It is right that Rudd should tread carefully when it comes to embracing Carbon Capture and Storage. Alarm bells are starting to be sounded throughout the world by renown geologists, that this activity could indeed cause earthquakes and tsunamis unnecessarily. Pumping this gas into disused oil wells or porous rocks could increase pressures within the rocks as the gas rises. The pressure could re-activate faults, some previously thought to be dormant and cause an earthquake. Also, chemical reactions between CO2, water in the aquifer and the rocks could further weaken these rocks, there-by further increasing the chances for earthquakes. The end results could not only be catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis, but also a catastrophic release of millions of cubic meters of CO2 into the atmosphere suffocating all life in the vicinity.

But he (Rudd) still wants an ETS ? Sounds like he just wants the money from it.

I totally disagree. To me, coal just seems to keep getting its own way. Compensated if an ETS comes in, of more value than agricultural land, millions of dollors for R&D whilst the rest of the nation's R&D suffers, favourable taxation when compared to energy produced from gas...here does it end?

There must be a benchmark and key milestone set, otherwise put the money elsewhere. Penalties must apply to new coal plants if this technology fails because the plants were allowed to go ahead on the basis it would work.

How about retrofitting the coal plants to gas?? Wouldn't that be better value. Put your money where you mouth is for change and stop coal's free ride.

The biggest danger here is that this method might remove billions of dollars worth of tradable carbon from the system. No profit in that.

Very interesting to see that this Government is not embracing such suggestions from countries trying to lead the debate on certain climate issues, yet wants to lead the debate on taxing agriculture into submission by keeping it in limbo regarding climate change whilst most other countries have kept agriculture out altogether.

And who pops their head up for a comment? The Climate Institute, whose mantra is that "religion needs to be part of the debate" and "God wants us to do this" and "if you not with us you are a dinosaur".

I thought God would have fixed the problem for all the true believers who go to church and live in Christian based democracies, which make up most of the developed world?

$2.4 billion is a lot of cash to throw at Carbon Capture and Storage with such huge potential risks like I mentioned before. $2.4 billion could build some pretty flash solar power stations with stored heat capacity to operate 24/7. And we could build them now. Not in 2020.

If the coal mining companies want to preserve their cash flow, they could tender to build the solar power stations. There would be no real job losses as the miners would face job transfers and not redundancies.

They are screaming about all the CO2 put into the atmosphere and how to deal with it but won't take the commonsense way out and just not use coal. It is really a simple equation, replace coal for power generation with solar. We already have the technology.

It is NOW technology and only has to be scaled to the generating capacity wanted. CCS, on the other hand has to be designed from the ground up and not all the huge risks with it have been adequately covered. We go into this form of technology at a huge risk.

Trugger, you will never get a job in Treasury and definitely are already black banned by the the tax dep. As a public servant, you probably would be a total failure - too much common sense and not enough spin! It's thanks to blokes like you that jobs in "research" are dwindling, CSIRO has been halved and there is talk that Canberra is half empty...I'll wake up sooner or later.

Hey Peter, tell your local politician and newspaper editor what you think about this. Only crap is going to happen if we do nothing. I am going to write to as many newspapers in Oz as I can, showing evidence of what I am stating. The more of us that put our money where our mouth is with specific scientific data, the more likely we will get something that is reasonable and acceptable, provided we use the best data available from the most respected and informed scientists.

I happen to believe in anthropogenic global warming, but for those who don't, I accept that we both need to join together to get the general pollution levels to a point where there is no argument about its deleterious effects.

So called clean coal technology is a myth at present. It cannot be done tomorrow, but other clean energy systems like solar are primed to go but don't have the sex appeal at the moment.

There is no need for research on the solar field. We know it works. We can start building it tomorrow. Why not??

Pumping carbon dioxide underground is quite scary. They are doing it in Central Qld at the Zero Gen site. No one knows what might be the side effects in 20-30 years time. Our aquifers may become polluted or damaged in some way.

When you dissolve carbon dioxide in water and make soda water - you also make it acidic. Acid water can react with minerals such as sulphur and create sulphuric acid. Our children drink from these underground aquifers. What will it do to them??

Andrew, more to the point, the more acid the aquifer becomes, the more it eats into the rocks and weakenes them.

The result could easily be an earthquake at least, and at worst, an earthquake with an escape of CO2 at the same time.

If that happens, there will be a lot of dead people to bury not to mention every dog, cat, cow, horse, bird and insect. The only thing that will survive will be plant life.