I see Ian Dunlop and Bruce Robinson from ASPO Australia have been featured in this article on "Carbon's Rocky Road":

For coal industries and electricity generators that depend on fossil fuels, geosequestration is the holy grail.

The theory behind it is that carbon dioxide can be harvested before it enters the atmosphere and then put under enormous pressure to turn it into a liquid, before being injected deep into the earth.

Trapped between supposedly impenetrable layers of rock where oil and gas once flowed, it ought to be stored safely and indefinitely.

However that theory has not been tested, as CCS critics often remind the coal lobby, and even if it were to be demonstrated after billions of dollars are spent on creating the technology, it could take another 20 years before it becomes a commercial proposition.

If the climate change science is right, and greenhouse gases need to start declining soon, then CCS will be too little too late to be considered a meaningful form of mitigation.

Former head of the Australian Coal Association Ian Dunlop, who now is deputy convener of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil, said he believed "we have probably left it too late for CCS".

At the same time he warns that government policy should not pick winners and that there is merit in continuing to encourage research into the technology, if only just to prove whether it will succeed or fail.

Shortly after Australia first signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, Mr Dunlop was appointed by the federal government to chair a group that would design an emissions trading scheme for Australia.

But Mr Howard squashed the project when he was converted into a climate sceptic by his US allies, according to Mr Dunlop, who had worked as an oil and gas sector executive for years.

In the years since, Mr Dunlop has strengthened his resolve to warn governments and industries about the dangers of not taking climate change risk seriously.

In the meantime, CCS polarises the opinion-makers, with many scientists, such as AASPO convenor Bruce Robinson, dismissing it as science fiction.

Others, such as Tony Maher, head of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, label it as a panacea that must be applied.

Mr Maher was selected by an international council of unions to give a short address in Bali's Plenary 1 on behalf of the world's workers.

Former Howard government adviser Guy Pearse, the author of High and Dry, has written that there are no plans on any scale or in any meaningful timeframe to capture most emissions from existing coal fired power stations.

"But various co-operative research centres promote the idea that 'clean coal' is here and now," Dr Pearse wrote in his pre-election expose of the political links between the coal lobby and the former prime minister.

I regard every politician (eg our recent PM) who said CCS was imminent as a Bull-something-or-other not a Bullroarer.

On the subject of hypocrisy if Morris Iemma is 100% behind Rudd how come his flunkies approved Anvil Hill coal mine and are trying to speed up the Newcastle coal loader.

On the subject of stalling tactics I see we now have a Garnaut review following an Emissions Trading taskforce following a State secretariat.

One more article for the day, from Grist:

Aussies R Us

Culturally, politically, and spiritually, what country in the world is most like the United States? It's not Canada and it's sure not Great Britain. The answer is Australia. Ask anyone who's been there. It just feels like America there, from the sprawling suburbs to the cars people drive, from the obsession with sports to their unit of currency: the Australian dollar. Add these factors too: both countries were British colonies, both wiped out indigenous peoples, both have big cities in the east and vast frontiers to the west, both have huge coal deposits and per capita greenhouse-gas emissions that lead most of the world, and, in the last several years, both have had conservative national governments that basically deny the reality of global warming. The Aussies R Us!

So how, then, did Australia just complete a national election where the issue of climate change played a central role and may have determined the outcome? How did a country so steeped in America's brand of fierce self-reliance, consumerism, and fossil-fuel addiction throw out a "climate skeptic" prime minister and hand a landslide victory to a Labor candidate who talked persistently about ratifying Kyoto? And most important, if they can do it Down Under, is there still hope for America?

Feeling the heat

Several factors help explain how a "global-warming candidate," Labor's Kevin Rudd, unseated incumbent John Howard after 11 years of conservative rule. But first among them is probably the nation's nightmarish drought. Beginning in 2002, the drought conditions intensified each year until a staggering 25 percent of all food production was lost in 2007. Emaciated livestock now roam a vast landscape of dry riverbeds. Rice production and wine grapes have been devastated. Food prices have soared and up to 1 percent of the nation's entire GDP has been lost, according to credible estimates.

With drinking water now in danger of running out in much of the country, and multiple scientific reports linking the dryness to global warming, Australians registered growing concern in opinion polls prior to the Nov. 24 election. But incumbent John Howard vigorously denied any climate connection for years and told voters to simply pray for rain and, if so inclined, change their light bulbs. Labor's Rudd, however, openly connected the drought to global warming during the campaign and called for clean, efficient energy as a path to preserving public health and the nation's agricultural heritage.

But drought alone did not push global warming from background noise to a top issue in a country long tolerant of a do-nothing government. Australian journalist Wilson Da Silva, a former president of the World Federation of Science Journalists, says that -- ironically -- developments in far-off America played a role too. The first was Hurricane Katrina. Among U.S. cities, New Orleans has always been a favorite among Australians, and to watch the horrors of 2005 just as new scientific studies showed a connection between warmer oceans and bigger storms, made a big impression.

Then came "Hurricane Gore." An Inconvenient Truth was proportionally twice as big a box-office hit Down Under than even in America, and Gore made several high profile trips to the country in its aftermath. "It changed the way many Australians see the world and themselves in it," says Da Silva.

Aussie business leaders demanded climate action

Also key to the electorate's changing mood was the fact that major Australian business leaders broke ranks with the Howard government over global warming prior to the vote. American Cathy Zoi, a Gore confidant who spent 12 years in Australia working on energy issues, says beginning in 2006 top businesses began calling for national legislation to cap carbon emissions. Why? "Because Australia is heavily dependent on foreign trade, and leaders could see the inevitable carbon constraints coming through Kyoto or subsequent agreements, and they wanted some certainty and process and predictability to prepare," says Zoi. "It was the smart business move." ...

Macquarie Bank is forecasting $40 a barrel next year, see Diary of a day trader . But they would have to believe that wouldn't they, given that they own Sydney Airport and most of the motorways in Sydney.