main sp triggers, page-5

"Labour are more likely to be forthcoming and generous in terms of grants to this industry. Kevin Rudd some months back on Lateline, without reference to any particular company, mentioned his enthusiasm for South Australian geothermal energy. John Howard is a climate-change skeptic."

At the risk of annoying the moderators for mentioning politics, I'm quite sure that if geothermal is proved commercially successful the Liberals will be just as supportive of it. I mean, why shouldn't they? They're supportive of good business, whatever it is. I actually think the Liberals' attitude is preferable to Labor's, here: it's quite irresponsible to promise to throw buckets of money at something that has not been proved a financial goer yet. (The fact that it almost certainly will be a goer is beside the point.)

Skepticism, too, is a proper, sober scientific attitude. Howard, here, is arguably more scientific than those who claim climate is changing without putting forward a falsifiable (in the sense of Popper/Duhem) hypothesis in support of it. That is, what climate change advocates need to come up with is a set of observations which, if those observations are falsified, could be taken as evidence that the hypothesis of global warming is wrong.