"Scientists will loose their funding if climate change is false": firstly the consensus is getting there, has grown rapidly. It's about done. What is being debated is whether it's man-made and whether we can do something about it.
Overall, your statement could be true, but it's not a useful comment, as the converse is equally true: "scientists working for polluting industries stand to lose (their jobs, funding) if warming and its cause end up being generally agreed."
I would have thought that if the Gov. wants to reduce carbon emissions it needs to be done with a positive rather than a negative and people WILL change.
There are MANY examples.... like Digital / Analogue phones, how many people would go back to analogue and give up TXT messages, mobile Internet, cameras and music in the phone?
Who would want to go back to vinyl or cassettes for music rather than CD and MP3?
Would you buy an analogue TV with 4 channels on it or would you go for a digital with lots more for a similar price?
Anyone want to go back to floppy discs from USB storage?
How about the new LED torches, no globes to blow and 10 times the battery life.
If they want to reduce car usage build better and cheaper public transport, If you want people to use less electricity promote better house design, and more energy efficient products etc.
People will change when it is a positive for them .
And Germany has just announced it's getting rid of its nuclear plants! Irrational fear of nuclear energy. Can anybody put numbers on the casualities per kilowatt hour of coal vs. nuclear? I'd guess it's far greater for coal.
graph from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint
We are exporting more and more coal, this is what should be reduced, so tax the people selling this and they might invest in alternatives, then other methods of energy production might become more viable.
Then overseas buyers can foot the bill (mining tax)
Wasnt this what Kevin Rudd was proposing to do before he was back stabbed and ousted?
Big business rules...
One of the windsurfing dudes here (older gent) is supposedly is a world-renowned scientist in energy transport. He travels all over the world for large energy projects, including the 3 Gorges and some nuclear plants in Asia and Europe. He was in Japan recently, I'd rather not know why.
Anyways, he says all the time that people can kick and scream all they want, it's all going to be nuclear within 25 years, that renewable energy sources will never take off, and the various lobbies have succeeded in preventing useful research in those fields.
I would tend to believe him - he actually has fascinating stories about those projects and the plants in Japan. Scary stuff - if any one of his warnings is true... gloomy stuff.
^ Royale with cheese please !.... What do they call a Whopper? I don't know, I didn't go into burger king....
Sorry, it's marginally more complex than that. Coal is actually an effective product to maintain balance in the system, so everyone has power whenever they want it. Solar and wind have a few issues associated with the required total power output, and with being able to delivery consistent power.
The laws of voltage drop means you can't easily put all the solar panels in the sunny desert either....
"Which is why a tax is needed to stimulate alternatives to coal."
"Thorium", "safe coal", "solar","Elvis", etc.
The tax is a show. You'z couldn't possibly think that Australia's peddly little tax, is going to make a dent in this field, at least not for another the first 25 years and it's too late.
The US, at least part of the establishment that is not trying to kill new sources, has given a shot since the oil went up in the 70s. Look where it's at now: a few wind towers here and there for perhaps 1% of the total grid consumption, and an ROI of about 20 years carbon-wise. Even that slim progress is coming at the end already. The only other advance is perhaps somewhat more efficient car engines, but car sales are going up all over (not only US, also China and Russia), so overall it's gotten worse really.
"There's this new this-that magic trick": very much a broken record, after solar energy, tidal machines, hydrogen engines, cold fusion and other dead-ends.
Not saying something won't be found, but it probably is not going to be in this generation's span. The climatic situation will have to be dire in the US and a few privileged countries for things to really happen.
^ So basically we are all ****ed. The planet is fine by the way, we'll be just a hiccough. < seriously, that's a stupid word.
It's hard to organise six billion people.
The way I see it in 100 years things will be somewhere between somewhat bad and tragic. Look what El Nina did to QLD. If you think it's expensive now you had better stop whining about slightly larger energy bills and start coming up with words for something that many zeroes at the end.
On the good side it should be windier.
^^^
Precisely, panda.
Except it won't be 100 years. It'll be somewhere between 30 and 50 years. Why? Well... the coal gets dug out of the ground by machines. And machines transport it from the coal face all the way to the railway to the port and on to the power station.
All those machines are powered by oil. And the oil will run out long before the coal does.
The industry reckons maybe 50 years of oil reserves tops but I reckon less given we're using more of the stuff every year. So we've got maybe 50 years at best but probably less.
How long will it take to develop new forms of energy?? It'll take 50 years for the whiners to stop whining about a carbon tax!
This proposed tax will smother much of the Australian economy with a blanket of increased costs and red tape. Much of Australia business is on a downward curve, evidenced by decreased spending. Whatever sparks there are will be snuffed out.
Australians need a new tax system as much as a hole in the head. The upside is the proposed tax will possibly have a great impact upon Australia's carbon dioxide emissions. If the economy falls into depression then activity will decrease, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions. So perhaps having the tax is a good idea to save the planet.
Make Australians poor so they can't afford to do anything. Unemployed people don't take overseas holidays or go around buying new 4WDs.