http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/page5324.asp

“If you are using an alternate piece of software…”

If it’s good enough for the Offical Website for the British Monarchy…

Would the answer have anything to do with:

(A) Robert Smith, and/or

(B) Ronald Reagan?

For anyone who is interested in the debate surrounding global warming and are, like myself, p-ssed off with reading unreferenced opinion pieces and the litany of equally unreferenced comments that are always due to follow, fear not. There is a place where sources of data are considered and logged, discussion is encouraged and in the end, the false information is held up for what it is. This magical place is called Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

If you do not find this page to be accurate, change it, but be sure to include some good proof or your amendment will likely be tossed in the rubbish bin where it belongs until there’s reason to believe it.

Reactionaries persist in trying to portray climate change as a left-right issue. It’s nothing of the sort. The division is between the rent-seekers who want to continue the subsidies that we are all paying to them for their carbon-intensive activities - involuntarily, through market distortions and the costs of climate change - and those who want polluters to pay for what they’re doing. It’s economically - not to mention morally - straightforward. Opponents of an emissions trading scheme want to perpetuate an economically-flawed model that is massively distorting our economy in their favour. But as we’ve seen, the Right is no fonder of the efficient operation of markets than the Left - especially not when their main source of political funding is from those who benefit most from current arrangements.

“Alternate means “by turns;” alternative (1590) means “offering a choice.”“

so the adjective is 520 years old, in the sense Bernard used it.

You’re not conflating two completely separate issues are you?

” Science is fundamentally about questioning and falsifying hypotheses. The causes of climate change have been hijacked by politics, and a “say so all of us” which has only a profound nuisance value for scientific enquiry. Science has become a business since the “privatisation” of universities. Climate change may be due to human pollutants, but we have now entered an “age of embarrassment” where it becomes nigh impossible to maintain a rational scepticism ready to admit new evidence, when even to begin to do so attracts the charges of denialism etc. This kind of thing belongs with a medieval priesthood and not a post-modern scientific process.”

If you think it is unecessary to have a debate now Mr. Keane……late this year and early next year should be fun. If Rudd takes your attitude it will be a single term government.

“But China and India aren’t doing anything.”

The simple fact is that if we shut down every factory in Australia, turned off every power station, junked every vehicle - in fact, if we executed EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN AUSTRALIA, then the displace CO2 emissions would be made up by China ALONE in less than six months.

Yes, that’s right. The rate of growth of China’s CO2 emissions is more than double that of Australia’s total yearly emissions. Check on the UN’s own website yourself if you don’t believe me!

“We’ve benefited from 200 years of carbon production. We have a moral obligation to acknowledge this, especially when we can afford to do it.”

Western guilt is stock-in-trade for the Left when it wants an emotional rather than logical response.

“Major trading partners like Europe and New Zealand have emissions trading schemes already.”

But the European scheme is a farce. It allowed for more carbon credit than were actually being produced! The bottom fell out of the market because there was no artificial shortage created - and an artificial shortage is what is needed to keep these bogus markets afloat.

“The only scientifically credible dispute over global warming now is whether we’ll be totally stuffed in thirty years or fifty years. Every time the evidence is re-considered, the scenarios get worse.”

Yet world temperatures dropped by 0.7 degrees last year. Global Warming?

“Our emissions might be small in total but we are one of the highest per-capita emitters and major exporter of carbon-intense coal. “

And the Trinidanians are the worst, if we are going to use per capita statistics. Shame on you naughty Trinidad! Or perhaps we need to import 100 million people to bring the average down a bit?

How can the Green Left seriously argue this point (unless it is more bourgeois guilt-worship) when the core point of their argument is that it is the QUANTUM of CO2 in the atmosphere, not the per capita output, which is creating AGW.

Which takes me back to the original point. If you wiped evey trace of human civilisation off the face of Australia, it would not make the slightest bit of difference to global CO2 level, thanks largely to the exceptional growth rate in China. What we do in Australia means nothing. Nothing.

There is a simple solution.

Instead of removing taxes on fuel give the tax money back to the motorist but require that the motorist spends the money on renewable energy resources. If the petrol companies can create a system to give us four cents a litre discount they can also create a system to give the taxes back to the motorist instead of the government. An electronic market
place where people can spend their returned taxes is easy to create and those that do not want to spend their returned taxes on renewables can sell the tagged money to someone who wants to. The money could be spent on solar panels, windfarms, geothermal wells, solar thermal plants, plants to build hybrid cars, insulation, light rail, or any other infrastructure to reduce greenhouse gases. The effect of the system would be a reduction in the net price of petrol and instead of giving taxes to multinationals taxpayers would end up owning renewable assets.

That is, we have a problem of getting investments in renewable energy resources. We know markets are the best way to allocate money. We know governments are bad at investing so instead of inventing artificial products like emissions permits and using a market in emission permits to drive investment in renewables we drive investments in renewables by giving the population the money and let them use the existing market in investments to reduce or save polluting energy. Note the money is not to be spent on renewable energy but on greenhouse gas saving infrastructure.

This approach is simple and could get underway tomorrow with the stroke of a pen and would not require any special legislation.

If we invested $3000 per person per year to renewable infrastructure which would earn ongoing income of between 5 and 10% we would have zero emissions in 10 years and a wealthy more equitable society.

If you want to ‘do good’, then do it on your own time and with your own money. Don’t conscript me into your cause, because it’s all a big fat lie as far as I am concerned. The ‘climate models’ are continually having to be re-jigged because ol’ Mother Nature doesn’t seem to be agreeing with what all those brainy scientists are saying about her.

Why has there been no increase in temperature since 1998, despite 10 year’s worth of increase CO2 emissions. And the sea levels have stopped rising too - so it looks like Tuvalu will have to think of some other way of playing on the consicences of the stupid Left to extort money out of the West.

If you want to feel good by turning off the lights for an hour, please be my guest. If you want to pay me money to plant some trees in my backyard, then I’ll be happy to accept it. But it’s not going to change anything. We are either screwed (if you’re right) or AGW is a lie (if I’m right). Nothing anything anyone does in Australia is going to change that one little bit, thanks to China and India.

You can have the licit pleasures of being a middle-class martyr to the environment, but, to borrow a phrase from my feminist friends, “Keep your morals off my body”.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/alternate?view=uk

— USAGE The use of alternate to mean alternative (as in we will need to find alternate sources of fuel) is common in North American English, though still regarded as incorrect by many in Britain.

So I guess if you are in NA, you are right.

You certainly weren’t a Finance Department official. An old Defence official maybe?

Were you at the ANU Democratic Audit workshop? [Nope, just checked the photo].

I just can’t for the life of me remember meeting you. Gimme a hint, Bernard. I’m sure that I can get it with just a small clue.

Well, the evidence isn’t debatable anymore, except by crackpots, fossil fuel companies (and even then not many of them anymore) and reactionaries who are the first to howl down relativism when it comes packaged with a French philosopher and left-wing cultural commentary but cling to it ferociously if it enables them to deny the most straightforward climate change science.

Ultimately climate change denialism is yet another example of carping special interests pleading to retain the cosseting and mollycoddling that they’ve enjoyed for decades. Most of us are imposing significant carbon costs on the rest of the community but are not being made to pay for that. It’s unfair and economically irrational and the sooner people start paying the costs of their behaviour - and therefore changing their behaviour - the better for everyone.

As your position on climate change demonstrates, your mob truly belong with the Nationals, dedicated to pork-barrelling and market distortions that deliver benefits to your mates. Although you probably think th Nats are a bit left-wing in their social views for your liking.

And, yep, Christian would never have done this. Bring him back, I say.

Yes, in regards to ad hominem I totally understand where you come from. Many climate-sceptics I’ve found are so full of fallacious information that it is simply too much of a laborious feat to prove them wrong and the easy method is to target them instead of their arguments. But, as a member of this respectable publication, I still do not consider it appropriate for Bernard to conduct himself in this fashion (although I confess to having a quiet little cheer when reading him defend himself against such ridiculousness).

Marion Wilson: You may find it interesting that driving on highways, is far more economical (L/km) than via regular streets driving at slower speeds. This is of course due to the energy wasted by stopping and starting at intersections and traffic lights not the speed at which we are permitted to travel. But yes I agree in essence, there is a great need for society to change its ways.

Since Peter Phelps mentioned it and JamesK wants to give him some undeserved cred, I’ll have a crack. “Yet world temperatures dropped by 0.7 degrees last year. Global Warming?” My thoughts are (and I’m no scientist) that this could be due in part by a mini cycle whereby the transfer of energy from the increasingly heated atmosphere at the poles melts the ice caps which in turn cool the ocean somewhat and inevitably the ocean’s lowered temperature has an effect on the atmospheric temp via slightly cooler sea breezes causing the world average temp to drop.

Just a theory, though if it’s true you have this situation: two years ago, lots of ice on the caps, lots of heat energy coming into the earth from the sun, and now, the same amount of heat coming from the sun, and a lot less ice on the caps to cool us down with.

re: fuel pricing versus regulation.
although i agree price of fuels is a more efficient signal, I don’t think its an either/or situation. As i understand it, the Europeans have both high petrol prices and longstanding regulation of emissions control on their vehicles (eg on diesel fuel). I think attempting price signals on emission/particulates from cars would actually be a more blunt instrument than regulation because of the cost of developing the technology and the once-off pricing (that could be neutralised in other ways anyway).

You avoid mentioning the equity/affordability problem of fuel pricing for those who have no real alternative to individual transport and are unlikely to get any in the future - ie people who live in country and esp rural Australia. I know the farmers have been getting a darn good subsidy/welfare on petrol so far but still, but its possible that in the short term, many country business’ (and then towns) may go bust before higher prices for food balance out the costs of Australia’s relatively high rural transport costs (at least i assume they’re relatively high). But maybe this is what should happen. Alternatively, instead of continuing their petrol/diesel subsidies, perhaps subsidies should be provided to access more fuel efficient vehicles - given they’re not gonna get access to public transport options like the rest of us city folk.