Comment 21 by Ignorant Amos

I honestly don't know how I managed to rub people up the wrong way with my posts, or are you looking for an argument?

You seem to be questioning the term negligible and linking it to a claim that I found Jos's posts informative. This isn't even a climate change argument.

Australia contributes a little over 1.3% of the worlds greenhouse emissions (though it has the highest per-capita emissions - largely due to the disproportionate size of the agriculture and resource industries). The reduction of Australia's emissions by 23% per annum by 2020 (estimated by the Government in the new multi-billion dollar tax plan) will not have a significant affect on global atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

I am being a bit disingenuous here. Of course it may give us the higher-moral-ground from which we can convince others to effect change - do-as-I-do and all that. However, it seems to me that there are several things to do (stop selling coal to China, close the dirty brown-coal-fired power plants, use our abundant coastline and sunny hinterland areas for alternative energy, go nuclear etc. etc. ) that would still cost, but have a more direct impact on reducing emissions and bring other benefits.

And, if you must know, Applied Physics/Computer Science double major, though this line of inquiry is starting to sound rather like an ad-hominem attack.