RVR - Thank you for your thoughtful and civil reply. Not enough...

RVR - Thank you for your thoughtful and civil reply. Not enough of this type of debate here.

But your first sentence is misleading, in the sense of its misleading technical basis (eg excluding all CO2 absorption by our vast forests and agricultural growth) and its linkage to suggest that we should therefore doom all industries that fund the majority of our economy by transferring them to other countries like China.

First part - my point is simply that it makes no sense to point at the two most populous nations as the "worst" offenders when it comes to pollution. If China was five separate countries, they wouldn't even be in the discussion. This is an international problem and it needs international cooperation rather than finger pointing and insinuating that "Why should I clean up my act when my neighbor is so much worse?" Your point about Australia's agriculture acting as a sink for emissions is a good one. Deforestation is just as bad as generating power with coal. Nations protecting their wild areas are helping immensely.

Second - "...to suggest that we should therefore doom all industries that fund the majority of our economy..." You missed the entire point of my post - which is that the fossil fuel industry will collapse due to economic forces, not because of Greenepeace or whomever. I strongly suggest you watch the video I posted - it is not about climate change, it is about the economics of power generation. The video makes the point that Wind/Solar/Batteries will take over power generation because they are cheaper and that ratepayers like ourselves should not be on the hook for future investments in unprofitable fossil fuel power plants.

Third "...by transferring them to other countries like China." No I'm not suggesting that. China is already in the process of cutting future investments in coal in favor of wind and solar power.

Have you looked at the FULL environmental costs of the materials in EVs and wind generators, for example, including the great difficulty and high expense of recycling them after their c20 year lives. (Wind generators sails - always imported, of course - cannot be recycled and have to buried on-site with great difficulty, but no one wants to consider such inconvenient facts?

Yes, this is FUD funded by fossil fuel industry. The environmental costs of renewable energy sources are not zero, but they are definitely lower than fossil fuels. Remember, these sources use no fuel! There are many engineers, scientists, and policy makers that spend a lot of time worrying about the "inconvenient facts" of the environmental costs of renewable energy and work towards better solutions. But this sort of work doesn't make the papers because it's not sexy or controversial.

And then there’s the argument: ‘well Third World, we in the First World all prospered by access to the cheapest coal-fired energy for 150 years while your peoples struggled with wood and dung-fired cooking and heating that shortened your lives with lung disease and prevented your basic access to education with no light after dark. But you mustn’t have access to such advantages, because we all believe in what’s best for you...’

I did not make this argument. There is no need for continued investments in coal power plants by anyone - period. But there is great inertia and untold billions of dollars at stake keeping this doomed ship afloat.

Finally, I agree with Lomborg that anthropometric global warming IS real, but its consequences are being deliberately exaggerated to some extent,

Perhaps by some people with an agenda, but not by scientists. If you want to know the facts, read the peer reviewed scientific literature. You can start at climate.nasa.gov

the entire world being willing to do what some insist must be done at vast cost and disruption

This transition is already happening and it will save you money and bring better health to people and the environment.

Bringing this back to Lynas - we are at the nexus of this immense transformation and our company is poised to prosper for years to come.

Peace