Still don't trust what man and his modern technology is doing to this earth.

So please, you Denialists, try being truly realistic and sinking your thoughts deeper than just behind the eyes and ears.

Even re-planting with agricultural-style herbage will never absorb the carbon that a forest will.

Even in our wheatbelt it was marvellous the tree and scrub growth that thickly covered both red clay and plain, creating its own moisture as proven by the rainbow creepers etc, that grew even in a dry year.

There are also genuine stories still how where our wheatbelt joins the dryer natural grazing country, showers do choose to follow the uncleared land, especially in the gullies.

To see so much of our jungle forest country being cleared these days makes one shiver with shame for the future of mankind.

Cheers - BB

This article is a reasoned and worthwhile assessment of the current state of play in this astounding debacle.

Paul Biggs is to be congratulated for his clear headed analysis.

It is fact based, and Paul gives scientific authority for his assertions.

The picture which is emerging is that the IPCC is a crumbling edifice despite the trouble it has taken, to pretend that its spurious Summary is a reflection of the science prepared for the IPCC Report.

The alarmists invariably refer to the fraudulent IPCC Summary to support their claims that global warming is caused by human activity.

There is no scientific proof of this assertion, and much material is put forward by serious scientists to show that it is a flawed assertion.

PeterJH says the same old names are rolled out. In this article Steven McIntyre and Ross McKittrick might be the same old names, but it would be unnecessary to mention them if Gore did not persist in presenting false science, in his purported documentary. If he took out what was false there would be little left of his presentation, but that is hardly an excuse for misleading the community.

There are not, as you assert, PeterJH, “truckloads” of peer reviewed articles supporting alarmist assertions ( or “mainstream” as you have the temerity to call them) .

The authority for the alarmist nonsense is the IPCC Summary, not written by scientists, but falsely purporting to be backed by the peer reviewed scientific works in the IPCC Report.

Scientists on both sides of the debate acknowledge that there is no scientific proof of human activity causing global warming.

The alarmists do not have scientific backing for their assertions, and global warming to date has been negligible. The little global warming which has occurred ceased in 1998.

All the fuss relates to virtually baseless, and certainly unproven, assertions about what might happen in the future.

“Scientists on both sides of the debate acknowledge that there is no scientific proof of human activity causing global warming.”
A variation on a well-known tune of pestilential endurance.
In an earlier arrangement it went like this:
“Scientists on both sides of the debate acknowledge that there is no scientific proof for smoking inducing lung cancer”.
That held the stage of public attention for many profitable (yet murderous) years. And there seems to be no shortage of similarly- committed disk-jockeys to do a re-run for the public with the current one.

All of these points have been rebutted at length elsewhere; see for example Coby Beck's website. To take just one criticism, that of the lag between warming and CO2 increase, it is not even claimed this is anthropogenic. Rather it is an astronomical cycle extending way back before civilisation whereby proximity to the Sun warmed the Earth and then CO2 increased as a secondary effect...nothing to do with burning fossil fuels which is a relatively recent phenomenon.

I do agree with Michael in Adelaide that IPCC needs to re-examine its assumptions on recoverable fossil fuel reserves. This is not to say their models are structurally flawed but the external variables are questionable. Nonetheless there is certainly enough coal (but not oil and gas) left to transform the climate even if it runs out earlier than IPCC predicts.

Some of those who watched the ABC presentation of The Great Global Warming Swindle last week may have indeed gotten the point that the smart money is not on whose dramatisation of the global warming science has fewer flaws and furphies.

The smart money, it appears, is on risk management. That which may not happen, but carries significant risks with its occurence, ought to be planned for. That's the direction most governments and global corporations are heading: planning with the risks of global warming in mind.

A quick scan of the posts above leads me to believe I should leave this item to the die-hards, conspiracy theorists and movie critics.

Both sides of the debate have merely confused the issue. They have embellished their evidence and have used a variety of dramaturges, cozeners, fabulists and prophets along with others to sell their side of the debate. With the amount of hot air they are generating they alone may be responsible for increasing the world’s temperature appreciably.