Behind all the flourish and big names, including an appearance by former US vice-president Al Gore, Clive Palmer's climate policy reveal was fairly airy and he doesn't have much skin in the game, writes Annabel Crabb.

The news that Clive Palmer would be joined by former American vice-president Al Gore for his carbon tax reveal was deeply surprising.

Not from Mr Palmer's point of view: he is on the record as liking dinosaurs. And razzle-dazzle. And while the Palmer United Party has proven very good in the past at doing things that annoy Tony Abbott, it is pretty much a technical impossibility to devise anything that would annoy the PM quite so much as bringing the High Priest of the Warmist Alliance along to a policy announcement. Having the whole thing emceed by The Brick With Eyes was just salt in the wound.

The motivation of Mr Gore (or vice-president Gore, as Mr Palmer loyally described him throughout the event, either due to a seriously antiquated grasp of American current affairs or an excessive love of flourish, a fault for which "Professor" Palmer is already widely known) is less clear.

Throughout Professor Palmer's introductory remarks, Mr Gore's face was a study in polite neutrality; the countenance of a diplomat trapped in social chitchat with a local witch-doctor, all the while signalling frantically behind his back to the driver.

The substance of the announcement is this: Professor Palmer and his acolytes will vote to abolish the carbon tax. They will no longer insist on Palmer's preference that the abolition be backdated, an outcome that would have proven highly satisfactory to the PUP leader's other life as an ersatz mining squillionaire.

Sorry, this video has expired US vice president Al Gore has backed PUP leader Clive Palmer's climate change policy.

They will insist on a demonstrable mechanism ensuring that every cent freed up by the abolition goes back to consumers.

Additionally, he said, the PUP alliance will amend the carbon tax abolition legislation to establish an emissions trading scheme, whose starting price will be zero dollars per tonne. It will kick into gear, says Professor Palmer, when comparable global economies (and here he waved grandly in the direction of China, the US, the European Union, Japan and South Korea, though he may have forgotten a few comparable economies) take matching action to price carbon.

Much about this announcement was not clear, because the PUP leader did not take questions, summarily declaring "urgent dinner" at about half past five; a declaration that tends to vindicate Treasurer Joe Hockey's recently-voiced suspicion that Palmer has more than one meal per evening.

But later, on Lateline, Professor Palmer confirmed, in his roundabout way, that he would not make the immediate establishment of an emissions trading scheme a condition of his party's "Yes" vote to the abolition of the carbon tax.

The Palmer ETS, in other words, is a fairly airy undertaking. The Professor has less skin in the game than either Kevin Rudd or his banana-split buddy Malcolm Turnbull, both of whom came a cropper trying to enact the very same thing.

Professor Palmer's announcement puts his balance-of-power party closer to the Labor position, which is to remove the carbon tax, but replace it with an ETS, the model - after all - which both John Howard and Kevin Rudd took to the 2007 election, if your political trauma counselling allows you to go back that far.

Labor and PUP, and the Greens (assuming they knock off smoking the policy whacky-baccy that in recent months has inspired them to oppose: 1) a levy on high income-earners 2) the restoration of petrol price indexation, and 3) the paid parental leave scheme they themselves gushingly endorsed when it was first announced) together can command a majority in the Senate. But they can't in the Lower House, which is where the Palmer ETS rather putters out, especially seeing as the PUP isn't planning to insist on its amendments.

So what - aside from the fairy dust - is notable from the Palmer announcement?

The significant undertakings are that PUP will not support the abolition of the Renewable Energy Target, nor the abolition of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, nor the abolition of the Climate Change Authority.

Professor Palmer also described the Coalition's Direct Action plan as "a waste of money" - a view that would not be universally contested among Government ranks, it must be said.

These decisions are not so much a budgetary headache for the Government (the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, as you will recall, is an "off-budget" item, like the NBN, the heroic assumption of whose profitability is the sole justification for omitting it from the national fiscal document). What they are is a profound complication of the Government's forward agenda.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 19 minutes 39 seconds 19 m Clive Palmer speaks to Lateline host Tony Jones

Killing off the carbon tax and Direct Action at the same time is far from a disaster for the Government. Direct Action was a looming and ungainly horror of which many Government figures will be relieved to be shot.

Hanging on to the Renewable Energy Target, the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, however - all the accoutrements of the economic-transformation model - is distinctly awkward. To do so is to retain, at the cost of the Prime Minister, much of the infrastructure he hoped to abolish.

Mr Gore's brief remarks were largely boilerplate in nature. He restated his commitment to carbon pricing. He described the joint announcement as an "extraordinary moment" - a conclusion with which no carbon-based life form could possibly disagree.

He said he was "disappointed" at the abolition of the carbon tax, but "extremely hopeful" that, through the establishment of an emissions trading scheme, and the retention of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Renewable Energy Target and the Climate Change Authority, Australia would continue to play a leadership role in the climate change effort.

One is reminded that Mr Gore has only recently met Professor Palmer, and must have been struck by his - Gore's, that is - unique opportunity to influence the path of a nation at a multi-point political intersection such as that on whose kerb we now nervously loiter.

Mr Gore must have last night felt optimistic that he had preserved an air bubble - in a rapidly-sinking vehicle - for the path in which he so passionately believes.

Mr Abbott - who will meet with Professor Palmer today and who just a month or so ago experienced the magnate's wholesale reversal on the Government's higher education reforms - could be forgiven for thinking that it's not necessarily over yet.

"The world is constantly changing," declared Professor Palmer this evening, as exordium to a short speech about how it was good for politicians to change their minds.

No politician has, in the course of such a short career, heretofore explored this prerogative to the same extent. Keep this in mind.

Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer. She tweets at @annabelcrabb. View her full profile here.