Sceptics will have their day

Later, we return to exactly the same point, and I suspect this deep confusion is shared by the bulk of the electorate. They have not grasped that Australia is about to spend a great deal of money - and it will be a lot of money - on the strength of a decidedly dodgy set of climate projections. They think that because climate is changing it must be something to do with human activities.

Give the issue perhaps two years, with temperatures still falling (they may either fall or rise, but I suspect they may fall) and electricity bills increasing sharply due to a carbon trading regime, and this attitude may change. Consumers will suddenly realise that talk about the environment means money out of their back pocket; take a closer look at graphs of falling temperatures, and at the scientific arguments, and start asking what they are paying for.

Although the details of the expected carbon trading scheme have not been finalised, there are early indications that, unlike in Europe where there an emissions trading regime has been in place for three years without making any appreciable difference to the electricity industry or consumers, big carbon emitters here are likely to be hit hard the moment an Australian scheme is introduced. There may be policies to offset the effects of these changes on the poor and elderly, and preliminary discussions have canvassed ways of returning the additional payments to families. But carbon trading still represents an extra cost and, one way or another, I suspect the mass of consumers will end up paying it.

The sceptics may yet have their day.

1. The graph uses data from the Hadley Centre - then click on climate monitor online, then on climate data visualisation then on global and hemispheric temperature. Numbers from a data file attached to the annual global graph has been plugged into an office Excel spread sheet. The five years rolling average had to be calculated by me. The graph starts from 1990 as that is the Kyoto year. The figure for 2008 is only for January and February, with the force of la Nina evident. The final annual result for 2008 will certainly be higher than the result shown here, but it hardly amounts to run away warming.

2. Improved Surface Temperature Prediction from a Global Climate Model (Science, August 10, 2007) Smith et al.

3. Recent Climate Observations Compared to Projections (Science May 4, 2007), Rahmstorf et al.