Freediver wrote.....
****Tony Abbott on the Science and Economics of Climate Change.
Tony Abbott has been moving in opposite directions on the science and economics of climate change. Until as recently as 2009 Abbott was one of our most extreme climate sceptics. By 2011, his conversion to the mainstream was complete and he acknowledged both the scientific consensus on climate change and the need for action. On the economics however, Abbott has been moving backwards. He started out being viewed as an intellectual and an economic rationalist. When John Howard went into the 2007 election with a carbon trading scheme as policy, Abbott made sound, rational arguments in favour of putting a price on carbon, and went one step further an argued that a tax made more sense than a trading scheme. He even took the time to explain the conundrum that politicians find themselves in, preferring a carbon tax for it's effectiveness and simplicity, but faced with a very difficult political task of selling it to members of the public to whom the economics seems counter-intuitive. Shortly after, he took a curious turn in that he continued to promote a carbon tax as a better mechanism to reduce emissions, but for absurd and non-sensical reasons (though the sound bites may appeal to disinterested or ignorant people, so long as they don't take a second look). He then proceeded to take the coalition down the path of direct action. This is a policy that is rejected by economists as expensive and wasteful, by scientists as unlikely to actually work, and by the farmers who are supposed to do all the heavy lifting. Finally, Tony Abbott has flagged a review of coalition policy (and another likely backflip) as early as 2015. It is little wonder that most of the debate about Abbott rarely gets past the first step of figuring out where he stands and what he really thinks.
Read more, including all the relevant quotes:****** by Freediver
Thats because deep down, like the majority of rational thinking adults, this opposed to stoned hippies.. he knows there's a need for policy review...in the absence of credible science to back it up before reaching a consensus either way. It's one thing to come up with a policy, it's another thing again to sell it to an increasingly skeptical community. A leader must be flexible...must gauge the public's willingness to accept policy before unleashing it. ...and in light of the recent droves of climatologists and scientists now coming forward and admitting they either got it wrong or were instructed to falsify data to conceal information from trusting unsuspecting tax-payers, I think it's understandable that Tony Abbott might want to re-think his policy ...particularly when it's based on less than credible findings from scientists who readily admit to having cooked the books in order to keep the government funding coming in order to keep their jobs.
I know 2 people who work in 2 separate departments at the CSIRO, and both don't believe carbon is whats causing the climatic cyclic trends our planet has been enduring since the beginning of time.
We cool down, we warm back up again. We have a decade of higher than usual summers, then we endure a period of cooling ....Eventually, we will endure another ice age.
It's been happening for millions of years, and well before man inhabited the earth.
Carbon Tax is a communist UN tax..designed to get nations purchasing Green technology..... Israel will be stoked.
Israel is a greentech super-power afterall, this and stand to cash in on the global demand for Green technology as more and more nations buckle under the mounting pressure to pay their electricity bills so sort Greener, more energy efficient alternatives.
And before you rant and rave ....this and go off half cocked... ask yourself, why are scientists coming forward in droves changing their position on Climate Change?
What percentage of Australians do you suppose believe Climate Change can be harnessed, prevented, even reversed with a Carbon Tax?
A) 80% +
B) 60% +
C) 40%+
D) 20%+
E) 10% +