The Age - Act now on climate, or else...

More alarmism from The Age, which today reports some typically curious logic from the Treasury (if I'm following correctly). Apparently the modelling states that trying to reduce CO2 targets from 550ppm to 450ppm would cost $15 trillion, whereas softening the target from 450ppm to 550pm would cost $610 billion, if 550ppm proved too ambitious. Are you with me so far?

I think the logic (unsurprisingly) supports the notion that we should "act now" and set an aggressive level of 450ppm, then if (when) it transpires that the economy is disappearing down a massive Black Hole, and the public wakes up to the fact that attempting to control "climate change" is nothing more than a pointless political gesture, it will "only" cost us $610 billion to relax the target to 550ppm.

Climate Institute policy director Erwin Jackson said the modelling reinforced that the costs of stalling on climate change were not just environmental and human, but economic.

"The longer we delay action, the more likely it is that future governments and our kids will have to decide to massively restructure the economy very quickly, as opposed to the choice we can make today to take decisive, smooth action to reduce emissions," he said.

Note the inclusion of "our kids", just to add an extra tug to the heart strings in order to elicit an emotional, rather than rational, response. This whole thing is typical of the convoluted and nonsensical arguments that desperate AGW alarmists have to concoct in order to justify their scaremongering.

Read it here.

P.S. Kevin Rudd is himself starting to suffer from cognitive dissonance about climate, warning yesterday that:

Australia could face tariffs from more climate conscious nations if it failed to cut emissions.

Which nations would they be? The EU nations perhaps, or China, or India... or the US?