global warming panic explained, page-31

ronny,

I interpret your phrase "just a quip" as acknowledgement that you were deliberately lying to make your point.

I agree that carbon sequestration by farmers could have appropriate incentives. We sequester carbon on our property in long turnaround tree crops, something we have been doing for many years. It fact we are intending to sustainably harvest timber from a sycamore plantation this year.

I do not agree that carbon offsets present a particularly efficient way to curtail carbon pollution. I see cap and trade as far too open to exploitation, distortion and profiteering. A carbon tax provides a relatively straightforward disincentive to carbon pollution. Given the public nature of electricity generating infrastructure, collecting such a tax should be relatively straightforward and difficult to circumvent. It is impossible to hide a filthy coal burning power station.

We are just months away from what will hopefully be a sensible carbon tax. What most concerns me is that Australia is deliberately avoiding the nuclear alternative to fossil fuel carbon pollution. Modern nuclear plants are unbelievably safe, especially when compared with the hazards of coal mining and the thousands already dying from global warming. (mainly direct heat stress related deaths) A carbon tax, even a modest one, swings the cost benefit pendulum towards nuclear and away from coal. I do not advocate scrapping coal plants, rather ensuring they pay for the carbon pollution they produce. A market driven drift from coal to nuclear requires only a supportive and sensible regulatory framework, a tax driven disincentive for fossil fuels and an underwriting mechanism for the very large capital costs of nuclear plants.

China and India both have substantial nuclear power programmes and both are low carbon polluters on a per capita basis. A well designed tax based carbon pollution scheme will redirect costs rather than adding to them in toto. We manage very well with a high tax regime for transport fuels. There is no reason we will not be able to do the same with a carbon tax for power generation.

The natural biocycle handles gigantic carbon loads but it does not cope with the additional load from burning fossil fuel. This is why atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are increasing.