There have been two big developments in climate science that should persuade our politicians that the science is far from "settled" and, if science was actually any part of the debate, would bring a halt to the "carbon tax". Of course science has got nothing to do with the issue, so the political debacle will just keep on going.

Firstly it appears that the person at the heart of the drowning polar bear myth that really gave the climate change religion some traction has been suspended because he lied about this very issue. In 2004 Charles Monnet presented some research that seemed to indicate that polar bears were dying due to exhaustion from having to swim increasing distances between land and ice floes becasue global warming was reducing the amount of sea ice. This was included in Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth."

In fact he found just 4 polar bear carcasses in the water. He failed to mention that a severe storm had been observed in the area just a few days before which could have had a big bearing on the fate of the bears. He also failed to mention that the bears in question had been shot with tranquiliser darts and had slipped into the water and could not be recovered.

So the next time you see some Greenpeace zombie in a polar bear suit collecting money to save the planet hit them with a tranquiliser dart.

The second issue is that a new study of the amount of heat actually radiated by the earth into space, as opposed to that predicted or assumed by "models", shows that the earth is radiating much more energy that previously thought. That means that the heating effect due to CO2 is about one-third to a half what the IPCC stated.

To put it another way, the time to act is next century.

From actual data measurements, as opposed to the standard alarmist "everything is worse than we thought" predictions, it appears that we can continue with business as usual, using coal and natural gas to generate cheap power. As the qunatities of these commodities declines in the next 50 years or so then natural market forces will allow the use of new renewable energy forms to gradually replace the fossil fuels.

We do not need a carbon tax now to cripple our economy.