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[Max White]

Well the peer assessment process is brutal to say the least. Any sign of foul play and every scientist who catches the scent will burn the offender at the stake! It's no wonder many scientists are too scared to fudge numbers.

And people think science is some sort of combined front...

[Glowcat]

I'm quite surprised they only found one email that looked bad.  They hacked out several years worth of emails from this group, and they only found one which could be taken out of context effectively.

Actually, there were several they took out of context effectively. All debunked of course, but behind closed doors they continue to spread the misinformation as if it were true.

They never seem to realize just how old the science behind Global Warming is. Over more than 50 years the phenomena has been investigated by climate scientists from around the world and we can't escape the fact that the only cause of current warming trends can and should be attributed to the greenhouse gases humankind are releasing into the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide. They would have us chasing ghosts despite solid physical evidence because their ideology demands that we not touch the sacred rights of energy companies.

[da dwarf lord]

3) Building new things takes money, and time, and space, as breadbocks has pointed out. It's part of the reason I'm opposed to corn ethanol, because it causes an artificial food shortage when millions of people go hungry every day (it also takes more energy to produce a gallon of corn ethanol than the gallon contains, and I object to giving more power to an already incredibly powerful lobby that has done very selfish things, but those aren't sustainability related).  Solar is only cost-effective if it's the same cost, not if it's the same cost in 10 years after all of the capital investments have been fully earned out. Capital projects cost money. Most people and businesses still can't afford it, or don't live in situations and places where it's a technologically and financially feasible option.

I agree the corn ethanol is unviable because as it stands now if you put all of America's corn production for a year into ethanol, you could drive New York's(? can't remember one of the big American cities) cars for a week. This makes all sorts of problems.

A few years ago I know some places were trying to use kinetic wave energy to provide power. Does anyone know how that's turned out? It would be interesting to see if that has the same problems as hydro-based energy storage.

This form of energy is very situational, it turned out about as efficient as coal but there are such few places it can viably be used.

I think that the carbon tax ( or is it emissions trading scheme? ) is the wrong way to go about the entire thing. If Australia put money towards nuclear power (Australia being one of, if not the largest exporter/miner of Uranium in the world) then there would be no carbon problem (or a reduced one) and would also allow the science of solar (which by the way is not advanced enough to be economically viable) to become more advanced, as nuclear is not a long-term solution, or perhaps an entirely new way of creating renewable energy to evolve. Solar is not a viable alternative atm, because there is no money in providing it, installing it yes but actually running solar plants no.

[Muz]

Australia is one of the most environmentally conscious countries out there, so not surprising. Unnecessary though. But it doesn't affect me, so I don't care much about it. Money has to go into something useful and I don't use much carbon anyway

[Max White]

While some may believe Australia to be a low emissions country, I'm left to wonder how true this is. We are not a heavy industry country, and are not known for really manufacturing much. Two of our three biggest exports are education and tourism, and the other one, mining, we managed to get into a fine art. Rather we buy products from over seas, so the greenhouse gases from producing these products goes to who ever we bought it from, rather then the benefactor.

When you look at our nice, comfortable population levels, it makes sense we don't appear to have a huge footprint. I mean there are only 22 million of us over here, it isn't many, but we should still be doing our part.

Of course the most effective way of helping out may or may not be with a carbon tax, and this thread has produced some good points as to why it may not work as intended. But that doesn't mean we should expect china to cut down, when they are making things for us.

[Blargityblarg]

Australia is one of the most environmentally conscious countries out there, so not surprising. Unnecessary though. But it doesn't affect me, so I don't care much about it. Money has to go into something useful and I don't use much carbon anyway

I'd like to point out basically all of Victoria's electricity is absurdly cheap, because it's absurdly dirty. We have a glut of brown coal (lignite, for those of you who played DF more than others) that's the dirtiest to burn, and we're burning it like mad, powering basically the whole state. Granted, we're not hugely industrial, but we are by no means hippies when it comes to emissions; it just looks that way because of our sparse population density.

[Sheb]

Plus, since Australia is making so much money selling coal around, it is promoting coal use abroad as well. I remember at least one instance of the Australian government subisidzing a coal power plant in Thailand on the understanding that it would run on Australian coal when I was there.