would make the Coalition irrelevant and hold the government to account where reducing greenhouse gas emissions is concerned.

Mike Popes article argues that neither government or opposition are willing to do enough to make a difference – but is that true? I think government is doing a lot more than is publicized and that its CPRS, while far from financially efficient, is at least guaranteed to bring down greenhouse gas emissions – or is it? Can the same be said for the opposition approach which is to rely on energy being used more efficiently so that less has to be used, which means burning less coal to produce it?

Copenhagen seems to have agreed that with present day technologies, economic growth can not be achieved without burning fossil fuels. Is that true in the case of Australia? And, as Shadow Minister says, what about Nuclear? Isn’t it only an outdated ALP hang-up and scare campaign that prevents us from generating electricity from nuclear? Ziggy Switkowski tells us that modern nuclear power stations are efficient, produce very little waste and can be built on any scale at almost any location. So why don’t we?

Yeah, me again

All very well for Pope to claim that Rudd has squibbed it at Copenhagen but what would he have done – what would you do – to make a better impression, let alone get a better result? Rudd didn’t falsify the level of our emissions, nor did John Howard. They both argued that we should not be penalized for emissions which are beyond our control such as those caused by bushfires. A perfectly reasonable position.

Sure, the government did itself no favours by making an “unconditional” offer to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a meaningless 5% but it has since given an undertaking that it will do what is needed to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2C. Problem is that Wong is still telling us that we (which means the government, not us) are committed to doing “no more and no less than what the rest of the world does”. And in the current state of play that leaves most people totally confused. Seems to me that “we” are committed to doing sweet …….?

More rubbish from the alarmists.If Pope is fair dinkum he should back all these claims with a bet say $50,000.You watch them run since the longer history of climate change does not back them.They have to ,"Hide the decline" Those Islands in the Pacific were sinking due to plates moving and not sea level changes.More lies.

JonJay - could I humbly suggest an alternative to one of your statements "Greens could win enough seats in the Senate to hold the balance of power which would make the ALP irrelevant"

The way the ALP is behaving and shoveling spin and playing games, eventually the average Australian will have had a belly full of that crap and vote them out for being smart ass bullshyt artists. (Fair suck of the sauce bottle mate, cobber, me old china!)

Poor davidf, so thin skinned, he thought phoenix94 was poking fun at him and took his bat and ball and left in an awful huff, after announcing it of course. That's what I thought was so funny, the instant knotting of his knickers, and the quick prance off stage.

No davidf, it's not a discussion site, it's an opinion site, and here you need a thick skin, it tends to get a little "rough" at times, but we all expect that.

Well I'm sure the Greens are full of princesses anyway, so he'll fit in well. Don't worry about the economy, health, defence, infrastructure or education you green voters, just worry about plastic bags, coal fired power stations and whale botherers. It pretty well defines gullible fools doesn't it. All their votes end up with the ALP anyway, so they are really just a faction of the great Labor movement.

I'd thought it was obvious long before Copenhagen that Rudd and co weren't serious about climate change. They were willing - eager - to negotiate away any teeth their CPRS and ETS had and blame the Liberals for doing what Labor wanted all along (to stem loss of votes to the Greens?). No negotiating with Greens I note; that would mean changing policy to be more in line with what climate science is telling us is required.

Of course it's a step forward to even have the issue acknowledged but our Labor government is overseeing the biggest expansion of fossil fuel mining and export Australia has seen and uses nonexistent Carbon Capture and Storage as the excuse to do so. Much more worthy technologies like hot rock geothermal languish whilst R&D funding is channelled to the biggest greenwash scheme of all. I notice even the fossil fueled energy industry won't invest in CCS of it's own accord.

Meanwhile all the voices, loud and insistent as they are, saying science is wrong, it's a conspiracy, a hot spike in a warming trend proves it's cooling, someone said something inappropriate in a private email etc just aren't credible compared to the world's leading scientific institutions. Given the wealth and power of the interests that want AGW to be wrong and just go away the contrarian cause still can't get credible science published, or demonstrate the existence of any conspiracy but their own one of denial. They can't get published in peer reviewed science or get accepted by mainstream science because their arguments don't stand up to genuine sceptical (ie scientific) scrutiny. To dismiss mainstream science in favour of the tissue thin arguments of climate science denial is to bet everything on science's losers.

Amicus, what I said was “the Greens could win enough seats in the Senate to hold the balance of power which would make the Coalition (NOT the ALP) irrelevant”.

But seriously, could any government rely on the Greens to support their legislation? My guess is yes – at a price where the environment was concerned and, as you point out, Green preferences usually go to the ALP anyway.

The next election, not that far off, is likely to be a referendum on climate change and what we should do about it. Rudd can certainly make it one by calling a double dissolution. Will he? Mind you, if Rudd thinks he has a shoe-in, he should think again and start explaining to the electorate what he is doing and how it will affect the climate. Oh yeah, and how it will affect their hip pocket.

What I want to know is how Rudd will live up to his commitment to keep temperature increase by 2100 to no more than 2 degrees when he says their 2020 target for reducing emissions need only be 5%. Climate scientist will tell us it can’t be done without reducing emissions by 2020 to a level which is 30% or more below 1990 levels.

Shadow Minister Hunt reckons it can be done by being more efficient. I reckon that’s just a stunt Mr Hunt. Scientists v politicians is “no contest”.

Ken Fabos makes a telling point, the failure of climate change skeptics to get theories published in a reputable scientific journal and peer reviewed. I am open to the view that science is wrong. It is all very well to simply assert this, as those who deny AGW and climate change often do - but quite another to persuasively show the science is wrong.

Much easier to show that the Rudd Government is disingenuous and the Opposition is equally determined not to compromise the production and use of fossil fuels.

As the obvious results of global warming start to effect the whole world with extreme weather events, melting of the polar icecap, the Greenland ice cap, Antartic ice shelves, glaciers melting all over the world and sensible rational people try to take some action to reduce the effects as an insurance, the denialists stream of garbled facts and vituperative insults are reaching a hysterical pitch.
I am now convinced that they do so because apart from the ones that are being actively financed by the corporations with a economic interest in stopping the move towards reversing the greenhouse gas escalating, the rest of the pack are unable to come to face the thought of global warming and deny it as a defense.
If they had any intelligence at all, it would be obvious to them that taking action now would be like insuring their house against disaster. It does cost a small amount to pay a premium but if there is a disaster it is well worth it. They would most likely not abandon insurance “because it is not going to happen” but would keep it up even if there were only a remote possibility they would need it.

Sarnian

I couldn't agree more. We all know why deniers and doubters can not argue on the basis of fact or empirical evidence, except by resorting to distortion, misrepresentation or downright porkies.

From Sarnia? I'm from Riduna.

Jon Jay, I was born in Caesarea but my family are all from Riduna & Sarnia. how to get in touch? Phone? 0362950881