Hi Philip,

If you are new to peak oil then, as a computer scientist, you will enjoy this (rather old) essay, "Peak Oil and the Preservation of Knowledge":

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/18978

By the way, as someone concerned about climate change you may be interested to know that there is not "plenty of coal":

http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/20593576/885722944/name/Patzek+and+Croft+2010+-+Peak+Coal+2011.pdf

or use this tiny URL:

http://tinyurl.com/2947fyn

michael_in_adelaide, thanks for the pointer to the peak coal article. I'm aware that there are rather divided views on this but it will not be terribly long before the accuracy of a prediction of peak coal in 2011 is tested. We should not also forget that there are vast amounts of methane in the oceans in the form of methane hydrates or clathrates that have not up to now been exploited because they are extremely unstable. Park a ship above one of these and try to tap into it, and you risk a huge bubble of methane in the water destroying your ship's buoyancy, for example. Then there's the problem that methane is any extremely potent greenhouse gas and some estimates of the amount in the oceans could push us well into a hothouse climate. So destabilising this stuff is seriously risky. Each step we take away from relatively easily extracted fossil fuels increases this sort of risk and of course the risk that we don't have the energy resources to build whatever comes next.

We don't have to agree on all the details to accept that serious work on a new energy economy is becoming urgent.

The Easter Island analogy is excellent. We're certainly in the business of chopping down the last trees, or using up the oil that we need to develop an alternative energy economy. At least the European Union's energy chief Guenther Oettinger acknowledged in November that oil had already peaked. It does give hope that the EU might take the lead in developing renewables and alternative energy sources. As for population, there is a very real risk of mass starvation as oil declines, combined with harvest reductions because of climate change, desertification, loss of biodiversity (e.g. bees to pollinate crops)and shortage of water (e.g. glaciers melting so rivers become seasonal). It is thus critical that, in dealing with all these manifold problems, we ensure universal reproductive health services so all people have the ability to limit their family size. It's easier to feed two children than five in times of food shortages.

Perhaps the most immediate problem facing Homo sapiens is degradation of human expectations.

In between the hiccups of war, depression, and intermittent tragedy on some very gross scales, people in general have been able to envisage prospects of improvement in their own lives, or for at least that of their children.

A great many have come to believe that normality lies in lifestyles of ever-increasing consumption and leisure-creation; and that anything less than that - perhaps more embedded in the reality of the environment upon which they depend, belongs to the hair-shirt brigade of a pre-technological age.

When a sense of deprivation, from their perceived entitlements, descends upon these people, discontent will breed like mould on last week’s bread. The spores of the fungus are already evident in the rantings of such people as: those denying the scientific data on climate change; the she’ll be right mob on cheap fossil fuel limits; and the “consumption, not numbers” campaigners against humanitarian action to minimize population pressure.

Life on this planet could be damned rough just around the corner, and escalating

Use of the "Easter Island story" to headline this article is on a par with the rest of it - scary, but insubstantial.

"One theory of what happened is that the islanders harvested all their trees, leaving them incapable of not only building more statues, but building ocean-going craft that would have allowed them to escape their fate, once their unsustainable consumption caused their food supply to collapse. Consequently population of the island plummeted, amid a decline into cannibalism."

Another theory goes:

"It appears there may have been two classes or races of inhabitants, those with long ears and those with short ears. The long eared people were the rulers. The short eared, who came earlier, were the workers. For this reason, most of the statues have long ears. Eventually, the short eared people revolted and killed all the long eared people."

http://www.qsl.net/w5www/easterisland.html

I rather like that one. Here's another:

"Other researchers have no doubt that its people, their culture and its environment were destroyed to all intents and purposes by European slave-traders, whalers and colonists - and not by themselves"

http://sacredsites.com/americas/chile/easter_island.html

Colonists and traders, huh? Here's more on that...

"In December 1862, Peruvian slave raiders struck Easter Island. Violent abductions continued for several months, eventually capturing or killing around 1500 men and women, about half of the island's population. International protests erupted, escalated by Bishop Florentin-Etienne Jaussen of Tahiti. The slaves were finally freed in autumn, 1863, but by then most of them had already died of tuberculosis, smallpox and dysentery. Finally, a dozen islanders managed to return from the horrors of Peru, but brought with them smallpox and started an epidemic, which decimated the island's population to the point where some of the dead were not even buried."

http://www.crystalinks.com/easterisland.html

But wait! Don't forget the rats...

"...anthropologist Terry Hunt blames the Polynesian rat for deforesting the 66-square-mile island's 16 million palm trees"

http://www.physorg.com/news8793.html

But why spoil a good yarn with conflicting theories, eh?

Hi. It's difficult to see how methane hydrates could be harvested at an energy profit - although it is true that their increased gasification due to warming of the seas could be a positive feedback driving global warming. Fortunatetly the half-life of methane in the atmosphere (before it is converted to e.g. water and CO2) is shorter than for CO2. Colin - "ever-increasing consumption and leisure-creation" is only half right. Who has more leisure nowadays? It is leisure-destruction that most of us are used to.

Just so that we are clear regarding "the she’ll be right mob on cheap fossil fuel limits", Hubbert curves are PRODUCTION RATE curves. Prices of production can go up but that does not mean that production rates will not fall (just as we are seeing right now for oil). Yes, you can mine carbon when the price goes higher but eventually it must stop due to lack of energy profit. Higher prices are just an expression in economic terms of the fact that more of the energy from energy production must be recycled back into energy production (i.e. energy profit is falling).

What a pity Philip doesn't have the power to
'smash this sorry scheme of things entire
and remould it closer to the heart's desire.

Look, I dunno where the author has been but doesn't he realise the immense revolution that is overtaking the energy industry? I haven't been through all the details myself but it has to do with rock fracturing and reserves of gas and shale oil.. lot of international press on it of late.

There may be some short term disruption due to the changeover to alternates, but this is due to OPEC failing to invest in production facilities - so, yes, prices may get higher, but forecasting in the oil game is very difficult.

As for Easter Island, the author and some of the posters are quoting the theories of Jarad Diamond. They are interesting theories but Diamond is virtually alone in making them. Other academics who have looked at the island say that Western contact, including slave trader raids and diseases, destroyed the culture (not civilisation) that made the statues.

The trees went through two causes, one was the introduction of rats by the original settlers - rats that ate the seeds from the trees. See the work of Professor Terry L. Hunt, a professor of Archeology at the University of Hawaii. the other was that it was a marginal place for trees anyway.

Diamond has bitten back, of course, but until he has some solid archeological evidence to back his theories, they have to be considered marginal.

And I almost forgot. Peak coal. Bwwwhahahahah! Some people are really, really, desperate for scare stories. Took a look at the first link on the peak coal paper. Its just nonsense. Dump it and forget it. Reserves of coal vary according to price and other factors, never on production.

Bioinformatics - is this some peculiar new age nonsense paid for by my tax dollars? Really you couldnt make this stuff up!

JBowyer, seriously man, you should try and at least google the meaning of words you don't understand before ridiculing them. You've just branded yourself on a public forum.

Bugsy, read mate, read..

I've just been glancing through some of the stuff on shale oil and gas.. I still don't quite grasp what's going on but apparently there is shale oil and gas accessible by these fracture methods everywhere. All the rule books have been thrown out the window, and the big reservoirs don't matter so much any more. Go and search for yourself if you don't believe me.

The article is now not so much wrong as completely outdated.

Hey, was I arguing that with you Mark?

I am sure there are a lot of burnable hydrocarbons out there. It may not be as cheap, and some of it appears to be already causing major concerns of environmental degradation and more direct pollution through contamination of water tables with compounds like benzene, especially in arable areas. But hey, it's there, lets burn it, I'm sure it won't cause any sorts of atmospheric or environmental problems at all.

I read all right, just evidently not the same pap you appear to.

Dear Curmudgeon (how aptly named!) and Pericles

Diamond was not the first to discuss the fate of Easter Island - he didn't do the original research. But from what he says and others have written, the first collapse in numbers came a long time before the 19th century sailors finished most of them off, by whatever means. As for trees, it did not support more advanced trees, only the large palms whose trunks could be used to roll the statues from the mine to the coast. Rats, I'm sure, could have contributed to the demise of the trees but the archeological record shows that there was a civilisation there of sorts for some time before collapse. So, as for the analogy with peak oil, Easter Island still holds as far as I'm concerned

Curmudgeon, you will be sad to hear that most of the fracking/shale gas hype is just that - hype. Go do some reading at www.theoildrum.com to find out. Here is one article to get you going:

http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2011/02/08/chesapeakes-move-brings-cheer-to-gloomy-us-gas-sector/

"We believe 2011 will be the breaking point, where producers run out of assets to sell to fund growth that is driven by spending 80 per cent more than discretionary cash flow. Natural gas E&Ps are living on borrowed time."

And as to peak coal - while you dismiss the Patzek and Croft paper out of hand it has, in fact, been published in a peer-reviewed journal so its ideas are worth considering at least. Peak Coal may not be this year but it may be soon, and a number of analyses point to it occurring before 2030.

ponnperish - no these theories are drive by Diamond, although I have read that Thor Heyerdahl was the first to propose it and Diamond took it up. However, I repeat that Diamond is virtually alone in making these statements, and there is now some contrary evidence from archeological digs (see Terry L Hunt, Uni of Hawaii). Even that would be fine if he had some sort of archeological evididence to back it up. He doesn't - its not even clear that he has attempted any digs himself on the island - therefore, its a fringe theory until proven otherwise.

michaelinadelaide - go back and look at the article you linked to educate me. It backs up what I said, the Americans are swimming in natural gas. It mentions there a natural gas glut. shale oil is apparently not far behind. Time to dump the peak oil theory and get reading. Peak oil only ever applied to eacy-lift (the stuff in the big reservoirs) in any case.

Well of course you would think that, popnperish.

>>So, as for the analogy with peak oil, Easter Island still holds as far as I'm concerned<<

That's fine, go for it.

But the fact remains that the analogy itself is so tenuous as to be insufficiently robust to sustain an entire article without generating the obvious response... oh, really?

It is true that many others share your opinion. But mainly because it supports their personal views on the environment - very few have actually bothered to look at the facts, and at the vastly conflicting theories, mainly because - quite simply - it suits them not to.

I am not alone in my position, by the way.

"Lipo [Carl Lipo of California State University] thinks the story of Easter Island's civilization being responsible for its own demise might better reflect the psychological baggage of our own society than the archeological evidence. 'It fits our 20th century view of us as ecological monsters'"

http://www.livescience.com/616-view-easter-island-disaster-wrong-researchers.html

To pick one version, from the dozens available, and use it in this cavalier fashion completely annuls any actual information the article may have contained.

It's called a "credibility gap".

This is what Diamond says about alternative views in his 2007 Science paper with many references:

"Thus, major changes unfolded on Easter Island before European arrival. Those changes included deforestation; the loss of palm sap as a food and water source; switching from wood to grasses and sedges as fuel; establishing stone mulching; ceasing to carve statues, because deforestation meant no more big logs and fiber rope for transport; abandoning upland plantations, probably used to feed workers transporting statues; and (as described in oral traditions) increases in warfare, statue destruction by rival clans, and use of refuge caves. However, alternative views have been proposed.

One view is a version of Rousseau's noble savage myth: the claim that bad things began happening on Easter only after European arrival (13-15). Undoubtedly, Europeans on Easter, as elsewhere in the Pacific, did serious harm through slave raids, worsened erosion, and introduced diseases, grazing animals, and plants. But this view ignores or dismisses the abundant evidence, summarized above, for pre-European impacts.

Another view recognizes pre-European deforestation but blames it on hypothesized droughts (2). However, there is no direct information about climate change on Easter between A.D. 1000 and 1700. Easter's forests had already survived tens of thousands of years of climate fluctuations (1), and it seems unlikely that a drought in the 1600s (if there was one) destroyed the forests just coincidently soon after human arrival.

According to a third view, deforestation was caused by introduced rats, as suggested by rat gnaw marks on many nuts of the extinct palm (15). This hypothesis does not account for all those palm stumps cut off at the ground and burned, nor for the larger number of palm nuts burned rather than gnawed, nor for the disappearance of the long-lived palm trees themselves (with an estimated life span of up to 2000 years) (16). If rats were responsible, they were unusual ones, equipped with fire and hatchets. Thousands of other Pacific islands overrun by introduced rats were not deforested, and many other tree species that survived on other rat-infested islands disappeared on Easter (16)."

Cont'd

The link to the whole paper is

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/317/5845/1692.full

The Hunt paper that Curmudgeon referred to is also on the Web

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/rethinking-the-fall-of-easter-island/1

Note that Hunt admits that it was the people who cut down the trees. The role of the rats (presumably) was in stopping regeneration. He doesn't explain why other rat infested islands weren't deforested or why the people wouldn't have had the wit to protect palm seeds and seedlings.

Pericles likes to pretend that Diamond is just an outlier, but archaeologists have been writing about collapses of societies and their relationship to population and environmental issues for a long time. Good sources, apart from Jared Diamond's book, are Prof. Steven LeBlanc's "Constant Battles" (Archaeology, Harvard), which has very convincing photographs, Prof. Lawrence Keeley's "War Before Civilization" (Archaeology, University of Chicago), and soil scientist Prof. David Montgomery's "Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations".

Of course, none of this provides absolute proof, but being completely impervious to evidence is the mark of denialism. If we are influenced by what we want to believe, perhaps Pericles is reluctant to believe anything that challenges his growthist ideology, that population and consumption can grow without limit on a finite earth, at least for the foreseeable future.

Divergence - go back and look at the material you cite. None of that gets diamond off the hook. Of course youd would have tree stumps and burned tree nuts.. there were people on the island after all.. the assumption you are making is that if rats are to blame then the islanders could not have touched any of the trees. Of course they would have cut down some. The allegation Diamond makes is that they went too far and cut them all down.. whereas Hunt makes the quite logical counter statement, backed by evidence, that rats did for most of the tree cover by eating the seeds (nuts). He also points out that it is known to have happened on other islands.

In any case, I'm not saying Diamond is wrong, but you can't use folk tales (his folk tale evidence has also been dismissed, incidentally) to prove that sort of story. You need a comprehensive archeological dig on the island. They can do wonders with archeological surveys these days.

Until then, as no other academic seems to agree with Diamond, its not really a question of trying to retread his arguments. It remains a fringe theory and that's really it. Nothing more to say. You get lots of them in archeology incidentally - Troy was really in England, Atlantis was really on what is now the bottom of a lake in Turkey, the Arc of the Covenent ended up in Ethiopia, chinese ships sailed all round the world rather than just chunks of the Indian and Pacific, a Roman legion got to China (google China and lost legion). Pay no attention until there is hard confirmation.

Mark, Jared Diamond could not by any stretch of anyone's imagination but yours be described as 'fringe'. Or as you previously have described him, a 'nutter'.

He has published quite widely and intelligently on a number of topics revolving around ecology and evolution. That some academics disagree with some of the details or underlying causes of particular ecological collapses does not in any sense make him 'fringe'.

Quite the contrary, he gets published in the most prestigous of journals and other academics are then left to openly debate his hypotheses, the result? Higher profiles for all concerned of course.

But to somehow equate Diamonds ideas of overarching ecological themes with those truly fringe historical theories you described is a grotesque distortion of reality. But I wouldn't have expected anything less, of course.

You must be thinking of someone else, Divergence.

>>Pericles likes to pretend that Diamond is just an outlier<<

I have no opinion of Mr Diamond whatsoever.

My observation was simply that his theory is merely one among many, none of which has any greater claim to accuracy and credibility than any other.

Except perhaps the one about the long ears and the short ears. That was pretty silly.

Curmudgeon,

Science is a peer reviewed journal. The editor would have sent Diamond's paper to at least two referees and more likely three or four before it was accepted for publication. These referees would have been archaeologists with expertise in the South Pacific and probably Easter Island itself. They would have been selected by the editor, not Jared Diamond. The idea that they would have let Diamond get away with making stuff up (as you suggested on another thread), grossly misrepresenting his references, or failing to deal with significant objections to his theories is as silly as the fringe historical theories you have referred to.

Incidentally, Diamond says those palm trees had a lifespan of 2000 years and had survived on Easter Island for thousands of years. It is hard to see how a rat could harm a mature tree. If people didn't cut them all down, what happened to them?

Prof. LeBlanc at Harvard includes a long section on Easter Island in "Constant Battles" and clearly accepts much of Diamond's account. While there certainly is controversy, it can't be said that "no one agrees with him".

Bugsy and Divergence - fellas look closely at the stuff you cite. Whoever is citing Diamond is just citing stuff that agrees with their own theories without going any further into it. The academics who have looked at Easter Island independently disagree. Sorry, but its a fringe theory, quite isolated from the mainstream. Attractive theories do get some traction however, no matter what evidence there may be.

Bugsy - read the chapter on Australia in that book of Diamond's on collapses. You know he confuses the West Australian State constution with the Federal Constitution.. and that is only one of several howlers. I was horrified. This is a best seller? then you tell me whether you think he should still be taken seriously or treated as fringe. He's fringe and that's really it..

Mark, the journal Science does not publish fringe theories.

Hey, is Plimers book a best-seller? How many howlers in there?

BTW, I haven't found anyone who stocks your book on the shelves yet, where's it available?

...Oh well, this event will solve the housing crisis in Australia then. All reduced to slum dwellers. Good, at that point Darwinian theory takes control and the philosophy of “survival of the fittest”, (the free market mantra of Capitalism), will mature. Bring it on!

"To those climate change deniers who take comfort in the fact that they will only be proved wrong after their lifetimes and who hate their grandchildren: this one will happen soon. "

The author unquestionably accepts the anthropogenic global warming dogma. Given his computer skills, it is surprising that he has not done a computer search, or other type of search, of the scientific literature to find papers that contain scientific evidence that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have had a significant measurable effect on average global temperature. If he were to find any, he could tell not only his grandchildren, but everyone else.

A few comments on comments:

Thanks for all the critiquing of the Easter Island theory, but maybe you missed the fact that I deliberately qualified the Easter Island story with "One theory of what happened". Accuracy of the story is irrelevant for purposes of analogy.

On shale gas: there are some authorities who consider the claimed reserves to be grossly exaggerated (e.g. http://www.energybulletin.net/node/53556). In any case, these gas resources are highly infrastructure-intensive, and can't be brought to market instantly any more than newly-discovered oil fields. Even if they could be, converting a sufficient fraction of oil-based infrastructure to gas to make a difference would be a massive project. The IEA's forward projections show "unconventional" gas, well into the period when magical oil fields yet to be discovered come on line, as remaining a tiny share of the market more for logistical and infrastructural reasons than doubts about estimates of reserves (a matter on which the IEA has historically been naïvely trusting: why would OPEC lie to an OECD agency?).

Raycom: climate science isn't dogma, it's physics. I strongly recommend you read a copy of Principles of Planetary Climate by RT Pierrehumbert. Since you sneer at the work of thousands of scientists, presumably a bit of physics and calculus won't be beyond you. Thanks for your appreciation of my computer skills. The requisite search is http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&q=CO2+affect+global+temperature+attribution -- can you report back on what's wrong with the materials it turns up?

I admire the sunny optimism of some posting here but reality doesn't have favourites. If there's reason to believe the situation isn't dire, let's see the evidence.

Oh.

That's all right then, PhilipM.

>>Accuracy of the story is irrelevant for purposes of analogy.<<

So (taking the above comment to its logical conclusion) I can simply make up anything I like, and say "this is analogous to what we are doing to the environment. Take heed, everyone."

Along those helpful lines, I should avoid corporate Christmas parties (Die Hard), stay out of the water (Jaws), and never let a small furry animal open a bottle of champagne (Alvin and the Chipmunks).

Ok. Now that you've explained it, I guess it sort of works.

At least for the champagne.

Well Pericles, I for one would never let a Christian fundamentalist with a tub of spakfilla near me if I had a gaping god-shaped hole in my head.

Philip

Perhaps your problem is that you misread or misinterpret what has been written.

My reference was to the anthropogenic global warming dogma, not climate science.

I appreciate the work that is done by genuine climate scientists, not pseudo-scientists.

I strongly recommend that you and other warmists bring yourselves up to date by reading the 8 February 2011 open letter, 'The Truth About Climate Change', submitted to the United States Congress by a group of genuine US scientists, in response to a letter of 28 January 2011 from eighteen climate 'alarmists', that is available at the following link
http://www.co2science.org/education/truthalerts/v14/TruthAboutClimateChangeOpenLetter.php

Once you have read it and the reviews/reports referred to therein, you could perhaps report back with your impressions

Raycom, AGW is a prediction of climate science. It's not a separate theory. If you know some physics and calculus you really need to read a text book to understand this stuff properly. If you don't you are working on blind trust, and there is plenty to distrust out there, especially bloggers who are vague about to whom they are accountable.

I've studied some of the material on the "CO2Science" blog and it's propaganda. For example, their materials on the medieval warm period don't add up. Their "best" data covers a number of relatively short warm periods at different locations spanning about 600 years. This does not add up to a global warm period, but a series of disjoint high points in the temperature record.

Philip, AGW is an hypothesis, which warmists ( a collective term for AGW believers) consider to be settled science and a major influence on climate.

However, the science is not settled. There is not even agreement about key factors.

For a start, the IPCC, the arch proponent of AGW, asserts a CO2 atmospheric residence time of 50 to 200 years, whereas there have been numerous studies that report measurements of 5 to 10 years ( see http://www.co2web.info/ESEF3VO2.pdf). The IPCC asserts that 21% of the CO2 in the atmosphere comes from fossil fuels, whereas Segalstad concludes that it is 4%.

There is no scientific evidence that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have had a measurable impact on climate.

Yet, warmist climate scientists arrogantly deride any questioning of their 'settled science'. They do so for political reasons -- having a vested interest in continuing to con politicians and the media -- and not as practitioners of scientific method, which invites questioning

Come on you guys. The salient point in Philip's article is that the IEA has shown that the production of oil is going to progressively decline over the next 50 years or so, to the point where humanity is not going to be able to cultivate enough food to feed itself, unless we manage to radically transform the way we use energy. What's to nitpick about?

At least we suburb-dwellers will still have our vege gardens;-)

Raycom, the resident time of CO_2 is not the relevant measure. The measure you want is the airborne fraction of emissions. CO_2 is in constant flux between the oceans and the atmosphere. A given molecule may well be in the atmosphere for only a few years, and no one is arguing about that. The relevant issue is the rate of flow between the atmosphere and the rest of the environment. If you increase the flow to the atmosphere, you have to increase the rate of absorption to balance out. We know the rate of human CO_2 emission to reasonable accuracy, and we can measure total CO_2 in the atmosphere to reasonable accuracy. The long-term trend in airborne CO_2 matches the Bern model (i.e. prediction) well. If only 4% of the CO_2 in the atmosphere is from anthropogenic sources, why is it increasing exponentially in line with increases in human emissions?

You are absolutely right that AGW is a hypothesis. Climate science is a theory, and a well-established one. A hypothesis is a testable prediction arising from a theory. Why do you want to argue about that?

Why do you think scientists have any interest in conning anyone? The rational response if you accept the mainstream science is to invest more in clean energy not more in climate science. It's the denial camp who are generating lots of jobs for climate scientists by refusing to accept that we know enough to take action.

Philip, you love to refer to 'the theory', but the dangerous AGW hypothesis has failed to stand up to testing.

As Bob Carter, who is well versed in the climate science field, has pointed out, no paper has yet been published that unambiguously invalidates the null hypothesis of a natural origin for observed modern climate change, despite about US$100 billion (US$79 billion in the US alone) having been spent since 1990 and the intense efforts of many scientists to find evidence that favours dangerous AGW.

On the other hand, there is abundant compelling scientific evidence that invalidates the IPCC's hypothesis that human greenhouse emissions (especially of CO2) will cause dangerous global warming. For references to some eight tests of the hypothesis of dangerous AGW, see end-note 228 on pp286-288 of Bob Carter's book, 'Climate: the Counter Consensus'. This book is a must-read for anyone who is serious about finding out the truth about climate change.

Raycom, Bob Carter has an agenda. His material is slathered with non-scientific language (of which this is a small sample: "Public opinion will soon demand an explanation as to why experienced editors and hardened investigative journalists, worldwide, have melted before the blowtorch of self-induced guilt, political correctness and special interest expediency that marks the sophisms of global warming alarmists" whereas his own side are "climate rationalists"). This is an emotional rant, not wording you would expect in a scientific paper. It's not just the tone: the content of the paper I've quoted is gibberish, more repetition of blog talking points than a scientific analysis.

His claim that the AGW hypothesis isn't supported by evidence is nonsense. A wide range of attribution studies show that natural influences alone are insufficient to explain climate variability over the last 100 years. For example, the claim that it's all the sun is wrong both in terms of the physics (the variation is insufficient) and, in recent decades, the trend. We have just started to emerge from the deepest solar low in nearly 100 years yet 2010 set a new record for temperatures. And no, we did not have an unusually strong El Niño.

The decline in Arctic sea ice and Antarctic ice mass, and many other lines of evidence support the mainstream hypothesis. The null hypothesis is that natural variability is responsible for all change, yet the major known natural influences are either insufficient or do not correlate with the change. This is very well known, and all good attribution studies start our with attempting to account for natural variability. What's left is anthropogenic change, and that change is consistent with the underlying physics.

Here's some reading for you: http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=climate+change+attribution

As I said before, if you think the physics wrong is, read Principles of Planetary Climate. You will need to be comfortable with calculus to understand it in depth, but if you have the confidence to tell thousands of PhDs they are idiots, that should be a small obstacle. Report back here when you find the error.

Philip, your response was predictable. You denigrate the well-known independent scientist, Bob Carter, as one having "an agenda" and one who "slathers" his material with non-scientific, emotive language. It is typical of the approach that warmists use to denigrate global warming sceptics.

Ironically, you then use emotive language to dismiss Bob Carter's observation that there is abundant compelling scientific evidence that invalidates the IPCC's AGW hypothesis. It is evident that you have not read end-note 228 (it takes up 3 pages of fine print, and is thus too long to be quoted here) of his book, which undoubtedly would be available in a Brisbane library.

It is up to the IPCC, or any other scientist for that matter, to come up with the scientific evidence to validate the AGW hypothesis. However, they have failed to produce that scientific evidence.

Your recommended website, http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=climate+change+attribution , contains about 72,500 entries, none of which has produced the required scientific evidence.

Raycom, you call me a "warmist" while decrying the use of denigrating language. But let's leave that aside.

I'm not sure which book by Bob Carter you are referring to (I couldn't find it in any library catalogue here) but I found this http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/11899/3/11899_Carter_2010_front_pages.pdf extract on a publisher's web site. In the extract, he writes: "The IPCC is the United Nations hody that in 1995 allowed a single activist scientist, Ben Santer, to rewrite parts of the key Chapter 8 (Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Climate Change) of its Second Assessment Report in alarmist terms", a statement comprehensively rebutted by Ben Santer here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/close-encounters-of-the-absurd-kind/

I wonder if Dr Santer has a case for defamation. The extract on the publisher's site is clearly the work of a person with an agenda, not a dispassionate scientist.

Read the book I referred to you. It's proper science, not conspiracy theory garbage.

Philip, the Robert (Bob) Carter book is entitled, 'Climate: The Counter Consensus', published by Stacey International in 2010.

The claim about Santer rewriting parts of key Chapter 8 of IPCC's Climate Change 1995 , has appeared in many publications.

S Fred Singer and Dennis T Avery, in their book 'Unstoppable Global Warming' published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2007, give the following account (see pp 120-121):

(Start of quote)
"The IPCC's Climate Change 1995 was reviewed by its consulting scientists in late 1995. The 'Summary for Policy Makers' was approved in December, and the full report , including Chapter 8, was accepted. However, after the printed report appeared in May 1996, the scientific reviewers discovered that major changes had been made "in the back room" after they had signed off on the science chapter's contents. Santer, despite the shortcomings of the scientific evidence, had inserted strong endorsements of man-made warming in Chapter 8 (of which he was the IPCC-appointed lead author):

"There is evidence of an emerging pattern of climate response to forcing by greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols ... from the geographical, seasonal and vertical patterns of temperature change ... These results point toward a human influence on global climate. (IPCC, Climate Change 1995, Chapter 8, 412)

The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate. "( IPCC, Climate Change 1995, Chapter 8, 439)"

(cont. in new post)

(cont. from previous post)
Santer also deleted these key statements from the expert-approved chapter 8 draft:

"None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed (climate) changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases."

"While some of the pattern-base studies discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part (of the climate change observed) to (man-made) causes. Nor has any study quantified the magnitude of a greenhouse gas effect or aerosol effect in the observed data -- an issue of primary relevance to policy makers."

"Any claims of positive detection and attribution of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced."

"While none of these studies has specifically considered the attribution issue, they often draw some attribution conclusions, for which there is little justification."

"When will an anthropogenic effect on climate be identified? It is not surprising that the best answer to the question is, "We do not know."

Santer single-handedly reversed the "climate science " of the whole IPCC report -- and with it the global warming political process. The "discernible human influence" supposedly revealed by the IPCC has been cited thousands of times since in media around the world and has been the "stopper" in millions of debates between non-scientists.

(Cont. from previous post)
The journal Nature mildly chided the IPCC for redoing chapter 8 to "ensure that it conformed" to the report's politically correct Summary for Policy Makers. In an editorial, Nature favoured the Kyoto treaty.

The Wall Street Journal, which did not favour Kyoto, was outraged . Its condemning editorial, "Coverup in the Greenhouse, " appeared 11 June 1996. The following day, Frederick Seitz, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, detailed the illegitimate rewrite in the Journal in a commentary titled, "Major Deception on Global Warming."
(End of quote from Singer and Avery)

If Robert Carter has an agenda, it is to expose the scientific facts about climate change and how AGW proponents have manipulated to keep those facts from the public spotlight.

The book you refer to may cover climate theory, but the hypothesis that anthropogenic CO2 emissions cause dangerous global warming has not been proved by scientific evidence. In the words deleted from the expert-approved chapter 8 draft of IPCC, Climate Change 1995, no one has quantified the magnitude of an anthropogenic CO2 effect in the observed data