Undidly and Belly,

Having spent a significant time working overseas in various countries, I can sum up how much air time Australia gets outside of natural disasters:

Zip
Zero
Nada
Blow all.

Everyone is waiting to see what the US, Japan, India and China do, and what tiny Australia does is inconsequential. If Australia puts a price on carbon now, when it comes to world wide negotiation, its hand will have been played, and Australia can only contribute by offering more.

The other issue is that if Australia taxes carbon and reduces consumption, it will lower carbon prices world wide and nearly all the savings will be taken up by others.

What I would support is a negotiated mechanism that is ready for implementation, that can be used as a bargaining point for world wide negotiations.

Going it alone while helping the wealthy greens feel smug, hurts mainly working class Australians and Australian business, while doing very little for the world.

Carbon pollution has become an obsession whose cause has been totally blamed upon humans. Next we will have taxes on the number of persons living in a home, the number of pets we keep and on farmers on the number of animals they run, or the fields they mow, the cars and machinery we use. All human activity produces carbon into the atmosphere, so that is why we need carbon absorbers i.e. Trees that love carbon. Come up with a policy to turn the deserts into forests anstead of taxing the population. You would think the Greens would have a greening policy for the deserts.

I Philo believe we should grow more trees, plant,for a while three for each we cut down.
You are aware that this is a world wide part of cutting our carbon footprint already?
However we need to understand while we will continue to use this vital part of carbon reduction, while the worlds emitters will continue to fund it, trees do not grow in the ground you want turned into Forrest's.
If we look to greens for advice on any thing we may be in worse trouble, latest output from the mad house is tax our cars,imprison us,kill the country life.
Only thing I am less interested in is SM,s impersonation of the child of Christopher Pyne and Julie Bishop.

Any action on carbon dioxide in whatever way is pointless until the
IPCC reruns its computer models using the now available realistic data
on the amount of fossil fuels available for burning.

The Global Energy Systems Group at Uppsala University have produced the
data and until the IPCC reports on what they believe would be the
temperature rise for those new figures, what is the point of even discussing AGW ?

It way well mean that AGW is a non event or it may not make much
difference.
The IPCC have not done anything about the new data as far as I can see
which might mean they do not want to know.

Until we know the results everyone is scrambling in the dark.

Of course our power costs are going up, but it is not because of carbon taxes which haven't come into being yet. It is because we are living under government legislation that requires the electricity grid system to give priority to "renewable/sustainable energy' such as solar and wind power. Both are perceived as being "green". These sources of energy may be green but the step of transforming their energy to electricity using wind farms and solar panels etc most certainly is not "green".
Apart from substantial emissions and toxic waste produced in manufacturing and setting up the plant, both these sources are extremely weak and intermittent being available only about 30% of the time when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing at an appropriate velocity. This makes it very difficult for the power grid operators to respond to power demand.
Consequently the operators have been forced to establish the same generating capacity using fast-response gas-powered turbines to stabilize the grid. Hydro-power would be better for this purpose but Australia doesn't have the water resources to contemplate this method.
The huge cost of setting up the carbon dioxide emitting gas turbine generators is a direct result of the legislation to give priority to wind and solar power generation. For Australia there is essentially no carbon or cost benefit by opting for wind and solar sources for power.

We have witness during the lifetime of many contributors to this and similar sites, the mass extension of deserts on most planets, by the simple operation of gutting trees down
There have been millions of acres of farmland becoming eroded and useless because of us practising imprudent agriculture practices, mainly because of greed.
We have seen our wonderful tropical forests destroy, turning the country side into a wasteland.
We have destroyed the forests in Europe with acid rain, caused by polluting manufacture practices.
We have seen the beautiful hills and dales in England and Wales destroyed, along with the village and people with the production and use of coal. A practice I am sure is responsible for more deaths in the last two or three centuries than anything else.
If we have managed to do the above, why is it hard to believe the release of carbon into the atmosphere be any different.
Yes the climate is always changing, as I believe most things on this planet does. What is different is the speed climate change is occurring.
As we are not clairvoyant, only time well prove who is right
Our descendants will not thank us if we do nothing and climate change does occur.
If we are wrong, the removal of fossil fuels will make the environment a cleaner and nicer place to live in