Tony Abbot made news around the world, by unseating Malcolm Turnbull as leader of the Australian opposition over Climategate, and then stalling the carbon tax.  By stalling the tax, Abbot challenged the Prime Minister to a double dissolution election, which would have been a referendum on the carbon tax. By backing down from that challenge, the Prime Minister finds himself empty handed in Copenhagen, making it much harder to reach agreement.
Abbot concludes that global warming alarmism is not, in fact, very popular among the voters, that skepticism sells when presented as delay, caution, and real science
The following skepticism will not be news to anyone that reads this blog – what will be news is that a competent politician finds it wins votes – that democracy, should the ruling elite pay attention to it, will in this case produce the less disastrous result.
one of the things that I have always found distressing about this debate Alan is the theological way in which it has been conducted – all this talk of deniers and believers, people being put on the spot and being asked to proclaim their faith one way or another.
I mean in the end this whole thing is a question of fact, not faith, or it should be a question of fact not faith and we can discover whether the planet is warming or not by measurement. And it seems that notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man made CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world’s warming has stopped.
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as if this is some latter-day environmental Munich agreement kind of thing. … there is far too much hype here and we all need to be objective and dispassionate about this because man is more than capable of rising to the challenge of the environment but we won’t do it if we rush into things in a fit of environmental rectitude.
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once you have got to explain why you have got this giant money-go-round taking money from polluters, then giving it back to people via these indirect mechanisms that certainly aren’t going to end up equalizing the burdens, I think then people start to say, ‘hang on a minute, this is all a bit of a con’.
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there’s Kevin heading off to Copenhagen to solve problems that may or may not occur in 100 years time.
It is working for Tony Abbot, it will therefore work for Republicans, if they have the guts.