Beware the policy that has no opponents in high places. During the US elections it was a reality check when the financial crisis came to a boil, and instantly both parties were in complete agreement about the need for a bail out. Much less being said about the redesign of the system to deter future […]

(Cross posted from What the people want) The federal government appears to have been reading our research, or similar, on an emissions trading scheme. According to The Australian Online TREASURER Wayne Swan has asked a powerful House economics committee to judge whether the proposed emissions trading scheme is the best way to tackle climate change… […]

A few days ago I drew attention to work that suggested the Indian Ocean Dipole was responsible for causing drought in southern Australia . I contrasted that to a view from the Bureau of Meteorology that the change was caused by the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole. Now there is an […]

The Northern Irish Environment Minister, Sammy Wilson, “has banned government television adverts in Northern Ireland warning of the effects of climate change“. This might seem a little “Irish” on a couple of fronts. For it to make sense you have to realise that England has devolved power to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, so as […]

Scientists from UNSW, UTAS and CSIRO think they know what is causing the drought across Australia. Not global warming, or at least it doesn’t get a run in the news report, but the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). I don’t think this is actually new news, but the scientists are to be published in a peer […]

There’s a certain line of argument in the greenhouse debate that says only those documents that have been peer-reviewed are worth anything. It’s a strange line of argument. I have a vision of a queue of facts all in a quantum state, waiting for a bureaucratic process to either confirm or anihilate them. Facts aren’t […]

At one stage I thought that an emissions trading scheme was probably the best way of moving away from a carbon economy, but the real world says it isn’t. Federal parliament today sits for the first time this year and one of the issues on the notice paper will be a bill aimed to establish […]

It was stinking hot in Canberra, but I couldn’t very well use the heat as an excuse not to attend the Climate Action Summit, could I? I slid into my seat in the packed ANU auditorium as Clive Hamilton delivered some political truths, all bad news. That much I already knew, as he outlined the […]

My partner alerted me to this phrase. Listen for it, coming from the mouths of policy advisors or pollies. It used to imply a plan, but now it just seems to cover a vague idea of the future. We can’t do otherwise, can we? Except, of course, if moving forward is taking us backwards, into […]

Kevin Rudd’s ETS plan or “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” as it is officially called, is a radical plan which starts off cool but in 12 years’ time will end up boiling hot. It’s not a 5 to 15% reduction in CO2, but a whopping 29 to 39%. The only sensible way to measure increases or […]