Well it's Bob Carter and a few others against thousands of mainstream scientists, and a big bunch of Nobel Prize winners, presumably all of whom are not infected by "mother earthism".

Meanwhile this was on last nights news:
A new Department of Environment report has found the water in more than half of Western Australia's southern rivers is too salty to drink. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200510/s1474946.htm and there are similar reports all the time. We would be stupid not to be very concerned.

Air quality in Perth often fails WHO safety levels for smog, so as lisamaree says there are other reasons for limiting emissions besides greenhouse.

I would expect a University professor to know what a "straw man" argument is - "a point of view created in order to be easily defeated in argument; the creator of a "straw man" argument does not accurately reflect the best arguments of his or her opponents, but instead sidesteps or mischaracterizes them so as to make the opposing view appear weak or ridiculous."

Tim Flannery's book, the Future Eaters, talks about tens of thousands of years of human caused ecosystem changes. Tim Flannery cannot therefore be so easily described as a "mother-earthist-Hansenist" who thinks things only changed after the industrial revolution.

To ridicule the ineffectiveness of Kyoto is not the same as ridiculing the science. The Kyoto agreement is an agreement reached between self -interested nations, and its flaws reflect this, not flaws in the underlying science.

It is interesting to reflect that the etymology of disaster (Latin: dis ‘‘lack’’ or "ill", astrum ‘‘heavenly body’’ or ‘‘star’’), suggests bad luck or ill-fortune beytond the control of mere mortals, much like Shakespeare's "star-crossed lovers". On this basis, I think it is makes no sense to suggest that an evolving, foreseeable process like anthropogenic climate change and our response to it should be the same as our approach to discrete natural disasters which are inherently unpredictable and beyond our ability to effectively ameliorate or mitigate.

No-one concerned about climate change is suggesting that we can fit a thermostat to our atmosphere and stop all climatic variation and extreme events. What is important is tackling the anthropogenic aspects of climate change.

I think it's foolish to believe that all the "mainstream" scientists agree that human intervention has caused global warming. Here's a quote from a very well respected atmospheric scientist. I think we all should keep an open mind and listen to both sides of this debate because there are intelligent, well qualified people on both sides:

“Now there’s a few modelers around who know something about storms, but they would like to have the possibility open that global warming will make for more and intense storms because there’s a lot of money to be made on this. When governments step in and are saying this – particularly when the Clinton administration was in – and our Vice President Gore was involved with things there, they were pushing this (global warming) a lot. You know, most of meteorological research is funded by the federal government. And boy, if you want to get federal funding, you better not come out and say human-induced global warming is a hoax because you stand the chance of not getting funded.”

--William M. "Bill" Gray, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU), and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences. Gray is noted for his forecasts of Atlantic hurricane season activity.

Funkster, your statements are correct but there's an awful lot you don't say!

- According to ice core data, temperatures were warmer than this on several occasions - your "warmest" should read "probably the warmest in the last 100 years". (I say probably because prior to 1950 coverage for temperature data slips quickly the further you go back.)

- Scientist can show you that a DOUBLING of carbon dioxide will cause an increase of about 0.7 degrees. (Maybe that's even in a closed container.) So much for dramatic warming.

- Ice core records show that temperatures typically rose BEFORE carbon dioxide increased. (If you don't accept that the maybe you can explain why 80ppm of CO2 caused a temperature increase of 10 degrees several thousand years ago but we've had 100ppm in about 200 years and warming is about 1 degree!)

Money spent on pointless mitigation is unlikely to provide any economic benefit for the country because nothing positive will come from it. Trapping carbon dioxide will have negligible impact on temperature but the costs of trapping will be passed to consumers.

All good points, Bob. In the late 90's I was invited to provide a private forest owners perspective to a CSIRO workshop on the impact of climate change on temperate forests. The group was advised that the impact of a 1 degree increase in temperature and a 10% reduction in average rainfall could be easily ascertained by inspecting a similar forest about 50km to the northwest of just about anywhere in eastern Australia.

This change would be much less than what would be observed by walking as little as 200 metres from the cooler south facing side of a hill to the hotter north side in the original forest.

When asked what management actions we could take in response to change, we advised that we would simply adjust the stocking rate of trees in the same way that nature does now. That is, instead of thinning a stand of regrowth back to 800 stems per hectare we would reduce this by 10% to 720 stems to ensure that each retained tree had the same water budget as before.

The break out groups were unable to identify any forest species that would be put at risk from being in a forest with trees that were an average 3.72 metres apart rather than the original 3.53 metres.

Indeed, the only forests that were likely to be put at risk were those (mostly public) forests that will not have any adjustments to stocking rates. Trees in these forests would be left to compete for the diminished water supply, placing them all under stress. This would reduce soil moisture, microbial activity and fertility. This in turn would reduce the nutritional value of leaf, sap and flowers with obvious implications for the health and resilience of dependent species, especially when associated with increased risk of wildfire.

And five years later the 2003 fires proved my point. Pity about the weakened wildlife that didn't have a chance. But that is what green ideology is all about. What better way to cover up their own mistakes than an exaggerated threat on a global scale.

I tend to agree with Benji (see above) and I think Carter makes a very valid point over C02 and the general hyperbole we are fed by the media and Greenpeace, the Greens, Conservation Foundation etc

The facts are well spelt out on this site:

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/Template/MainPage.jsp?Page=Index

I think after reading this, few would really believe the earth is warming, but is, as Carter et al said, a changing environment where climate fluctuates over thousands of years.