Well said Teddy Bear. You have perfeclty summarised the political environment and the feelings and objectives of many people.

Philo states isolated facts to try and shore up his view that there is no man-made global warming. He quotes facts out of context, for example:
'Mars is cold and its atmosphere is mostly CO2' but fails to mention that it has very little atmosphere (1% of Earth's pressure) and is much further from the sun.
'Venus has a lot of CO2 but its temerature is stable' - fails to mention it's also very hot (467 deg C), also has a lot of sulphuric acid, a cooling gas and is closer the sun (so what does all of that prove?)
'Water vapour has a much greater heating effect than CO2 ad there's more of it' - fails to mention that it returns to the ocean as rain in days where CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years

We should all be wary of facts stated out of context. They can be as dangerous as lies, particularly when spouted by unqualified climate deniers. These people purport to know more than the 97% of peer reviewed scientists who assure us that man made global warming is fact.
Why are the deniers not prepared to trust the full analysis of the scientific establishment on climate change but are prepared to believe those isolated scientific facts that suit them?

OK Shadow Minister a carbon price is a tax; it is a tax reform, in much the same way as your party's GST was. As you well know and do not say, tax reforms are reallocations of how and where tax is levied, they are not simply 'great big new taxes'. There are scores of taxes under various names from income tax, GST to stamp duties and various levies; most of us know that they all are part of the present tax system. Those who aren't clear on this can brush up by checking Wikipedia of the Treasury website.

Your party's current alternative to a carbon price / tax / trading scheme (all amount to the same thing done in different ways) is for the taxpayer to pay industry to reduce their emissions, apparently without making us pay more (i.e. new) tax. Sounds like magic to me. When are you going to spell out how you propose to do this? No-one, economists included, believes it can be done. Perhaps you should admit that you along wth big resource industries who pay next to nothing (5-6c/ kWh) for their energy, want to do nothing. Paying about 3c more under a carbon tax, might reduce their huge profits, at least 50% of which go to rich tycoons overseas.

When are you going to show the electorate how you propose to reduce emissions without costing the taxpayer? Perhaps it would be better to stop pretenting and admit that you like Philo are a global warming denier?

1,000 years ago Greenland was as the name suggests, a Green Land of grasses and trees. Wonder - Why? Because the Earth was warmer then and there was less Ice which allowed those from the North to sail to its shores!

I suggest we cap the energy of volcanoes and we might have an answer to Global warming, our energy generation and reduction of sulfur dioxide entering the atmosphere.

I am not denying Global warming just that the highrst % of it is not caused by humans, and we cannot control it.

We are in agreement, Philo and others, that the world has warmed and cooled for many reasons. I suspect that the 97% of climate scientists may be aware of that too but they say this latest 'blip' of 1 deg and rising to 2, 3 , 4, 5 degrees if unchecked is the result of man made greenhouse gas emissions (collectively referred to as CO2e).

I don't need them to tell me that the consequences of 2 plus deg. warming are very unpleasant and costly indeed. I have experienced more than 50 summers and the last two have been the worst; around Perth they were more than 2 deg. warmer (max and min) than the average of about 100 years of records. As a result of these record hot years the west coast and the East coast had extremes of weather as predicted by the climate science. Driest seasons on record followed (when coupled with the La Nina weather cycle) by floods and tornadoes like the small one that ripped out 2 foot thick trees and detroyed my neighbour's roof. And this is nothing to what we are in for when it really starts to warm up.

If you doubt the link between CO2 and warming check out the 'hockey stick' graphs by Mann and other mainstream climate scientists.