There is no evidence that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None.

On global warming, public policy is where the science was in 1998. Due to new evidence, science has since moved off in a different direction.

The UN science body on this matter, the IPCC, is a political body composed mainly of bureaucrats. So far it has resisted acknowledging the new evidence. But as Lord Keynes famously asked, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

Four things have changed since 1998.

First, the new ice cores shows that in the six global warmings over the past half a million years, temperature rises and falls occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rises and falls in atmospheric carbon. The carbon rises could not have either started or ended the temperature rises. So there must be natural influences on global temperatures that are more powerful than atmospheric carbon levels.

Whatever course we adopt, it will cost. 

I make the following proposals for laws and expenditure to meet the menace of global warming brought on by the burning of coal and oil:

1. Postpone the introduction of carbon trading until after the next  Federal election. We need more time for the formation of a public consensus and  sound community support for meaningful action,  for something more than mere soft support for laws that will keep the government in office. The political imperative may well lie elsewhere.

2.  Side by side with a licensing and carbon trading regime, we need taxes of the nature of ground rent of mine sites and of an excise on coal produced for use, or for domestic and export markets.

3.  The government proposes to reduce the excise now levied on some petroleum based fuel consumption. This is not enough. We should impose an equal excise  on all fuel used in all categories of consumption, and not least on those now exempt as well as add in a tax on coal. All excise rates should be set upon a basis of thermal or carbon  equivalents.

By Philip Siefert

A large organisation can replace upwards of 20,000 round-trip, short-haul flights annually with video meetings, saving 2,200 tons of CO2 from being released into the environment.

For companies to "go green," they need solutions that positively impact the environment without raising costs or sacrificing productivity.

However, to make an impact, we all need to take personal action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The longer we wait the more difficult it is going to be.  The point is to get started doing something now.  So I say, accept that this rebellion is real and realise that the time for taking action on global warming is not tomorrow, not even today, but this very minute.

The key to engaging enterprises in this endeavour is to identify CO2 reduction programs that do not raise costs or sacrifice productivity.  It is possible to be environmentally responsible and stay competitive, without breaking the bank.  Companies must be presented though with workable steps that they can take today to reduce their carbon footprint.

Our answer to this question will shape many other considerations.

Australia has strong ties with the global economy.  At the moment neither Australia nor the global economy are ecologically sustainable.  Global warming is a key indicator; there are others.

To a significant extent economic increase drives environmental deterioration - at least in the affluent parts of the world.  This is because economic increase is based on increasing the production and consumption of material goods, which currently involves increasing CO2 emissions and industrial toxins.

Thus it would appear that in our present industrial civilisation economic increase and environmental sustainability are incompatible.  This might be called The Great Contradiction.

Below I will show some graphs from Prof Will Steffen (ANU) showing the correlation between economic increase, population growth and increase in global economic activity...