John Redwood posted the following under heading “How a Prime Minister Loses his Job”

The outgoing PM in Australia serves as a warning to incumbents. If you combine unpopular climate change legislation with a big tax increase, you lose your job. The legislation was defeated, and the tax increase on mining has now been abated.

Just posted on  blog comments

This illustrates the importance of carrying people with you through difficult and necessary decisions. On tackling the problem of the deficit the government is being brave and honest about the gravity of the problem. The Coalition is also making attempts to minimise the impact on service provision.

On climate change, we have had many dogmatic statements about the collective opinions of experts and the science being settled. This is accompanied with wild allegations on the motives of critics (in the pay of oil companies) or their very sanity (flat-earthers, or equivalent to holocaust deniers). To carry the majority forward, the scientific case needs to be made more clearly. That means opening up the black box of climate models to independent investigation and subjecting empirical studies to full statistical tests. Conflicts of interest should be stated and recognised. Like in a court of law, when people can see the robustness of the case, then the doubters will be the silenced and sacrifices willing made for the sake of our descendant’s futures.

We have been delivered with a fait accompli, with no reasonable person being able to question. It is not just the basic science that we are unable to question, but also the policy perscriptions. This is alien to an open society.