So isn't life just getting curiouser and curiouser?

We haven't peered down the rabbit hole lately as the stench emanating form there has been a strong indicator that the tea party under way is out of control and gotten into all bottles that make you "really big" or "really small" and no-one really knows what they are drinking any more.

When out of the shadows, pops the biggest jolliest rabbit of them all. Mr Clive Palmer who some whisper wants to be the king of the land never mind anyone's rabbit holes.

So what happens on Wednesday afternoon? Palmer joins with dear long-time climate campaigner Al Gore to declare both are mad as hell and they're not going to take it any more.

So down the rabbit burrow goes a nice little package. Of the exploding kind.

Suddenly there are several very special wild cards, refusing to stay put in the pack and declaring they will not play the mad hatter's game no more no more.

No, they would not vote to get rid of the Clean Energy Corporation and no they would not vote to get rid of the Clime Change Authority no the carbon tax, unless there was an emissions trading scheme put in its place. It could sit there quietly at zero cost until some nice big trading partners get their act together on their own ETS and there was something to trade.

Phew. Did we ever mention how fast things can change these days?

Remember what we told you that breakaway group from the Heartland Institute in the US said? The US needs a carbon price and the best way to do that in a free market economy was with a market mechanism. A price. Not only that, but Eli Lehrer, leader of the breakaway group, the R Institute, who held a debate with his old chums at the Heartland (sponsors of all things anti-climate and first cousins to those nongs in Melbourne, the Institute of Public Affairs) said the US would probably have an ETS by 2015.

Phew, that's some call.

Well it was at the time we reported it in mid 2013.

Now? Yesterday's news.

So here's the state of play:

A new Senate after 1 July. A raft of legislation coming from what's dubbed as the most unfair budget in living memory, if not ever in the white history of this land. A trigger for a double dissolution that's come and just keeps coming and people now starting to egg on the Abbott camp into pulling that trigger.

What did the papers say?

That the of the castle and all his government were in "disarray"

What did Al Gore say?

that Palmer's call was an "extraordinary moment in which Australia, the US and the rest of the world is finally beginning to confront the climate crisis in a meaningful way".

And:

"The US, earlier this month, saw a dramatic move by President Obama to require a 30 per cent reduction in carbon emissions, reductions that will, for the most part, be a come accomplished by individual states and regions in my country through an emissions trading system,’’ he said.

“We have also seen the nation of China implement a cap-and-trade system in two provinces and five cities, and we heard an announcement last week by a high official that these pilots will serve as the basis for a nationwide cap-and-trade system in China within the next few years.”

What did Laura Tingle in the AFR say?

Clive Palmer had just carried out a "stunning wedging of not just Tony Abbott but Labor and the Greens"

"The lethal message for Tony Abbott is that an emissions trading scheme can be resuscitated – without the agony of renegotiating an entire carbon scheme – when anyone but Abbott is prime minister."

"The PUPproposal allows the government to meet its election promises to repeal the carbon tax and to reduce the cost of living."

Now isn't that a clever Clive?

But Abbott can't win this one.

"On that basis, you would think it must have to consider accepting the PUP amendments. After all, if it does not, Abbott has pledged to return to voters as soon as possible.

"But accepting the amendments would leave Abbott perpetually vulnerable."

"Meanwhile, Clive Palmer has popped up in a place no one was expecting.

"He has popped up on the left of not just the government but Labor on asylum-seekers and has returned to the climate change debate to the place it was in 2009 when Tony Abbott defeated Malcolm Turnbull."

Yay for Clive!

Meanwhile more wild cards are falling out of the pack and going their own way.

Motoring Enthusiast Party's Ricky Muir, elected to the new Senate, said recently he would like to keep the carbon price, Senator Nick Xenophon said he was of a mind to keep the CEFC and Muir said he too was quite interested in clean energy.

Well you would be a moron not to, right? And Muir is keen to show to those who voted him in that he didn't stand a silly joke.