World-famous physics professor, Al Bartlett, takes Australia's Climate Change Minister Penny Wong's figures apart on climate change emissions and population numbers, showing that Ms Wong is wrong. "To accommodate the projected population growth AND to reduce overall annual emissions by 60% would require an annual rate of decrease of per capita emissions of polluting greenhouse gases of 3.543 percent per year over the next forty years. The per capita annual emissions would have to be cut in half every 19.6 years!" Bartlett also says that at its present rate of growth, Australia’s population will double by 2050."

This is a supplement to a comment about population growth and consumption in Europe. The comment suggested that Europe was decreasing its consumption whilst growing its population. Graphs comparing per capita and National petroleum consumption in Australia and France, also showing population numbers and rate of growth.

The 2009 Copenhagen Conference “took note” of an 'Accord'.

Well, what a hell of an expensive note taking exercise that was!

The full cost of the Copenhagen Conference should be disclosed including all return flights, accommodation, livestock killed and A4 paper printed off, etc. Given that green house gases are their specialty, the conference hosts (the UN) should also disclose the total tonnage of greenhouse gas emissions of this latest Conference of the Parties (COP15). This then must become the decadent standard never to be exceeded in future.

See also: "A climate con: Analysis of the 'Copenhagen Accord' of 21 Dec 09.

Copenhagen was a deadline without a plan.

Too many issues, too many causes, too many delegates, too much reading, too many options and yet forced to deliver a global consensus solution in just 2 weeks!

Why was a Viking speed expectation imposed on such complex and polarising issues? Participants must have spent the first week just reading the plethora of reports and getting acquainted with the issues and with one another.
Plundering of foreign lands may have taken just 2 weeks, but to reach consensus on complex global negotiation between 192 countries with differing priorities in 2 weeks?

When the ABC put to her that a population trending to grow by 65% to a level of 35m people by 2035 was contradictory to a target of reducing Australian carbon emissions by 60% in the same time period, Penny Wong replied, incredibly, that we have to 'delink our levels of carbon pollution from economic growth and population growth, not try to reduce population. She did not say whether we would do this by using magic or religion, but a morbid fascination with my own survival, not to say scientific curiosity, has prompted me to write to her and ask for details. See also: "Depression forces MP Andrew Robb from the frontbench"

The Garnaut Report has failed to discuss the energy assumptions underlying its conclusions. Tim Flannery argues that the core assumption that alternative energy technologies can be scaled up by the huge magnitudes required to replace fossil fuels is invalid. This failure should invalidate the Garnaut Report.